Mass protests against French troops intensify in Niger as the deadline for their withdrawal approaches
France refuses to withdraw its ambassador and troops from Niger, and reiterates its threat of supporting military invasion by ECOWAS, while the regional bloc itself is “determined to bend backwards to accommodate diplomatic efforts”
August 29, 2023 by Pavan Kulkarni
Anti-French protesters rally in support of the Niger's military government on August 28 in Niamey. Photo: Issifou Djibo / EPA / TASS
Niger’s military government reportedly cut off electricity and water supply to the French embassy in capital Niamey on Sunday, August 27, after the expiry of the 48-hours it gave the French ambassador, Sylvain Itte, to leave the country.
It has also instructed suppliers to stop providing the water, electricity and food supplies to the French military base, warning that anyone continuing to supply the base with goods and services will be treated as “enemies of the sovereign people.”
The 1,500 troops-strong military base in Niamey has become a site of frequent demonstrations, with people demanding that Niger’s former colonizer withdraw its troops. Thousands gathered outside this base on Sunday, demanding that its ambassador and troops leave the country, waving the national flag of Niger, reportedly alongside those of the BRICS countries and the DPRK.
A similar protest was also held on Friday, August 25, hours after the military government, the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country (CNSP), ordered the French ambassador out of Niger. Protesters raised anti-French slogans, and threatened to invade the base if the troops did not leave Niger in a week.
Earlier this month, the CNSP ended Niger’s military agreements with France and ordered its troops to leave by September 2. With France refusing to withdraw on the grounds that it does not recognize the authority of the military government, protests are expected to intensify as this deadline approaches.
‘Niger doesn’t belong to France’
“Niger doesn’t belong to France. We told the French to leave, but they said ‘no’,” complained Aicha, a supporter of CNSP protesting outside the base. “As citizens we don’t want the French here. They can do whatever they want in France, but not here,” she told Al Jazeera.
The popular sentiment against the presence of French troops has manifested in several mass demonstrations, especially militant over the last two years. By cracking down on the anti-French movement and inviting into the country more French troops, ordered out of neighboring Mali by its military government, former Nigerien president Mohamed Bazoum had consolidated domestic perception of him being a puppet of France.
His removal from office on July 26 in a military coup led by the then head of the presidential guard, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, has won popular support, with thousands repeatedly taking to streets to rally behind the CNSP, reiterating the demand for the withdrawal of French troops.
‘The fight will not stop until the day there are no longer any French soldiers in Niger’
“The fight will not stop until the day there are no longer any French soldiers in Niger,” CNSP member Colonel Obro Amadou said in his address to a crowd of around 20,000 supporters who had gathered in Niger’s largest stadium in Niamey on Saturday, August 26. “It’s you who are going to drive them out,” he added.
Insisting that “France must respect” the choice of Nigerien people, Ramatou Boubacar, a CNSP supporter in the stadium, complained about the continued control France maintained over successive Nigerien governments even after the end of colonial rule. “For sixty years, we have never been independent [until].. the day of the coup d’etat,” she told the AFP.
French President Emmanuel Macron has however remained obstinate. “[W]e do not recognize the putschists, we support a president [Bazoum] who has not resigned”, he said in his remarks on Monday, August 28, reiterating French support for a military invasion of Niger by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), “when it decides”.
Expressing its “full support” to France and reiterating that the European Union (EU) “does not recognize” the CNSP, its spokesperson for foreign affairs, Nabila Massrali, also raised the specter of war. “The decision of the putschists to expel the French ambassador,” she said, “is a new provocation which cannot in any way help to find a diplomatic solution to the current crisis.”
‘ECOWAS is determined to bend backwards to accommodate diplomatic efforts’
However, the current chair of ECOWAS, Nigeria’s president Bola Tinubu, said on Saturday, August 26: “We are deep in our attempts to peacefully settle the issue in Niger by leveraging on our diplomatic tools. I continue to hold ECOWAS back, despite its readiness for all options, in order to exhaust all other remedial mechanisms.”
Tinubu has toned down his initially aggressive and threatening rhetoric against Niger after facing anti-war protests and opposition domestically. On August 5, a day before the one-week deadline given by ECOWAS on July 30 to the CNSP to reinstate Bazoum was to expire, the senate of Nigeria refused to support military action.
Without the participation of Nigeria — which has Africa’s largest economy, amounting to about 67% of ECOWAS’ GDP, and the largest military in the sub-region — the bloc’s capability of undertaking a military action is drastically reduced.
This is especially the case because Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea — which are among the 15 countries in ECOWAS, but suspended and sanctioned after similar popularly-supported coups backed by the domestic anti-French movement — have extended support to Niger.
Mali and Burkina Faso, whose military governments have successfully ordered the French troops out of the country, have committed to mobilize their military in defense of Niger. Together, these four countries amount to nearly 60% of ECOWAS’ land area.
Nevertheless, the ECOWAS heads of state met again in Nigeria on August 10 and ordered their Chiefs of Defense Staffs “to immediately activate” the bloc’s stand-by force. The Chiefs of Defense Staffs of ECOWAS member states subsequently held a two-day meeting on August 17 and 18 in Ghana.
Ghana’s president is also facing domestic opposition and may be unlikely to be able to secure approval of the parliament where the main opposition party, opposed to military intervention, has the same number of seats as the ruling party.
Nevertheless, “We are ready to go any time the order is given,” Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, declared at the conclusion of this meeting, adding that an unspecified “D-day is also decided. We’ve already agreed and fine-tuned what will be required for the intervention.”
He introduced a caveat, however, that, “As we speak, we are still readying [a] mediation mission into the country, so we have not shut any door.”
A week later, on Friday, July 26, the ECOWAS said it was still “determined to bend backwards to accommodate diplomatic efforts.” ECOWAS commission president Omar Touray, former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Gambia told the media: “For the avoidance of doubt, let me state unequivocally that ECOWAS has neither declared war on the people of Niger, nor is there a plan, as is being rumored, to invade the country.”
Invading Niger will not be the walk in the park, warns CNSP President, Gen. Tchiani
Nevertheless, stating that “threats of aggression on the national territory are increasingly being felt,” Brigadier General Moussa Barmou placed the Nigerien military on “Maximum alert” on August 25, “in order to avoid a general surprise”.
Abdoulaye Diop and Olivia Rouamba, Foreign Ministers of Mali and Burkina Faso, visited Niamey on Thursday, August 24, reiterating their “rejection of an armed intervention against the people of Niger which will be considered as a declaration of war” on their own countries.
They also welcomed the two orders signed by the CNSP president Abdourahamane Tchiani that day, “authorizing the Defense and Security Forces of Burkina Faso and Mali to intervene on Nigerien territory in the event of an attack.”
“If an attack were to be undertaken against us,” Tchiani said in his televised address on Saturday, “it will not be the walk in the park some people seem to think.”
Red Alert no. 17: No Military Intervention against Niger
AUGUST 24, 2023
Why is there an increase in anti-French and anti-Western feeling in the Sahel?
From the mid-nineteenth century, French colonialism has galloped across North, West, and Central Africa. By 1960, France controlled almost five million square kilometres (eight times the size of France itself) in West Africa alone. Though national liberation movements from Senegal to Chad won independence from France that year, the French government maintained financial and monetary control through the African Financial Community or CFA (formerly the colonial French Community of Africa), maintaining the French CFA franc currency in the former West African colonies and forcing the newly independent countries to keep at least half of their foreign exchange reserves in the Banque de France. Sovereignty was not only restricted by these monetary chains: when new projects emerged in the area, they were met by French intervention (spectacularly with the assassination of Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara in 1987). France maintained the neocolonial structures that have allowed French companies to leech the natural resources of the region (such as the uranium from Niger, which powers a third of French lightbulbs) and have forced these countries to crush their hopes through an International Monetary Fund-driven debt-austerity agenda.
The simmering resentment against France escalated after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) destroyed Libya in 2011 and exported instability across Africa’s Sahel region. A combination of secessionist groups, trans-Saharan smugglers, and al-Qaeda offshoots joined together and marched south of the Sahara to capture nearly two-thirds of Mali, large parts of Burkina Faso, and sections of Niger. French military intervention in the Sahel through Operation Barkhane (2013) and through the creation of the neocolonial G-5 Sahel Project led to an increase in violence by French troops, including against civilians. The IMF debt-austerity project, the Western wars in West Asia, and the destruction of Libya led to a rise in migration across the region. Rather than tackle the roots of the migration, Europe tried to build its southern border in the Sahel through military and foreign policy measures, including by exporting illegal surveillance technologies to the neocolonial governments in this belt of Africa. The cry ‘La France, dégage!’ (‘France, get out!’) defines the attitude of mass unrest in the region against the neocolonial structures that try to strangle the Sahel.
Why are there so many coups in the Sahel?
Over the course of the past thirty years, politics in the Sahel countries have seriously desiccated. Many parties with a history that traces back to the national liberation movements and even the socialist movements (such as Niger’s Parti Nigérien pour la Démocratie et le Socialisme-Tarayya) have collapsed into being representatives of their elites, who, in turn, are conduits of a Western agenda. The entry of the al-Qaeda-smuggler forces gave the local elites and the West the justification to further squeeze the political environment, reducing already limited trade union freedoms and excising the left from the ranks of established political parties. The issue is not so much that the leaders of the mainstream political parties are ardently right-wing or centre-right, but that whatever their orientation, they have no real independence from the will of Paris and Washington. They have become – to use a word often voiced on the ground – ‘stooges’ of the West.
