Geopolitics in the 2020s.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Baldy Prigozhin's doing no doubt. Wagner will likely limit themselves to guarding the rulers and gold mines and let IS and Al Quaeda linked groups run the rest. The French have pretty well fucked off home already.

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/04/26/wagner-in-africa-russias-other-empire-in-the-making-bloodier-than-ukraine/

https://reliefweb.int/report/burkina-faso/actor-profile-islamic-state-sahel-province

 

The French still have huge influence in the region, business there is worth billions to the French economy. 

The Russian presence is handy for any future 'liberal intervention' I suppose.

[welshbairn]

28 minutes ago, Herc said:

The French still have huge influence in the region, business there is worth billions to the French economy. 

The Russian presence is handy for any future 'liberal intervention' I suppose.

Can't have the Frogs and Ivans nicking everything for themselves, time for a Blairite humanitarian intervention.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

Can't have the Frogs and Ivans nicking everything for themselves, time for a Blairite humanitarian intervention.

Can't be much appetite for that atm with what's going on in Ukraine. The thought of are brave boys having to go without decent kit as everything gets punted across to Kiev simply doesn't bear thinking about.

Easier and cheaper to either fund the 'moderate' jihadists or stage a coup I would think.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Herc said:

Easier and cheaper to either fund the 'moderate' jihadists or stage a coup I would think.

It's easier to get authorisation for military expenditure on counter-terrorism so there's an incentive to really stretch the definition of jihadist. We all know of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria and they're a genuinely jihadist group. However, there's far less evidence that the conflicts in Niger and the like have a significant jihadist component.

More often, it's an inter-ethnic conflict between pastoralists (herders) and farmers. The historically dominant ethnic group will've long been favoured by central government and therefore will own the land. The historically marginalised ethnic group will've therefore always lived a more precarious semi-nomadic existence. It's that group which takes up arms and becomes the insurgency.

Edited August 1, 2023 by FreedomFarter

[jagfox]

Burkina Faso, Mali say military intervention in Niger would be 'declaration of war'

[Guest]

5 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Baldy Prigozhin's doing no doubt. Wagner will likely limit themselves to guarding the rulers and gold mines and let IS and Al Quaeda linked groups run the rest. The French have pretty well fucked off home already.

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/04/26/wagner-in-africa-russias-other-empire-in-the-making-bloodier-than-ukraine/

https://reliefweb.int/report/burkina-faso/actor-profile-islamic-state-sahel-province

That UN article was an interesting read. IS in the Maghreb being the source of the Sahel IS is well-known. It's an irony that the French pushed hardest for the NATO ousting of Gaddafi then later expended so much fighting the consequences of it in Mali. Many Malians, like all Sahel nationalities moved to Libya as migrant workers. Under Gaddafi, Libya was a petro-state with an enormous wealth disparity between it and the impoverished Sahel nations. Remittances from emigrant workers in Libya was a huge part of those nations' economies. Many of the Sahel Africans were also used as soldiers by Gaddafi either in the Libyan state forces or in in his various private guards. Post-Gaddafi, they took their weapons and military experience back to Mali with them, leading the insurgency there.

That Sahrawis were heavily involved in the early spread of IS from Libya to the Sahel was new information to me. It makes complete sense, though. They've been increasingly displaced by Moroccan settler-colonialism since the 1970s so their recent history is one of militancy against their dispossession. As an aside, Trump, in typical Trump fashion, came up with a moronic deal between Israel and Morocco in 2020. Morocco were to normalise relations in return for Israel recognising Morocco's claim to the Sahrawis' land in Western Sahara. So now USA and Israel are the only two nations in the world officially supporting Morocco's ethnic cleansing in Western Sahara.

Edited August 1, 2023 by FreedomFarter

[StellarHibee]

 

[welshbairn]

Awkward.. Senior Niger coup leader visiting US army base 8 weeks ago. The US has 2 bases and around 1000 military staff in Niger, including drone facilities.

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/ap-top-news/2023/07/28/no-clarity-about-whos-in-charge-in-niger-2-days-after-mutinous-soldiers-ousted-the-president

[Granny Danger]

5 hours ago, StellarHibee said:

 

Criticism of Israel is off the table.  Calling Israel an apartheid state is supposedly anti-semitic when we all know it’s no such thing.

[Guest]

BBC coverage of the Niger coup has been frustrating. They've heavily implied a Russian role (where there's not been one) assuming that'll best pique the interest of readers and clickers. Of course Brits won't give a toss about Nigeriens or what's actually driven events in that nation. They surely just want Russian bogeymen stuff because that relates back to their concerns closer to home. Tabloid-like mentality.

The small amount of Russia flags among the pro-coup crowds in Niger are primarily an expression of anti-France sentiment. These Nigeriens are hoping the new coup regime will be resource nationalists. The vast majority of Nigeriens have seen zero material benefit from the US and France-backed "democracy" in their nation so some are quite happy to see it dispensed with.

France - Niger is a textbook example of the "unequal exchange" which characterises North - South global economic arrangements. This is from a 2013 Oxfam report on how AREVA (80% owned by the French state) extracts uranium from Niger:

Quote

AREVA's two subsidiaries in Niger, Somaïr and Cominak, benefit from a number of tax advantages: exemptions from duties, VAT and even fuel taxes, which they use in massive amounts. A "provision for the reconstruction of mines" also lets them set aside 20% of their profits which are therefore excluded from corporate taxes.

In 2010, the two subsidiaries extracted a total of 114,346 metric tonnes of uranium in Niger, representing an export value of 2.3 trillion CFA francs (over 3.5 million euros). From that sum, Niger was only paid 300 billion CFA francs (approximately 459 million euros), or 13% of the exported value. 

