FRANCAISSolidarités - History
1991-1999
-1991, France: Alain Boinet and Patrice Franceschi launch Solidarités, following ad hoc organisations created in the second half of the 1980s, i.e. Solidarité Afghanistan in 1987, then Solidarité Mission Liban and Solidarité Roumanie in 1989. A former member of the Guilde européenne du raid, Alain Boinet had set up his first humanitarian caravan in December 1980, when he illegally crossed the Pakistani border from Peshawar to supply the Mujahidin, at war against the Red army in Afghanistan; the goods had been directly given to the supporters of Commander Amin Wardak.
-November 4th 1993, ex-Yugoslavia: a Solidarités’ vehicle explodes on a landmine near the town of Vares, which has just been taken by the Muslim forces of Bosnia; one person is killed and another seriously injured.
-Since 1994, Afghanistan: Solidarités keeps running its programmes while the Taliban fundamentalists gain power and end up taking Kabul on the 26th of September 1996. The new regime imposes a strict application of the Koranic law, the sharia, and wants to discriminate against women. Besides, the authorities try to supervise humanitarian aid and sometimes forbid access to areas controlled by their opponents, for instance, in January 2001, on the territory of the Hazara minority. Solidarités, then operating from Bamyan, has to withdraw from that territory, to Mazar-I-Charif. The September 11th 2001 attacks in New York and the American reprisals, consisting in bombing the country, obviously change the situation. Solidarités evacuates its expatriate staff and, from Pakistan and Uzbekistan, come back to Afghanistan in November via Mazar-I-Charif while the Northern Alliance takes Kabul and overthrows the Taliban regime.
-December 1995, Rwanda: with Action Nord Sud and another charity, Solidarités is the only French NGO not to be expelled from the country by the government of the Rwandese Patriotic Front, whose relations with Paris are low. Some members of the regime want to take advantage of the absence of witnesses to avenge the victims of the 1994 genocide. Still, in Butare, Solidarités had rescued some wounded people hidden in the forest and suspected of taking part in the massacres before the victory of the Rwandese Patriotic Front. Solidarités, which signs an official statement protesting against the expulsion of other NGOs, can stay in the country; its mission will eventually close in 2001.
-Since December 1996, Burundi: Solidarités helps the displaced people and the refugees who are back in their country.
-1998-2001, ex Yugoslavia: Solidarités decides in September 1998 to open a mission in Kosovo, and sees about 300 NGOs arrive after NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) bombs the Serb troops in June 1999. The organisation also works in Macedonia after April 1999, and in Serbia, where a hydraulic programme starts in December 2000. Most of these missions close in 2001, including in Bosnia.