Absent any reliable political or democratic instruments, the discarded rural and petty-bourgeois sections of the Sahel countries turn to their urbanised children in the armed forces for leadership. People like Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traoré (born in 1988), who was raised in the rural province of Mouhoun and studied geology in Ouagadougou, and Mali’s Colonel Assimi Goïta (born in 1983), who comes from the cattle market town and military redoubt of Kati, represent these broad class fractions. Their communities have been utterly marginalised by the hard austerity programmes of the IMF, the theft of their resources by Western multinationals, and the payments for Western military garrisons in the country. Discarded with no real political platform to speak for them, large sections of the country have rallied behind the patriotic intentions of these young military men, who have themselves been pushed by mass movements – such as trade unions and peasant organisations – in their countries. That is why the coup in Niger is being defended in mass rallies from the capital city of Niamey to the small, remote towns that border Libya. These young leaders do not come to power with a well-worked agenda. However, they have a level of admiration for people like Thomas Sankara: Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso, for instance, sports a red beret like Sankara, speaks with Sankara’s left-wing frankness, and even mimics Sankara’s diction.
Will there be a pro-Western military intervention to remove the government of Niger?
Condemnations of the coup in Niger came quickly from the West (particularly France). The new government of Niger, led by a civilian (former finance minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine), told French troops to leave the country and decided to cut uranium exports to France. Neither France nor the United States – which has built the largest drone base in the world in Agadez (Niger) – are keen to directly intervene with their own military forces. In 2021, France and the United States protected their private companies, TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, in Mozambique by asking the Rwandan army to intervene militarily. In Niger, the West first wanted the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to invade on their behalf, but mass unrest in the ECOWAS member states, including condemnations from trade unions and people’s organisations, stayed the hands of the regional organisation’s ‘peacekeeping forces’. On 19 August of this year, ECOWAS sent a delegation to meet with Niger’s deposed president and with the new government. It has kept its troops on stand-by, warning that it has chosen an undisclosed ‘D-day’ for a military intervention.
The African Union, which had initially condemned the coup and suspended Niger from all union activity, recently stated that a military intervention should not take place. This statement has not stopped rumours from flying about, such as that Ghana might send its troops into Niger (despite the Presbyterian Church of Ghana’s warning not to intervene and the trade unions’ condemnation of a potential invasion). Neighbouring countries have closed their borders with Niger.
Meanwhile, the governments of Burkina Faso and Mali, which have sent troops to Niger, have said that any military intervention against the government of Niger will be taken as an invasion of their own countries. There is a serious conversation afoot about the creation of a new federation in the Sahel that includes Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger, which have a combined population of over 85 million. Rumblings amongst the populations from Senegal to Chad suggest that these might not be the last coups in this important belt of the African continent. The growth of platforms such as the West African Peoples Organisation is key to the political advancement in the region.
Shocked by Niger Coup, Victoria Nuland Appeared “Desperate” During Africa Tour
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 29, 2023
Anya Parampil
A veteran South African official detailed meeting with an unprepared and “desperate” Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, begging for local help rolling back the popular coup in Niger. The recent BRICS conference might give Nuland even more to fret about.
When US Acting Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, traveled to South Africa on July 29, her reputation as a blunt instrument of Washington’s hegemonic interests preceded her.
According to a veteran South African official who attended meetings with the senior US diplomat in Pretoria, however, Nuland and her team were demonstrably unprepared to grapple with recent developments on the African continent — particularly the military coup that removed Niger’s pro-Western government hours before she launched her multi-stop tour of the region.
“In over 20 years working with the Americans, I have never seen them so desperate,” the official told The Grayzone, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Pretoria was well aware of Nuland’s hawkish reputation, but when she arrived in Pretoria, the official described her as “totally caught off guard” by winds of change engulfing the region. The July putsch that saw a popular military junta come to power in Niger followed military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso that were similarly inspired by mass anti-colonial sentiment.
Though Washington has so far refused to characterize developments in the Nigerien capital of Niamey as a coup, the South African source confirmed that Nuland sought South Africa’s assistance in responding to regional conflicts, including in Niger, where she emphasized that Washington not only held significant financial investments, but also maintained 1,000 of its own troops. For Nuland, the realization that she was negotiating from a position of weakness was likely a rude awakening.
Serving both parties and advancing empire, one regime change op at a time
Throughout the past decade and a half, Victoria Nuland has established herself as one of the most heavy-handed – and effective – agents of Western-directed regime change ops within the State Department. As the wife of the arch-neoconservative strategist, Robert Kagan, who advised both Republican presidential contender, Mitt Romney, and Democrat, Hillary Clinton, Nuland embodied the interventionist consensus that prevailed across both parties in the pre-Trump era. In fact, her first high-level job came under the watch of Vice President Dick Cheney, when he appointed her to serve as his deputy chief of staff.
When Nuland returned to government as a Russia specialist in Obama’s State Department, she spearheaded the covert campaign to destabilize Ukraine, driving the 2014 Maidan Coup that sparked the country’s ensuing civil conflict and, ultimately, a Western proxy war with Russia that rages to this day.
“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions,” Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, boasted during a December 2013 talk before the US-Ukraine Foundation in Kiev, flanked by a promotional panel for the Chevron corporation.
“We’ve invested over five billion dollars to assist Ukraine in these and other goals,” she continued, articulating Washington’s support for what she described as Ukraine’s “European aspirations.”
Nuland repeated the unintentionally revealing boast during a 2014 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Days before her address, she and then-US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, distributed “freedom cookies” to Ukrainians occupying Kiev’s Maidan Square in protest of President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to, in Nuland’s words, “pause on the route to Europe.”
Roughly three months later, the prolonged campaign of riots in the Maidan successfully dislodged Yanukovych’s government, resulting in the installation of a decidedly pro-EU (and openly pro-Nazi) regime in Kiev that would promptly win the title of “most corrupt nation in Europe.” Days before Yanukovych’s ouster, leaked audio revealed that Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt were actively selecting the opposition figures that would assume power in Kiev in the event of Maidan’s success.
“Fuck the EU,” she infamously remarked during the February 7 phone call, an apparent response to European leaders opposed to her government’s destabilization effort in Ukraine.
Nearly a decade since Nuland’s Kiev campaign, however, Washington’s ability to dictate the sovereign policy of foreign states is increasingly limited—particularly in South Africa and the surrounding region.
In Africa, the sun sets on the unipolar world order
The emergence of a new global order was on bold display when heads of state from Brazil, India, China, and South Africa convened for the 15th annual BRICS Presidential Summit in Johannesburg throughout the week of August 21. While Western media highlighted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s absence from the summit as evidence of deep divides within BRICS (Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov attended the summit in Putin’s place), the bloc ultimately issued a unanimous August 24 declaration that it would extend full membership to Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
“BRICS is a diverse group of nations,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who chaired the summit, tweeted after announcing the results of BRICS’ landmark Johannesburg 2 Declaration before a room packed with international press. “It is an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but a shared vision for a better world.”
Indeed, BRICS leaders stressed the importance of the group’s function as a “consensus-based” organization built on the foundation of multilateralism and a commitment to principles enshrined in the UN Charter. This stands in stark contrast with alliances like the G20, which, while ostensibly committed to multilateral exchange, are viewed by Washington and its allies as a forum through which to impose their own worldview. Western hubris was particularly palpable upon India’s assumption of the G20 presidency in 2023, when US and European officials waged a futile campaign to pressure New Delhi into excluding Russia from group meetings despite Moscow’s permanent member status.
“We should not go back to a Cold War with two polarizing blocs”
On the sidelines of the BRICS summit, I spoke with South Africa’s Minister for Trade, Industry, and Competition, Ebrahim Patel, about BRICS’ purpose”>I spoke with South Africa’s Minister for Trade, Industry, and Competition, Ebrahim Patel, about BRICS’ purpose.
“BRICS want to stand for a world in which everybody benefits, this is not about trying to get into a new Cold War,” Patel commented.
“The Cold War was not a good moment for humanity,” Patel, who chaired the BRICS Business Forum in Johannesburg, continued when asked whether the US and Europe could ever accept multilateral exchange as anything other than an attack on Western hegemonic interests. “We should not go back to a Cold War with two polarizing blocs, but we do need the voices of the Global South to be out there helping to shape the architecture of governance and the way in which human beings interact.”
So is BRICS an anti-Western alliance?
“There will be many instances of misinterpretation, but we stand for a world that is united, recognizing that countries and firms will compete,” Patel explained. “That’s healthy, and underpinning that competition must be a deep collaboration and cooperation between nations.”
Asked what makes BRICS’ commitment to multilateralism different from blocs such as the G20, Patel offered a window into how BRICS truly operates.
“When the heads of state sit together, they say, ‘okay, how can we move the dial forward?’ Consensus building is a slow process. It’s an uneven process. But it does mean that the decisions that are taken have solid support.”
After two days of deliberations in Johannesburg, during which delegates considered membership applications from roughly two dozen nations, BRICS reached the consensus to admit six states that will drastically expand its share of the international economy and resource market. Following the new members’ formal induction into the bloc next February, BRICS will include 6 of the world’s top 10 oil producers, 50 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves, and 37 percent of global GDP adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). The G20’s share of global GDP currently sits at 30 percent. With the addition of Argentina and Saudi Arabia, BRICS will also count six permanent G20 nations among its own membership bloc.
“It is that slow, time consuming process of building consensus,” Minister Patel reflected on BRICS success. “But it’s more solid. It lasts longer.”