(https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/areva-niger-who-benefiting-uranium)

There's this quote in the report from a Nigerien activist: 

Quote

"In France, one out of every three light bulbs is lit thanks to Nigerien uranium. In Niger, nearly 90% of the population has no access to electricity. This situation cannot continue. France must prove that the time for secret agreements, closed negotiations and pressures is over. African countries should be able to count on fair revenues from French companies extracting their resources", said Ali Idrissa, national coordinator for ROTAB. 

That statistic there; one in three lightbulbs in France is lit with Nigerien uranium yet in Niger, nearly 90% of the population has no access to electricity; that's where the Nigerien anger at France comes from.

Unfortunately I don't anticipate a Nigerien Thomas Sankara emerging from among these coup leaders and things could easily turn even worse off the back of it. Especially with the sanctions already applied on Niger by the West African central bank in response to the coup.

Edited August 2, 2023 by FreedomFarter

[GHF-23]

4 hours ago, FreedomFarter said:

BBC coverage of the Niger coup has been frustrating. They've heavily implied a Russian role (where there's not been one) assuming that'll best pique the interest of readers and clickers. Of course Brits won't give a toss about Nigeriens or what's actually driven events in that nation. They surely just want Russian bogeymen stuff because that relates back to their concerns closer to home. Tabloid-like mentality.

The small amount of Russia flags among the pro-coup crowds in Niger are primarily an expression of anti-France sentiment. These Nigeriens are hoping the new coup regime will be resource nationalists. The vast majority of Nigeriens have seen zero material benefit from the US and France-backed "democracy" in their nation so some are quite happy to see it dispensed with.

France - Niger is a textbook example of the "unequal exchange" which characterises North - South global economic arrangements. This is from a 2013 Oxfam report on how AREVA (80% owned by the French state) extracts uranium from Niger:

(https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/areva-niger-who-benefiting-uranium)

There's this quote in the report from a Nigerien activist: 

That statistic there; one in three lightbulbs in France is lit with Nigerien uranium yet in Niger, nearly 90% of the population has no access to electricity; that's where the Nigerien anger at France comes from.

Unfortunately I don't anticipate a Nigerien Thomas Sankara emerging from among these coup leaders and things could easily turn even worse off the back of it. Especially with the sanctions already applied on Niger by the West African central bank in response to the coup.

While obviously not all post-coup governments are the same, but is the Burkina Faso government not being run by self-identifying Sankarists? I honestly don't know how far his politics were adopted in West Africa in his own time let alone now though. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by GHF-23

[Guest]

1 hour ago, GHF-23 said:

While obviously not all post-coup governments are the same, but is the Burkina Faso government not being run by self-identifying Sankarists? I honestly don't know how far his politics were adopted in West Africa in his own time let alone now though. 

They are, aye. It's too early to say whether they'll actually enact the sort of policies Sankara did but they certainly use his image and rhetoric. Their leader, Ibrahim Traore, was trained by USA prior to doing his coup last year. He's since kicked the French out of Burkina Faso. That's a funny aspect to this pattern we keep seeing. USA builds up, trains and arms West African militaries which then results in a coup and the first thing the new military government does is kick out the French.

US interest in Burkina Faso was far lesser than it has been in Niger, though. There's a newly-built $100M US base in Niger, for example. So I don't think this new Niger coup government are going to get the same room to consolidate their power. 

[D Angelo Barksdale]

Fidel Castro's son Justin Trudeau splits from his wife.

[Guest]

This gives a detailed description of the malign impact US military interference has had upon the Sahel: https://archive.ph/ng2if

Excerpt:

[Guest]

[D Angelo Barksdale]

 

[StellarHibee]

3 minutes ago, Ziggy Sobotka said:

 

"The Taiwanese. A great bunch of lads."

[ClydeTon]

16 minutes ago, Ziggy Sobotka said:

 

I mean, sure, those boys went off into war as teenagers and so commemorating them seems reasonable, but celebrating ties with Imperial Japan!? And, at the same time, them suggesting that America and Britain only fought on ideological grounds seems a bit baseless as well, considering Japan attacked first.

America fought because Pearl Harbour was attacked and, in the Pacific, it was mainly a case of not having a militarily strong Japan that could pose a thread. Also, economics. Britain was the exact same - they were attacked first by Japan in the Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong colonies, and beyond that were aiming to strengthen their position in Asia by wearing Japan (that worked...)

If the Taiwanese Nationalists / Anti-ROC groups are glorifying the WWII Empire of Japan are the heroes, what does that say about them? Have they just forgot their own history, and the details of the Pacific Theatre, or are they what they have made themselves look to be?

[D Angelo Barksdale]

1 hour ago, ClydeTon said:

I mean, sure, those boys went off into war as teenagers and so commemorating them seems reasonable, but celebrating ties with Imperial Japan!? And, at the same time, them suggesting that America and Britain only fought on ideological grounds seems a bit baseless as well, considering Japan attacked first.

America fought because Pearl Harbour was attacked and, in the Pacific, it was mainly a case of not having a militarily strong Japan that could pose a thread. Also, economics. Britain was the exact same - they were attacked first by Japan in the Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong colonies, and beyond that were aiming to strengthen their position in Asia by wearing Japan (that worked...)

If the Taiwanese Nationalists / Anti-ROC groups are glorifying the WWII Empire of Japan are the heroes, what does that say about them? Have they just forgot their own history, and the details of the Pacific Theatre, or are they what they have made themselves look to be?

Aye, it's a bit strange.

[vikingTON]

https://theintercept.com/2023/08/09/imran-khan-pakistan-cypher-ukraine-russia/

The US pushing for regime change in "aggressively neutral" countries as usual.