The headteacher of a prestigious French secondary school in Qatar has been abruptly recalled by the authorities in Paris after a routine staffing dispute threatened to turn into a diplomatic affair. Mediapart has learned that Hafid Adnani, who was on detachment from the French education ministry where he is regarded as a high-flyer, was last month told to back his bags and stand down as head of the Lycée Bonaparte in Doha. He had been accused of an “anti-Muslim attitude”.
It is the second time in a year that the head of a French lycée in the wealthy Arab state has been obliged to return to Paris in a hurry; in the autumn of 2012 the headteacher at the Lycée Voltaire in Doha was forced to quit after facing unsubstantiated claims of paedophilia that he strongly denied, allegations that followed a falling out with the local Qatari prosecutor. This second case underlines the difficulty of running an educational establishment in an Arab state which is investing heavily in France and with which the French government is keen to maintain close relations.
In this latest case Hafid Adnani quit Doha abruptly on the weekend of September 7th and 8th after a clash with a colleague escalated into a more wide-ranging affair. According to a number of sources the headteacher at the Lycée Bonaparte, run by the overseas teaching authority the Agence pour l’enseignement français à l’étranger (AEFE) which is under the control of the French foreign ministry, had wanted to get rid of the school's finance director because she did not have the qualifications that she claimed to have to do the job. At the start of September she filed a complaint, claiming that Adnani was guilty of an “anti-Muslim attitude”.
The complaint quickly led to the headteacher’s arrest. The French ambassador was alerted and it appears an agreement was quickly reached in which Hafid Adnani was released but was required to quit his job and pack his bags immediately for Paris – leaving his family behind in Doha. The sudden departure of Hafid Adnani came out of the blue for parents, who had no inkling anything was wrong. “On the Friday he was seen in Doha, and on the Sunday we were told he was in Paris!” says the mother of one pupil at the lycée, who asked not to be named. At the time of writing the headteacher was still on the school's website, as is his message for the start of the new academic year (see below).
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The French foreign ministry said simply that Hafid Adnani had been replaced on Sunday September 8th by the school's deputy head and that the finance director had resigned. “The headteacher had a disagreement with an official at the Bonaparte French lycée. To avoid exacerbating the affair and in his own interest, the Agence pour l’enseignement français à l’étranger offered him a new position,” said the foreign ministry in Paris. “The deputy head will take over in the meantime pending the nomination of a new headteacher.”
At the education ministry in Paris, meanwhile, officials say they are “in the process of finding him a new headteaching position in France”. Yet neither foreign minister Laurent Fabius's ministry nor education minister Vincent Peillon's department wanted to comment further on what is seen as a sensitive issue. The president's office at the Elysée meanwhile referred all calls to the foreign ministry, simply noting that the affair was not discussed during President François Hollande's two meetings with the Qatari authorities in September.
France has in any case shown itself very reticent when it comes to criticising the actions of the state's ruling family, whether they concern the organisation of the football World Cup in 2022 – for example over the deaths of 44 Nepalese workers on a construction site – or respect for human rights, for example over reports that Qatar and other Gulf states may use 'gay detector' tests on expatriates.
Yet the Lycée Bonaparte affair is the second case in a year in which the head of a French school in Doha has had to leave in a hurry after curious and seemingly unfounded allegations were made. In the previous case the school involved was the :Lycée Voltaire which was set up amid much fanfare in 2008 during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, and which was run by the French secular society the Mission laïque française, an organisation founded in 1900 and whose role is to teach the French language throughout the world.
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This school was set up with the support of the Al Thani ruling dynasty in Qatar, which wanted a French school for the children of wealthy Qatari families; the Bonaparte school is mostly used by expatriates. It also taught the son of ousted Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. However, the curriculum and text books used at the school soon became a source of conflict with the Qatari authorities; the chief prosecutor in Doha was the head of the school governing board. Le Nouvel Observateur magazine reported how the then headteacher of the school was summoned before the authorities over a history book that had a number of pages devoted to Christianity. “They had to censure books so that it did not show that France produced wine or show images of a naked woman in a science text. You couldn't sing Three Little Pigs in nursery school either!” the mother of a former pupil told Mediapart.
To reduce the growing tensions a new headteacher, Franck Choinard, was appointed on double the salary of his predecessor. But the situation did not improve. The Mission laïque who ran the school was asked to pack its bags at the end of 2012. “For the first time in our history,” says the association’s president, former ambassador Yves Aubin de la Messuzière. The association was accused of having diverted 500,000 euros from the Qatar school to pay for other teaching establishments around the world, though the association says it was simply a misunderstanding of its accountancy process. At the time headteacher Franck Choinard sided with Qatar and even made a formal complaint about the funds in Paris, though French prosecutors have now closed the affair.
Franck Choinard's good relations with the Doha authorities did not last long, however. Like Hafid Adnani, the headteacher at the lycée Voltaire was given two days to leave the country after the local authorities apparently accused him of paedophilia, a claim he strenuously denied. The 'evidence' for this claim was a photo showing the teacher holding a pupil on a camel. “One evening he told us he had to pack his bags in 48 hours,” one member of staff told Le Nouvel Observateur. The headteacher told friends that the prosecutor's entourage had not forgiven him for failing to dismiss two members of staff at the school. “Here again is a case totally fabricated by the authorities,” says a source with a close knowledge of the Gulf state. “It is Qatari practice.”
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During François Hollande's visit to Qatar in June 2013 the situation was smoothed over. The Qataris themselves now run the school in partnership with the AEFE. However, the Mission laïque's Aubin de la Messuzière says it was “wounding for the association not to have been sufficiently protected by the French diplomatic service”. In fact, France has not reconsidered any of its partnerships with the wealthy Arab state, which is now a major investor in many different sectors in France.
The new affair involving the Lycée Bonaparte seems unlikely to change this. “These are two schools that are working. Overall it's going quite well in Qatar,” says an official at the education ministry in Paris. When asked if this second incident would encourage a rethink of its teaching partnerships with Qatar, the foreign ministry for its part simply said: “No.”
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English version by Michael Streeter