Thanks to BRICS, Robert Kagan’s notorious blueprint for the US to serve as a “benevolent’ global hegemon may be overtaken by the developing world’s vision for a century that honors the political independence, self-determination, and territorial sovereignty of all states. Will the generation of US officials that comes after Nuland accept Washington’s place in this multipolar world, or will they insist on going down fighting?
Last week’s BRICS summit in South Africa was momentous. It announced six new members and now represents almost half the world’s population. But there’s more to it than just economic interests.Here, African Stream CEO Ahmed Kaballo sits down with independent media The Grayzone to unpack the significance of what’s happening. Along with Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil and Wyatt Reed, they assess how we got here. They also look at what’s to come for Africa and other developing parts of the world currently under the boot of Western hegemony. A once-in-a-generation realignment is taking shape, involving everything from global supply chains to the interconnection of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Saudi’s Vision 2030, UAE port expansions and security guarantees among member states.
The military of Gabon seized power in the country and announced the dissolution of the current government.
The country's borders are closed until further notice. The organs of power have been dissolved, the operation of the constitution has been suspended.
By a happy coincidence, Gabon is also a former French colony that has reserves of uranium, oil and gas.
The rebels in Gabon stopped broadcasting French TV channels in the country.
In fact, the country overthrew the rule of the Bongo family, which ruled Gabon since the early 60s with the support of France.
The formal reason for the coup was the presidential elections, where the incumbent president from the ruling family, who received the post by inheritance, won in the 3rd round.
After that, the military said "Enough to endure this" and went to overthrow the government.
We are waiting for the official statements of the rebels on the further vector and prospects for the possible decolonization of Gabon. The best way to get rid of France is a military coup. Let's see if Gabon has learned this lesson.
We Don’t Want to Rule Sudan - Sudanese Army Commander-In-Chief
Sudanese leader and army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the coastal city of El Alamein. Aug. 29, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@NahostR
Published 29 August 2023 (20 hours 2 minutes ago)
Al-Burhan: “We seek to hold free and fair elections, in which the Sudanese people decide what they want.”
The Commander-in-Chief of the Sudanese Army and Chairman of the coup's Sovereign Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, reiterated during a visit to Egypt, previous pledges to seek to complete the transition path and hold fair elections. He confirmed that the armed forces do not seek to continue ruling Sudan.
Al- Burhan renewed the statement that the army is facing rebel groups that committed war crimes in order to seize power.
The Sudanese leader arrived on Tuesday morning in Egypt on his first official foreign visit after the outbreak of war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in mid-April.
Al-Burhan left Khartoum for the first time, at dawn last Thursday, ending the siege imposed on him by the RSF militia since the beginning of the war.
Today, he was received at El Alamein International Airport by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and a number of ministers and members of the Sudanese mission to Egypt, where an official reception ceremony was held for him.
Al-Burhan and Al-Sisi held a bilateral meeting at the presidential palace in El Alamein, which dealt with aspects of joint cooperation in all fields.
He also discussed the developments in the situation in Sudan and the efforts made to settle the crisis in a way that preserves its security and stability - according to the Sovereignty Council's media.
Al-Burhan said, in statements reported by (Cairo News) channel: “We seek to hold free and fair elections, in which the Sudanese people decide what they want.”
He added, "I assure all friends of Sudan that we are seeking a democratic transition and do not aspire to rule," and considered that the army is facing "rebel groups that have committed war crimes in order to seize power."
Al-Burhan said, after the end of the talks with the Egyptian side, that they explained to the Egyptian leadership the developments in the situation in Sudan. He highlighted the appreciation to “Egypt's position regarding receiving Sudanese refugees.”
He added, "The war in Sudan was caused by a group's attempt to seize power. We seek to put an end to the war in Sudan and end the current tragedy."
Al-Burhan denied everything that is being circulated about the return of the former regime, and said: “We have no intention of seizing power. We seek to establish a democratic system and hold free and fair elections in Sudan.”
He affirmed commitment to seeking a real transitional period, and pointed out his keenness in today's talks to have the Egyptian leadership updated of what is going on in Sudan.
Al-Burhan called on the international community to look at the war in Sudan objectively, and denied what was being promoted that the Sudanese Armed Forces had become an incubator for extremist groups.
According to the joint statement, the meeting reviewed developments in Sudan and held consultations on efforts to resolve the crisis in order to preserve the security of the Sudanese people. The statement stressed the need to find a solution that preserves the sovereignty, unity and cohesion of the Sudanese state, within the framework of strengthening the course of Sudan's neighboring countries, the first summit of which was recently hosted by Egypt.
The meeting also dealt with ways of cooperation and collective coordination to support the Sudanese people affected by the conflict, especially by delivering humanitarian aid and facilitating its flow to the most needed.
African Union suspends Gabon after military coup ousts President Ali Bongo
Military officers ousted President Ali Bongo on August 30, just minutes after Gabon’s national electoral body proclaimed the incumbent as the winner of the August 26 general elections. Bongo was placed under house arrest as hundreds of people took to the streets in Libreville to celebrate the ouster of a family that has ruled Gabon for 56 years
September 01, 2023 by Tanupriya Singh
Military officers announce that they have seized power in a coup in Gabon.
The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU) on Thursday, August 31, suspended Gabon from all its activities, organs and institutions. The announcement followed a day after a military-led coup ousted Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba.
The coup followed just minutes after Bongo was proclaimed the winner of the general elections held in the Central African country on August 26.
In the early hours of August 30, the Gabonese Center of Elections (CGE) announced that Bongo had won Saturday’s polls with 64.27% of the votes. Albert Ondo Ossa, former education minister and the consensus candidate put forward by a platform of major opposition parties, Alternance 2023, won 30.77%.
Soon after the results were announced, 12 men, including the police, soldiers from the elite Republican Guard, and the National Gendarmerie, appeared on the television channel Gabon 24 and declared that the election results stood canceled and that they had seized power “to put an end to the regime.”
“Today, the country is going through a serious institutional, political, economic and social crisis,” the statement read. “The organization of the general elections of [August 26, 2023] did not meet the conditions for a transparent, credible and inclusive ballot so much hoped for by the people of Gabon.”
“Added to this is irresponsible and unpredictable governance, resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion, with the risk of leading the country into chaos.”
The soldiers added that they would respect Gabon’s commitments to the national and international community.
Identifying themselves as the Committee of Transition and the Restoration of Institutions (CTRI), the group announced that the election results were canceled and that the borders of the country had been closed. All the institutions of the Republic were dissolved, including the government, the Senate, the National Assembly, the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council, and the CGE.
The announcement was followed by sounds of gunshots in Libreville. However, according to Harold Leckat, the director of news publication Gabon Media Time, the shots fired were a form of military communication, which was confirmed to him by senior army officials. “Through these shots, they called out to other corps commanders who then responded with warning shots. It was in fact a way of giving their approval to the movement orchestrated by the Comité de Transition et de Restauration des Institutions [CTRI],” he told Peoples Dispatch.
The CTRI placed Bongo under house arrest and proceeded to arrest others, including his son, on charges such as corruption, embezzlement, and treason.
Following a meeting, the group proceeded to name General Brice Oligui Nguema, the head of the Republican Guard, as the president of the transition. He will be sworn in on September 4.
Nguema had been an assistant to former President Omar Bongo until 2009 when Ali Bongo came to power. The General worked in Gabon’s embassies in Senegal and Morocco before returning to the country and joining the Republican Guard in 2018. Some reports also suggest familial ties between Nguema and Bongo.
Meanwhile, crowds of people took to the streets in celebration on Wednesday, raising slogans of “Down with Bongo” and “Down with the PDG!” (Bongo’s Gabonese Democratic Party). “Thousands of Gabonese took to the streets, flying the national flag, singing the national anthem and celebrating with the security forces who overthrew the regime in Libreville,” Leckat said.
“The Gabonese people came to demonstrate their joy at finally seeing this system, which has multiplied constitutional coups d’états since 1990, finally overthrown.”
Speaking to Democracy Now, Daniel Mengara, a professor and founder of the Bongo Must Leave movement, noted: “[The people] are very happy that for once the Bongo family has been at least disabled to the point of opening up the possibility of perhaps later on democracy for Gabon… This is a rare opportunity for the Gabonese people to engage in national dialogue that would allow for…after the transition to go into democratic rule.”
Gabonese nationals also gathered outside the country’s embassy in Senegal on Wednesday to welcome Bongo’s removal from power. However, the protestors were dispersed by Senegalese forces who deployed tear gas. Violence was also reported outside the Gabonese embassy in Rabat, Morocco.
Questions surrounding the electoral process
Saturday’s elections had been conducted under an internet blackout, border closures, and a curfew. Foreign journalists were reportedly not issued press accreditation to cover the election. There were also concerns about the ability of Gabonese citizens living abroad to vote in the election, given that only 14 polling stations in 12 countries had been approved.
The announced results would have given Bongo a third term in office, extending the rule of his family which has been in power in Gabon for the past 56 years.
“The August 26 election was organized in an amateurish way that surprised many. Already, it was a general election, which meant that deputies in parliament, local elected officials and the President of the Republic had to be elected within a sufficiently short timeframe, with an electoral list on which there were deceased persons, and on which there were duplicates,” Leckat said.
He added that the list had been put together hastily in a period of just two weeks, despite the fact that several localities “were, and still remain inaccessible.” Another concern was related to the appointment of the head of the CGE, Michel Stéphane Bonda.
A former advisor to both President Ali Bongo and his father and predecessor Omar Bongo, as well as the former minister delegate for water and forests, Bonda is a close associate of the ousted president, Leckat said.
Another major challenge was related to the voting system itself. In July, the CGE announced a single-ballot system for the legislative and presidential elections, which would in effect mean that a vote for a party’s parliamentary candidate from a particular constituency would automatically mean a vote for that party’s presidential candidate.
The change was rejected by the opposition which argued that it would allow Bongo to unduly benefit from votes given to PDG candidates in the legislative elections. Moreover, not all opposition parties had fielded candidates for the legislative elections. Albert Ondo Ossa himself was also an independent candidate.
Prior to these changes, reforms to Gabon constitution were approved in April, under which all political mandates were reduced to five years (which would make the presidential election take place simultaneously with the parliamentary elections) and the double round voting system was canceled. A term limit for the presidency was removed in 2003.
“Even though it was a question of electing [officials] to two different institutions, we ended up voting for the president and the deputy [for the National Assembly, or the Lower House of parliament] on the same ballot paper, unheard of in a democracy,” Leckat said.
“It is all these elements that prompted the uprising, certainly of the army. And if this army uprising hadn’t taken place, I’m convinced that the Gabonese people would have shown defiance, because they massively voted for the consensus candidate of the opposition [Albert Ondo Ossa].”
Gabon had witnessed violent protests in the aftermath of the previous presidential elections held in 2016, in which Bongo had won with a slim majority of 49.80% (by 5,500 votes) against his opponent, Jean Ping, who secured 48.23% of the vote share. At least five people were killed according to the government’s own estimates.
Members of the armed forces had also mounted a foiled coup attempt in 2019 while Bongo was seeking medical treatment in Morocco.
Even though the Bongo family has amassed vast personal fortunes, Gabon’s substantial oil wealth has not translated into an improvement in the living conditions of a large part of the country’s population, about one-third of whom are impoverished. The country’s unemployment rate stands at around 30%.
As of August 31, the country remains under curfew from 6pm to 6am. However, the CTRI has since announced the restoration of the internet and broadcasting of international radio and television channels in the country.
The Alternance 2023 platform has called upon the CTRI to continue the vote counting process, and has expressed willingness to engage in dialogue.
International response
As international responses to the coup continue to trickle in, a call for Bongo’s restoration to power is notably absent.
However, in a statement issued on Wednesday, the head of the African Union Commission strongly condemned the “attempted coup” as a “way to resolve its current post-election crisis” and called upon the national army and security forces to adhere to their republican roles and to guarantee the physical integrity of the deposed president and the members of his family and government.
Following a meeting on August 31, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, currently chaired by Burundi, announced that Gabon’s suspension would remain in place “until the restoration of constitutional order in the country.”
The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) has also issued a communique condemning “the use of force as a means of resolving political conflict and gaining access to political power.” It called for a “rapid return to constitutional order” and indicated that it is waiting for an “imminent” meeting of the Central African Peace and Security Council (COPAX) to discuss the current situation in Gabon and the way forward.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who is the current chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), also expressed “deep concern” regarding Gabon’s socio-political stability and the “seeming autocratic contagion appearing to spread to other parts of the African continent.”
ECOWAS has imposed severe sanctions and threatened a military intervention in Niger in West Africa, where military officers had seized power in a popularly-supported coup on July 26.
Meanwhile, European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters that Gabon’s election had been “plagued by irregularities.”
“There are military coups and institutional coups, where you don’t need to take up arms, but if I rig an election to seize power, that is also an irregular way to do it,” he said.
France, in a statement issued by government spokesperson Olivier Véran, condemned the military coup and reiterated its “commitment to free and transparent elections,” adding that “the result of the election, when it is known, must be respected.” The Bongo family has held close ties with France—to the extent that Gabon has been considered a “central pillar” and “example par excellence” of Francafrique, an enduring economic and political system of control between France and its former colonies.
Gabon is among 14 countries on the African continent that uses the neocolonial CFA Franc currency. France also has about 350-400 troops stationed in Gabon and French companies have historically enjoyed preferential treatment in the country, including in oil licensing.
French company Eramet, which is the world’s largest producer of manganese ore, has resumed mining in Gabon after briefly suspending operations on August 30.
“Gabon has only been able to get rid of its presidential puppet through the intervention of its military. Macron will, once again, have compromised France in supporting the unbearable until the end. Africans are turning the page,” stated Jean Luc-Melenchon, a left-wing French politician and former member of the National Assembly.
Meanwhile, White House spokesperson John Kirby stated, “It is obviously deeply concerning (to see) yet another country where military officers have taken these dangerous and reckless steps and attempted takeovers of democratically elected governments.” A separate statement from the US State Department noted “with concern, the lack of transparency and reports of irregularities surrounding the election.”
China has called on all relevant parties in Gabon to “resolve differences peacefully through dialogue, and restore normal order as soon as possible.”
UN Secretary General António Guterres firmly condemned the coup in a statement, noting with “deep concern the announcement of the election results amidst reports of serious infringements of fundamental freedoms.” He called on “all actors involved” to hold an “inclusive and meaningful dialogue.”
SEPTEMBER 1, 2023 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR Russia inherits Prigozhin’s African odyssey
Russia’s Deputy Defence Minister Colonel-General Yunus-bek Yevkurov (L) presents a pistol as gift to Libyan military commander Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar (C), Benghazi, Libya, August 24, 2023
Africa, especially west Africa, has a strong sense of collective identity. Trends in one country have a way of spreading across the continent. Therefore, It might or might not be a coincidence that the military takeover in Gabon on Wednesday came just a day after French President Emmanuel Macron took a tough stance vis-a-vis the generals in power in Niger.
Macron not only scoffed at the generals’ demand seeking removal of the French envoy in Niamey and the French troops numbering 1500 personnel in that country but threatened to attack Niger.
Apparently, Macron meant business. AFP had reported last week the stern warning by the spokesman for the French general staff, Colonel Pierre Gaudillière, that “French military forces are ready to respond to any resurgence of tension that would undermine French military and diplomatic bases in Niger” and that “measures have been taken to protect these bases”.
But the generals in Niamey hit back despatching a communication to the French foreign ministry that Macron’s envoy, Ambassador Sylvain Itté “no longer enjoys the privileges and immunities attached to his status as a member of the diplomatic staff of the French Embassy”; his “diplomatic cards and visas” and those of his family members “are cancelled”; and, the Niger police “have been instructed to proceed with the expulsion” of Itté.
It is a humiliating rebuff to Macron. He has no option now but to dial back his threat. A bloodbath in Niger to vent his anger at the deportation of his ambassador will be disastrous for France’s international standing.
Besides, a “known unknown” factor also comes into play which will make Paris (and Washington) think twice — the ghost of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. This needs explaining.
Although no credible source has linked Russia to the coup in Niger, its strong connection with interventions in African countries — Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali and Libya — through the Wagner group leaves unanswered questions. This of course brings up the circumstances of the plane crash of Prigozhin in mysterious circumstances, which Russian investigators now estimate as an act of sabotage.
There is no question that Prigozhin was an obstacle to the US/NATO plans in Africa. John Varoli, former foreign correspondent for New York Times, Bloomberg and Reuters TV (who was based in Moscow from 1992 to 2013 and was “trained as a US foreign policy expert with a focus on Russia and Ukraine”) wrote a riveting blog in Substack recently where he concluded on the following lines:
“More than anyone, the CIA and Kiev had a score to settle and wanted Prigozhin dead… Projecting Russian influence into Africa is a crucial part of Putin’s foreign policy, and Wagner is the key to this success. Relations with African leaders are built on Prigozhin’s personal charisma… Likewise, by eliminating Prigozhin and his top officers, NATO has dealt a blow to the Kremlin’s ambitions in Africa… Like with any high-profile assassination, we will never know the full truth. But one thing is for certain — the U.S., certain NATO members and Ukraine benefit the most from Prigozhin’s demise, while the Kremlin gains absolutely nothing. All available information points to Western involvement and guilt.”
The US-led proxy war in Ukraine has entered a new phase where terrorism is increasingly becoming a weapon for the Americans to weaken Russia. It is no secret that the Ukrainian drone strikes deep inside Russia are backed by US technology and satellite data. The CIA Director has publicly boasted about a robust programme to recruit Russian citizens to work for his agency.
All indications are that Russians are getting their act together to reorganise the Wagner fighters following Prigozhin’s assassination. For the first time, a Russian military delegation paid an official visit to Libya on August 22, according to a Defence Ministry statement in Moscow. The delegation was led by deputy defence minister Col. Gen. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who is known to have been the point person for Prigozhin.
Interestingly, the general’s visit was at the invitation of Libyan National Army (LNA) commander Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar who is closely associated with Wagner group, which is thought to be guarding much of Libya’s military and oil infrastructure.
In retrospect, it was Wagner’s presence which effectively derailed the original US/ NATO plans to expand the alliance’s foot prints to the African continent via the Libyan gateway in the downstream of the gruesome murder of Muammar Gadafi and the regime change in 2011, with the alibi of fighting terrorism in the Sahel region.
Suffice to say, Wagner played a key role in the great game in Africa. If the Western intention behind the assassination of Prigozhin was to decapitate Wagner by destroying the top command structure of the group and thereby vanquish the Russian influence in Africa, that is not going to happen. Moscow is doubling down and, interestingly, not hiding it, either.
Last Tuesday, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York Dmitry Polyansky told Tass news agency that Russia will continue to extend comprehensive assistance to Mali and other African countries who are interested in it. He expected “more evidence” of Russian-Malian security cooperation.
Indeed, from Libya, the Russian military delegation led by Col. Gen. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov travelled to Burkina Faso where it was received by President Ibrahim Traore. The Tass reported, “The sides discussed bilateral military and defence cooperation, including its present state and future prospects. They also addressed other issues raised during the meeting between the presidents of Russia and Burkina Faso on the sidelines of the Second Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg in late July.
“The head of the Russian delegation assured Traore of Russia’s support for the transitional period in Burkina Faso. He also said that Russia stood by the country’s people in all areas of potential development.” [Emphasis added.]
This is tantamount to a security guarantee for Burkina Faso at a crucial juncture when it has vowed to support Niger’s defence against any Western-backed military intervention in Niger.
Again, earlier in August, Assimi Goïta, the Interim President of Mali — yet another country which has contracted Wagner to replace the French troops — telephoned Putin to discuss security issues following the assassination of Prigozhin (who was believed to have visited Mali shortly before his death.) The Kremlin readout said that “Assimi Goïta described in detail the processes taking place in Mali and told the Russian President about the efforts of the national leaders to stabilise the situation and wage an uncompromising battle against terrorist groups.”
All these developments taken together, the formation of a military alliance between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger last week needs to be put in perspective. Niger has authorised the armed forces of Mali and Burkina Faso to intervene on Nigerien territory in case of an external attack, according to a joint statement by the three countries.
Plainly put, the pact allows Mali and Burkina Faso to provide military assistance to Niger in the event of a military intervention by ECOWAS or France. Matters are inching toward the coup leaders in Niamey seeking help from Wagner if push comes to shove.
Against this dramatic backdrop, on Thursday, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu who heads the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] floated a compromise formula on Niger’s return to democratic rule similar to the nine-month period his country underwent in the late 1990s. The ECOWAS had so far insisted that it wanted the ousted President Mohamed Bazoum back in power right away. That was also Macron’s demand. But Tinubu is apparently having second thoughts.
The situation in Nigeria for August 21-31, 2023
September 1, 2023
Rybar
On the territory of Nigeria, clashes between law enforcement agencies and anti-government groups continue .
Over the past few days, government troops have launched a series of operations against illegal gangs, among which the struggle for influence is intensifying.
The growing economic crisis in the country is a source of concern. Experts consider the government's efforts to overcome it insufficient.
clashes
In the central part of Nigeria in the states of Plateau and Kaduna, criminal cells were liquidated in the area of the settlements of Jagindi Tasha, Gwash and Kamantan. As a result of the operation , 17 criminals were arrested, nine kidnapped people were released, six attempts at armed robbery and four attacks were prevented.
In two separate operations in the communities of Gobara and Gawa in Borno State, the Nigerian armed forces released 25 hostages from Boko Haram.
In parallel, the militants attacked the village of Maiwa and kidnapped eight farmers.
A similar incident took place in the northwestern state of Zamfara, where unidentified assailants attacked the village of Nasarawa-Burkullu. During the attack, four civilians were kidnapped, including the head of the village.
In the east of Nigeria, in the area of the settlement of Duguri, a clash occurred between radical Islamists from the Islamic State in West Africa and Boko Haram: 41 members of terrorist organizations were killed.
After the defection of high-ranking Boko Haram commander Abu Idris and his joining the Islamic State, the latter increased pressure on their "competitors".
In the state of Rivers in the south of the country, the Nigerian Air Force launched airstrikes on several illegal oil refineries in the area of the settlements of Idama, Bille, Omoma and Gogokiri. During the operation, several ships were also destroyed, which were loaded with crude oil and headed towards the Gulf of Biafra.
Over the past few days, Nigerian military operations have neutralized 23 terrorists, arrested 109 criminals, five kidnappers, one informant and 22 suspected oil thefts.
In addition, 231 terrorists and their families have surrendered to government forces. Among them: 25 adult men, 63 adult women and 143 children. Also managed to save 41 kidnapped hostages.
Domestic political situation
The People's Democratic Party has criticized the ruling All Progressive Congress for allegedly failing to rescue eight members of the National Youth Service who were recently kidnapped.
The opposition party also calls for attention to the general economic crisis in the country. The NDP stated that "Nigeria is on the brink of an abyss under the leadership of Bola Tinubu, who lacks recognition and support from citizens."
Criticized the economic policy of President Bol Tinubu and Edo Governor Godwin Obaseki. The removal of fuel subsidies and the ruling administration's currency reform have led to increased hardship for Nigerians, he said .
In turn, the Minister of Information and National Guidance, Mohammed Idris, said that Obaseki's comments on the decisions of the federal government lose sight of the broader economic picture.
Former All Progressive Congress Deputy Secretary for National Advertising Timy Frank called US President Joe Biden's alleged request to meet with President Tinubu inappropriate and deserving of condemnation.
Biden's request, he said, runs counter to the US government's position on democracy, as "the results of the 2023 presidential election in Nigeria are being challenged in court."
Economic problems
Trade deficit continues in Nigeria . This problem may be related to the growing instability in agricultural regions, which is forcing many farmers to leave their lands.
Government efforts seem to be insufficient. Small farmers, who account for 90% of food production, face limited resources.
The Nigerian Bureau of Statistics announced a 4.1% drop in the unemployment rate. However, this statement caused skepticism among trade unions. Their management claims that the report does not correspond to the real economic situation in the country.
With the removal of fuel subsidies by the government , the road transport sector has been in a drastic decline, leading to problems in ensuring the continued movement of people, products and resources throughout the country.
CIA Still Refuses to Declassify Documents Exposing Its Responsibility for the Betrayal, Arrest and 27-Year Imprisonment of Nelson Mandela
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - August 31, 2023 0
Nelson Mandela speaking with co-defendants outside the “Treason Trial” in South Africa in the late 1950s. [Source: axios.com]
CIA operative Donald Rickard admitted to role in capture of African hero
On August 5, 1962, Nelson Mandela was apprehended by South African authorities while driving with Cecil Williams, a white Communist theater director, from Durban to Johannesburg.
At the time, Mandela, a leader of the military wing of the anti-Apartheid African National Congress (ANC), was a fugitive from South Africa’s Apartheid regime.
After his arrest, Mandela was tried for treason and served 27 years at the infamous Robben Island prison, before being freed and becoming South Africa’s first Black president after the fall of the Apartheid regime in 1994.
Nelson Mandela in his Robben Island cell. The CIA helped put him there. [Source: latimes.com]
Details have since emerged indicating that the South African police who arrested Mandela had been tipped off about his whereabouts by the CIA.
August 1962 was during the height of the Cold War—Mandela’s capture occurred only a few weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis—and the American intelligence community believed that Mandela and the ANC were secret allies of the Soviets—which indeed they were.
Nelson Mandela after becoming South Africa’s first Black president. [Source: time.com]
The U.S. government was also intent on keeping South Africa open to U.S. corporations—the U.S. signed a military cooperation agreement with South Africa, an important source of uranium and other strategic minerals—and did not like the left-wing character of the ANC and the prospect of it destabilizing the country.
This past February, Richard Stengel wrote in Time magazine about his quest to uncover the truth about Mandela’s arrest.
Richard Stengel [Source: huffpost.com]
Stengel noted that, in 1986, while Mandela was still in prison, when the U.S. Congress was contemplating putting anti-Apartheid sanctions on South Africa, the Johannesburg Star printed an un-bylined news story that said, according to a “retired senior police officer,” the South African police had been tipped off to Mandela’s whereabouts by an American diplomat at the U.S. consulate in Durban who was “the CIA operative for that region.”
In 1963, the diplomat, according to the Star, had revealed his role while drunk at a party at the Durban apartment of “Mad” Mike Hoare, a well-known Anglo-Irish mercenary.
“Mad” Mike Hoare [Source: bt.com]
Four years after the Star article, at the time of Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 when he was about to visit the U.S. and get a hero’s welcome, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a piece reporting that a “retired [American] intelligence official” said that, within hours of Mandela’s arrest, a “senior CIA operative” named Paul Eckel walked into his office in Washington and said, “We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups.”
The article further quoted a former South African intelligence official named Gerard Ludi as saying the CIA had a paid informant in the ANC Durban branch who told the local case officer where Mandela would be.
Then, in 2016, a long-retired CIA officer named Donald Rickard, then 88 years old, gave an interview to British film director John Irvin in which he said he had informed the South African police about Mandela.
Gerard Ludi [Source: namibiana.de]
Donald Rickard [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
Speaking to Irvin for his dramatized documentary, Mandela’s Gun, Rickard confirmed that he had been operating under cover as a State Department vice-consul in Durban.
He described the city as a “cauldron” of anti-Apartheid activity and that the ANC was riling up the city’s substantial Indian community.
Rickard stated further that “Mandela was going to come down and incite the Indians and I found when he was coming down and how he was coming, and he came in a black limousine with a guy sitting in the back as the passenger and he was the driver. That’s where I was involved and that’s where Mandela was caught.”
Nelson Mandela when he was head of the military wing of the ANC. [Source: dailymail.co.uk]
When I was a professor at Bucknell University from 2006 to 2009, my office was next to Donald’s nephew, a popular English professor who had been active in the anti-Vietnam War movement who had told me about his Uncle and Mandela.
Reached for this article, he said he could not add anything more to what was reported by Stengel in Time magazine.
A 2018 biography of mercenary Mike Hoare quotes him confirming Donald Rickard’s story.
Rickard was personally unrepentant about assisting in Mandela’s capture, saying:
“Mandela was completely under the control of the Soviet Union. He was a toy of Moscow. He could have incited a war in South Africa. The United [States] would have to get involved, grudgingly, and things could have gone to hell…The Soviet Union would have done anything to get its hands on the mineral chest—anything—and Khrushchev said: ‘When we get it we’ll dictate the terms of surrender for the West.’ We were teetering on the brink here and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it.”
Donald Rickard died two weeks after his confession. His only regret was that he had been indiscrete. Rickard said “the biggest mistake of my life” was boasting about it at Mike Hoare’s party. “I was never promoted again after I came back from South Africa. They were embarrassed that I embarrassed them.”
Richard Stengel has recently reviewed declassified documents, which point to the U.S. government’s concern about Mandela being a Communist organizer, and the CIA’s role in tracking him.
Stengel filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see if they would confirm any details surrounding Mandela’s capture, which they refused to do.
Nevertheless, the evidence seems clear from Rickard’s testimony and other revelations that the CIA was behind the capture and long-term imprisonment of one of the 20th century’s greatest historical figures.
Blue Flag Over Las Anod: A Victory for Somali Nationalists
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 30 Aug 2023
Somali nationalists claim victory and raise the Somali flag above the city of Las Anod.
On Saturday, August 26, blue flags and social media messages proclaimed a Somali nationalist victory over the secessionist forces that had held them under siege in the city of Las Anod and the surrounding region of Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (SSC) since February 2023. Dr. Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdisamad, a frequent contributor to Black Agenda Report, tweeted , “With today’s developments in #SSC I want to call on Khaatumo State & its leaders to be gracious in victory, please treat the misguided young men from #Somaliland forces decently.”
This story has received no international press, but it’s a crucial victory in the struggle for a cohesive Somali nation. I spoke to Somali American software engineer and writer Jamal Abdulahi, about its meaning and its significance to the various imperial interests discouraging Somali unity.
ANN GARRISON: Jamal, you have written about the nationalist struggle in Somalia’s Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn region for Black Agenda Report, but could you summarize it again?
JAMAL ABDULAHI: In late 2022, secessionist forces attempted to break up peaceful unionist protests in the city of Las Anod but ended up killing scores and wounding scores more. Among those killed were a number of young people who were executed at point blank range by the secessionist forces.
The killings sparked an uprising that quickly became an armed struggle. Thousands took up arms against the secessionist regime headquartered in Hargeisa.
The secessionist forces regrouped and received more reinforcements from Hargeisa. They gathered at Goojacade, a former Somali National Army base at the outskirts of the city. It’s from this base that the secessionist forces shelled the city of Las Anod indiscriminately for six months.
Many civilians were killed and many more wounded. Displacement is estimated at over 100,000 .
Local unionist forces engaged in pitched battles with secessionist forces each time the city was shelled.
Finally, unionist forces broke through the secessionists’ defense lines on Saturday, August 26, 2023, and the secessionists suffered a crushing defeat.
Hundreds of secessionist forces were captured, and scores were killed and wounded. The scattering secessionists abandoned a great deal of military hardware, including heavy artillery, rocket launchers, and armored personnel carriers.
Secessionist forces who fled regrouped in the town of Oog, 90 miles north of Las Anod. This is where leaders of SSC-Khaatumo demanded that secessionist forces be withdrawn in early 2023 for talks to commence.
Now that secessionist forces are in Oog, SSC-Khaatumo leadership has called for peace talks despite ongoing bellicose rhetoric from Somaliland President Muse Bihi . It’s a tremendous victory for the unionists and for peace in northern Somalia.
AG: What are the imperial interests involved in this struggle, and how might this victory affect them?
JA: Both the UK and the United States have strategic and natural resource interests in northern Somalia.
The British have a colonial legacy in the region, which was a British protectorate before the Somali Republic was born in 1960, so there are historical ties. Recently, the British firm Genel Energy has been exploring for oil and gas in the region.
For the United States, the 2022-2023 National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA) calls for a feasibility study for establishing a military base in the port of Berbera on Somalia’s northern coast. That is continuing.
It’s unlikely that either will be dramatically impacted by the unionist victory over the secessionists in SSC in the near future. Both the UK and United States have vast resources to protect their interests.
AG: The call for a feasibility study in the 2022-2023 NDAA for building a US military base in the Port of Berbera repeatedly spoke of negotiating with Somaliland directly, bypassing the federal government and violating Somalia’s sovereignty, but President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud didn’t protest. Why do you think he didn’t object to seeing Somalia’s sovereignty violated in this way?
JA: Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been swimming in a third lane in between unionists and secessionists. He has seemed willing to accept two functionally parallel states, Somalia and Somaliland—based on colonial boundaries—while maintaining the idea of one country in name only. This emerged from negotiations with secessionists during his first presidency, from 2012 to 2017.
AG: Somalia seems to be little more than a flag and a UN seat. In a sign of just how weak the federal government is, President Mohamud didn’t even seem to take interest in the fact that a secessionist war was going on in the north of the country. Why do you think that was?
JA: Mohamud met with the leader of the secessionist movement in Djibouti. He once invited SSC traditional leaders to Mogadishu for talks. He issued a number of video statements between talks. The statements were convoluted but vaguely pro-secession. The vast majority of Somalis dismissed them as a kind of political triangulation with no tangible results.
AG: Why do you think that the US government felt compelled to negotiate with Somaliland rather than Somalia over the military base in Berbera Port?
JA: The United States has a history of being transactional in this part of the world. The bureaucrats at the Pentagon would tell you that they make decisions based on reality on the ground. Muse Bihi controls Berbera.
Mohamud has not shown inclination to see a truly unified Somalia. Above all, he came to power with the help of the United States. There is no reason to expect he would oppose the United States' obvious violation of Somalia’s sovereignty. Somalia and the United States are now puppet and puppeteer shows.
AG: Elements of the US government seem to have favored Somaliland secession, as evidenced by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s bizarre advocacy for it earlier on in his career, and by that of the Heritage Foundation . They seem to want to make it out to be the Taiwan of Africa. What do you make of that?
JA: Somalia has many clan fiefdoms, which are formally designated Federal Member States. They were intended to be administrative regions but often act as sovereign nations within Somalia. Most Federal Member States have independent contacts, relationships, and agreements with foreign countries independent of Somalia. So what Pete Buttigieg was advocating in secessionist Somaliland also happens in other regions that do not claim to be independent of Somalia.
I think it may simply be that Buttigieg, and even the Heritage Foundation, are paid lobbyists for Somaliland.
AG: In any case, the US has gone out of its way to suppress the struggle for a unified Somali nation and to undermine the previous, hugely popular Somali president, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo. Why do you think that is?
JA: The only interests that the US acknowledges in Somalia are fighting terrorism and establishing geostrategic advantage, as with the military base in Berbera. It also blocks competitors, most of all China and Russia, from exerting influence in the country.
The current thinking among many Pentagon and State Department bureaucrats seems to be that transactions are more expedient and lopsided in favor of the United States when they deal with the clan fiefdoms known as Federal Member States instead of a united Somalia. President Farmaajo tried to build a real Somali nation and demanded an equal country-to-country relationship rather than a subservient one. That was essentially why he fell out with the United States.
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud promised not to do anything without the approval of the United States in one of many meetings at the United States Embassy, according to at least one person present.
THE CONNECTIONS OF THE OUSTED PRESIDENT OF GABON WITH OBAMA AND THE FALL OF LIBYA
1 Sep 2023 , 11:54 a.m.
Bongo was called "Obama's man in Africa" (Photo: File)
With the coup against Ali Bongo Ondimba in Gabon on August 30, a dynasty that began with his father, Omar Bongo, in 1967 ended. His arrest was immediately condemned by France and the United States, and the reason is due to the interests energy that French companies have in the country and the alliance that was built in the Obama era with the autocrat.
Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone , notes that he was "one of the former Democratic president's closest allies on the continent and relied on him for diplomatic support as he waged a war against Libya that unleashed terror and instability throughout the region".
In fact, Ali Bongo was not only the first African leader to call for Gaddafi's resignation, but Obama was so desperate to invade Libya that in 2010-2011 he gave Gabon a temporary role on the UN Security Council so that could get the necessary votes to do so.
Review that the bond was so close that Foreign Policy described the Gabonese leader as "Obama's man in Africa." And it is that with the help of Obama the ousted president created his links with Davos and attended the World Economic Forum on several occasions. As an Agenda Contributor he envisioned himself as the one to accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Africa by implementing lucrative digital identification and payment systems among the heavily impoverished population of his country.
As Gabonese discontent grew over the dire conditions to which they were subjected in the upper echelons of the economy, the image was built that Bongo was a cultured man with refined tastes with interests in "history, soccer, classical music, jazz and bossa nova. So it is not surprising that the Gabonese have so fervently celebrated the departure of the autocrat.
Like dominos, African states are one by one falling outside the shackles of neocolonialism. Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and now Gabon are saying 'non' to France's longtime domination of African financial, political, economic, and security affairs.
Pepe Escobar
SEP 1, 2023
(Photo Credit: The Cradle)
By adding two new African member-states to its roster, last week's summit in Johannesburg heralding the expanded BRICS 11 showed once again that Eurasian integration is inextricably linked to the integration of Afro-Eurasia.
Belarus is now proposing to hold a joint summit between BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). President Aleksandr Lukashenko's vision for the convergence of these multilateral organizations may, in due time, lead to the Mother of All Multipolarity Summits.
But Afro-Eurasia is a much more complicated proposition. Africa still lags far behind its Eurasian cousins on the road toward breaking the shackles of neocolonialism.
The continent today faces horrendous odds in its fight against the deeply entrenched financial and political institutions of colonization, especially when it comes to smashing French monetary hegemony in the form of the Franc CFA - or the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community).
Still, one domino is falling after another – Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon. This process has already turned Burkina Faso's President Captain Ibrahim Traoré, into a new hero of the multipolar world – as a dazed and confused collective west can’t even begin to comprehend the blowback represented by its 8 coups in West and Central Africa in less than 3 years.
Bye bye Bongo
Military officers decided to take power in Gabon after hyper pro-France President Ali Bongo won a dodgy election that “lacked credibility.” Institutions were dissolved. Borders with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo were closed. All security deals with France were annulled. No one knows what will happen with the French military base.
All that was as popular as it comes: soldiers took to the streets of the capital Libreville in joyful singing, cheered on by onlookers.
Bongo and his father, who preceded him, have ruled Gabon since 1967. He was educated at a French private school and graduated from the Sorbonne. Gabon is a small nation of 2.4 million with a small army of 5,000 personnel that could fit into Donald Trump’s penthouse. Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.
The military qualified Bongo’s 14-year rule as leading to a "deterioration in social cohesion” that was plunging the country “into chaos."
On cue, French mining company Eramet suspended its operations after the coup. That’s a near monopoly. Gabon is all about lavish mineral wealth – in gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, niobium, iron ore, not to mention oil, natural gas, and hydropower. In OPEC-member Gabon, virtually the whole economy revolves around mining.
The case of Niger is even more complex. France exploits uranium and high-purity petrol as well as other types of mineral wealth. And the Americans are on site, operating three bases in Niger with up to 4,000 military personnel. The key strategic node in their ‘Empire of Bases’ is the drone facility in Agadez, known as Niger Air Base 201, the second-largest in Africa after Djibouti.
French and American interests clash, though, when it comes to the saga over the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline. After Washington broke the umbilical steel cord between Russia and Europe by bombing the Nord Streams, the EU, and especially Germany, badly needed an alternative.
Algerian gas supply can barely cover southern Europe. American gas is horribly expensive. The ideal solution for Europeans would be Nigerian gas crossing the Sahara and then the deep Mediterranean.
Nigeria, with 5,7 trillion cubic meters, has even more gas than Algeria and possibly Venezuela. By comparison, Norway has 2 trillion cubic meters. But Nigeria’s problem is how to pump its gas to distant customers - so Niger becomes an essential transit country.
When it comes to Niger’s role, energy is actually a much bigger game than the oft-touted uranium – which in fact is not that strategic either for France or the EU because Niger is only the 5th largest world supplier, way behind Kazakhstan and Canada.
Still, the ultimate French nightmare is losing the juicy uranium deals plus a Mali remix: Russia, post-Prighozin, arriving in Niger in full force with a simultaneous expulsion of the French military.
Adding Gabon only makes things dicier. Rising Russian influence could lead to boosting supply lines to rebels in Cameroon and Nigeria, and privileged access to the Central African Republic, where Russian presence is already strong.
It's no wonder that Francophile Paul Biya, in power for 41 years in Cameroon, has opted for a purge of his Armed Forces after the coup in Gabon. Cameroon may be the next domino to fall.
ECOWAS meets AFRICOM
The Americans, as it stands, are playing Sphynx. There’s no evidence so far that Niger's military wants the Agadez base shut down. The Pentagon has invested a fortune in their bases to spy on a great deal of the Sahel and, most of all, Libya.
About the only thing Paris and Washington agree on is that, under the cover of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), the hardest possible sanctions should be slapped on one of the world’s poorest nations (where only 21% of the population has access to electricity) - and they should be much worse than those imposed on the Ivory Coast in 2010.
Then there’s the threat of war. Imagine the absurdity of ECOWAS invading a country that is already fighting two wars on terror on two separate fronts: Against Boko Haram in the southeast and against ISIS in the Tri-Border region.
ECOWAS, one of 8 African political and economic unions, is a proverbial mess. It packs 15 member nations - Francophone, Anglophone and one Lusophone - in Central and West Africa, and it is rife with internal division.
The French and the Americans first wanted ECOWAS to invade Niger as their “peacekeeping” puppet. But that didn’t work because of popular pressure against it. So, they switched to some form of diplomacy. Still, troops remain on stand-by, and a mysterious “D-Day” has been set for the invasion.
The role of the African Union (AU) is even murkier. Initially, they stood against the coup and suspended Niger's membership. Then they turned around and condemned the possible western-backed invasion. Neighbors have closed their borders with Niger.
ECOWAS will implode without US, France, and NATO backing. Already it’s essentially a toothless chihuahua – especially after Russia and China have demonstrated via the BRICS summit their soft power across Africa.
Western policy in the Sahel maelstrom seems to consist of salvaging anything they can from a possible unmitigated debacle - even as the stoic people in Niger are impervious to whatever narrative the west is trying to concoct.
It's important to keep in mind that Niger’s main party, the “National Movement for the Defense of the Homeland” represented by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, has been supported by the Pentagon – complete with military training – from the beginning.
The Pentagon is deeply implanted in Africa and connected to 53 nations. The main US concept since the early 2000s was always to militarize Africa and turn it into War on Terror fodder. As the Dick Cheney regime spun it in 2002: “Africa is a strategic priority in fighting terrorism.”
That’s the basis for the US military command AFRICOM and countless “cooperative partnerships” set up in bilateral agreements. For all practical purposes, AFRICOM has been occupying large swathes of Africa since 2007.
How sweet is my colonial franc
It is absolutely impossible for anyone across the Global South, Global Majority, or “Global Globe” (copyright Lukashenko) to understand Africa's current turmoil without understanding the nuts and bolts of French neocolonialism.
The key, of course, is the CFA franc, the “colonial franc” introduced in 1945 in French Africa, which still survives even after the CFA - with a nifty terminological twist - began to stand for "African Financial Community".
The whole world remembers that after the 2008 global financial crisis, Libya’s Leader Muammar Gaddafi called for the establishment of a pan-African currency pegged to gold.
At the time, Libya had about 150 tons of gold, kept at home, and not in London, Paris, or New York banks. With a little more gold, that pan-African currency would have its own independent financial center in Tripoli – and everything based on a sovereign gold reserve.
For scores of African nations, that was the definitive Plan B to bypass the western financial system.
The whole world also remembers what happened in 2011. The first airstrike on Libya came from a French Mirage fighter jet. France's bombing campaign started even before the end of emergency talks in Paris between western leaders.
In March 2011, France became the first country in the world to recognize the rebel National Transitional Council as the legitimate government of Libya. In 2015, the notoriously hacked emails of former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton revealed what France was up to in Libya: "The desire to achieve a greater share in Libyan oil production,” to increase French influence in North Africa, and to block Gaddafi's plans to create a pan-African currency that would replace the CFA franc printed in France.
It is no wonder the collective west is terrified of Russia in Africa – and not just because of the changing of the guard in Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and now Gabon: Moscow has never sought to rob or enslave Africa.
Russia treats Africans as sovereign people, does not engage in Forever Wars, and does not drain Africa of resources while paying a pittance for them. Meanwhile, French intel and CIA “foreign policy” translate into corrupting African leaders to the core and snuffing out those that are incorruptible.
You have the right to no monetary policy
The CFA racket makes the Mafia look like street punks. It means essentially that the monetary policy of several sovereign African nations is controlled by the French Treasury in Paris.
The Central Bank of each African nation was initially required to keep at least 65 percent of their annual foreign exchange reserves in an “operation account” held at the French Treasury, plus another 20 percent to cover financial “liabilities.”
Even after some mild “reforms” were enacted since September 2005, these nations were still required to transfer 50 percent of their foreign exchange to Paris, plus 20 percent V.A.T.
And it gets worse. The CFA Central Banks impose a cap on credit to each member country. The French Treasury invests these African foreign reserves in its own name on the Paris bourse and pulls in massive profits on Africa's dime.
The hard fact is that more than 80 percent of foreign reserves of African nations have been in “operation accounts” controlled by the French Treasury since 1961. In a nutshell, none of these states has sovereignty over their monetary policy.
But the theft doesn't stop there: the French Treasury uses African reserves as if they were French capital, as collateral in pledging assets to French payments to the EU and the ECB.
Across the “FranceAfrique” spectrum, France still, today, controls the currency, foreign reserves, the comprador elites, and trade business.
The examples are rife: French conglomerate Bolloré's control of port and marine transport throughout West Africa; Bouygues/Vinci dominate construction and public works, water, and electricity distribution; Total has huge stakes in oil and gas. And then there’s France Telecom and big banking - Societe Generale, Credit Lyonnais, BNP-Paribas, AXA (insurance), and so forth.
France de facto controls the overwhelming majority of infrastructure in Francophone Africa. It is a virtual monopoly.
“FranceAfrique” is all about hardcore neocolonialism. Policies are issued by the President of the Republic of France and his “African cell.” They have nothing to do with parliament, or any democratic process, since the times of Charles De Gaulle.
The “African cell” is a sort of General Command. They use the French military apparatus to install “friendly” comprador leaders and get rid of those that threaten the system. There’s no diplomacy involved. Currently, the cell reports exclusively to Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron.
Caravans of drugs, diamonds, and gold
Paris completely supervised the assassination of Burkina Faso's anti-colonial leader Thomas Sankara, in 1987. Sankara had risen to power via a popular coup in 1983, only to be overthrown and assassinated four years later.
As for the real “war on terror” in the African Sahel, it has nothing to do with the infantile fictions sold in the West. There are no Arab “terrorists” in the Sahel, as I saw when backpacking across West Africa a few months before 9/11. They are locals who converted to Salafism online, intent on setting up an Islamic State to better control smuggling routes across the Sahel.
Those fabled ancient salt caravans plying the Sahel from Mali to southern Europe and West Asia are now caravans of drugs, diamonds, and gold. This is what funded Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), for instance, then supported by Wahhabi lunatics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
After Libya was destroyed by NATO in early 2011, there was no more “protection,” so the western-backed Salafi-jihadis who fought against Gaddafi offered the Sahel smugglers the same protection as before - plus a lot of weapons.
Assorted Mali tribes continue the merry smuggling of anything they fancy. AQIM still extracts illegal taxation. ISIS in Libya is deep into human and narcotics trafficking. And Boko Haram wallows in the cocaine and heroin market.
There is a degree of African cooperation to fight these outfits. There was something called the G5 Sahel, focused on security and development. But after Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, and Chad went the military route, only Mauritania remains. The new West Africa Junta Belt, of course, wants to destroy terror groups, but most of all, they want to fight FranceAfrique, and the fact that their national interests are always decided in Paris.
France has for decades made sure there’s very little intra-Africa trade. Landlocked nations badly need neighbors for transit. They mostly produce raw materials for export. There are virtually no decent storage facilities, feeble energy supply, and terrible intra-African transportation infrastructure: that’s what Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects are bent on addressing in Africa.
In March 2018, 44 heads of state came up with the African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) – the largest in the world in terms of population (1.3 billion people) and geography. In January 2022, they established the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) – focused on payments for companies in Africa in local currencies.
So inevitably, they will be going for a common currency further on down the road. Guess what’s in their way: the Paris-imposed CFA.
A few cosmetic measures still guarantee direct control by the French Treasury on any possible new African currency set up, preference for French companies in bidding processes, monopolies, and the stationing of French troops. The coup in Niger represents a sort of “we’re not gonna take it anymore.”
All of the above illustrates what the indispensable economist Michael Hudson has been detailing in all his works: the power of the extractivist model. Hudson has shown how the bottom line is control of the world’s resources; that’s what defines a global power, and in the case of France, a global mid-ranking power.
France has shown how easy it is to control resources via control of monetary policy and setting up monopolies in these resource-rich nations to extract and export, using virtual slave labor with zero environmental or health regulations.
It's also essential for exploitative neocolonialism to keep those resource-rich nations from using their own resources to grow their own economies. But now the African dominoes are finally saying, “The game is over.” Is true decolonization finally on the horizon?
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger at the Forefront of the African Revolution
SEPTEMBER 2, 2023
Niamey, Niger, August 19, 2023: Thousands of young people queue to register to volunteer to defend their country as part of a volunteer initiative. General Abdourahmane Tchiani, head of the Presidential Guards Unit, has repeatedly warned ECOWAS and unnamed Western nations against stepping in. “We once again reiterate to ECOWAS or any other adventurer our firm determination to defend our fatherland.” Photo: Sam Mednick/Associated Press.
By Gerald A. Perreira – Aug 24, 2023
“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.”
– Thomas Sankara
History is a great teacher. If we do not learn from it, we are doomed to repeat mistakes made. Early post-colonial African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita and Marien Ngouabi spoke of economic independence and the ongoing struggle for true independence. Well aware of the trap of bogus independence, what Walter Rodney referred to as “brief- case independence,” or what I refer to as “flag-and-anthem independence,” these leaders mobilized and organized their people for the completion of their respective national liberation struggles. However, Western imperialism and its stooges, or “running dogs of imperialism,” as the Chinese revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong called them, either overthrew or assassinated these visionaries. Like so many conquerors throughout history, the imperialists enlisted the support of reactionary regimes and Western assets in the military to achieve their diabolical agenda, that is to keep Africa in a state of permanent dependence and servitude, so they could continue their rape and plunder of the continent.
Frantz Fanon’s observation in his seminal work, ‘Towards the African Revolution’ remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published in 1964. Fanon observed that “the great success of the enemies of Africa is to have compromised the African themselves. It is true that these Africans were directly interested in the murder of Lumumba, Chiefs of puppet governments, in the midst of a puppet independence, facing day after day the wholesale opposition of their peoples, it did not take them long to convince themselves that the real independence of the Congo would put them personally in danger.”
Fast forward to 2023, and as if to confirm his status as a compromised African, ECOWAS Chairman, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, is expressing his concern that the emerging trend of coups in West Africa had reached “alarming levels.” Of course, alarming for him as he wonders if he will be the next neo-colonial leader to be swept aside.
As a multipolar world emerges, all over Africa the people are rising up and challenging decades of neocolonial rule, exploitation and fake independence, favouring relations with Russia and China over the US and West Europe. Regardless of what takes place at the political level, it is when the masses rise up that real and meaningful transformation occurs. It is the masses who make history. They are just waiting for the moment, for the tipping point and the moment is here.
In Africa, here in the Caribbean and South America, and throughout the Global South, people at the grassroots are often clearer about what is taking place globally than many who are located in the ivory towers of academia, who so often become confused. In the poorest areas of Guyana, people who have never travelled far from their area or had access to books, or even in some cases internet, are very clear about why Muammar Qaddafi was killed, while we had the globally renowned Guyanese economist and dependency theorist, Clive Thomas, regurgitating the imperialist narrative “Qaddafi must go!” For the masses, knowledge is not gleaned from books and other people’s stories and therefore it is not disembodied. Knowledge devoid of an experiential dimension becomes an abstraction and this precludes an authentic understanding of the immense pain suffered by the peoples of the Global South, and the devastating impact that the injustice we experience has on every aspect of our lives, including whether we and our loved ones even get to live.
Thus, the only people who truly understand the suffering that inflicts millions on this earth every day are the sufferers themselves. As we say in Guyana, “who feels it, knows it.” Those who have been forced to reckon with it, and to fight it themselves, are the ones who will eventually make the change. These are the people who filled the stadium on August 7th to support the revolutionaries of Niger as they closed Niger’s airspace and refused to surrender. These are the people who are signing up in their thousands to defend Niger as I write this article. These are the people in Nigeria and Ghana who oppose their country’s proposed military intervention in Niger because they understand all too clearly that this is a proxy war hatched by the imperialists, especially the US and France. These are the ones in Haiti, who understand and support Jimmy Chérizier, while Haitian activists residing in the US and France and commenting from their ivory towers are falling for the Western narrative which insists on criminalizing those from the Haitian streets who have become conscientized, and now, instead of fighting each other, are fighting their oppressors.
“When the people stand up, imperialism trembles.”
– Thomas Sankara
The political heirs of the traitors who stood in the way of the post-colonial revolutionary African leaders are now plotting and planning ways to thwart and kill this new generation of African revolutionary leaders, Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso, Assimi Goita of Mali, and Abdourahmane Tiani of Niger, all in the name of ‘democracy’ – liberal democracy, a Western colonial imposition, an illusion of democracy, a trap that has left the African continent in chaos, persistent poverty and chronic dependency – the hallmarks of the neo-colonial arrangement. It is the chains of this enslavement that the revolutionary coup leaders in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are determined to break. The same chains that Imran Khan is determined to break in Pakistan.
“Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on earth to rule all of humanity.”
– Thomas Sankara
In the words of Kwame Nkrumah: “Neo-colonialism is not a sign of imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp.” The Empire knows that it has come to the end of its reign, even if they refuse to admit it openly. The power and influence of the Empire is fading faster than could have ever been imagined even a year ago, it is indeed taking its last hideous gasp. Although in the open, the US and West Europe are still strutting on the world stage with their usual arrogance and bravado, behind closed doors they are in panic mode.
This new set of compromised Africans, under the umbrella of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), continue to push for a military intervention in Niger, backed of course by France and the US, but as I write, are still retreating from making that fatal mistake as they realize it would be doomed to failure. The Western Corporate media continues to bleat about restoring ‘democracy’ to Niger, despite the fact that the coup leaders have the overwhelming support of the people – isn’t that democracy? BBC repeats the same thing over and over, that the US and EU are committed to finding a diplomatic solution to Niger’s “political turmoil,” despite the fact that there is no turmoil as the people of Niger express their overwhelming support for the coup. It is the imperialists that are in turmoil as they realize the extent of the support the coup leaders and Russia have, and the extent of the hatred that is being directed towards them.
The people make history – coup supporters in the streets of Niger, “Down with France, Long Live Putin.” Photo: Sam Mednick/AP.
ECOWAS is a neo-colonial body that colludes with the imperialists to keep the existing political and economic arrangement intact. It’s the Black face of White supremacy. Obviously, the coup leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are well aware of this. All three countries are members of ECOWAS. However, unlike the pro-Western puppets they removed, these revolutionaries are determined to move beyond sham independence and bogus liberal democracy. Those useless neo-colonial States like Nigeria should pay attention to the suffering of their people, rather than talking about invasion. Where were these “running dogs of imperialism” when NATO was bombing Libya into dust. Truth be told, some of these cowards, who call themselves African leaders went along with the imposed decision to destroy Libya. The good news is that it is only a matter of time before they are swept away by the rising tide of the African Revolution.
Why did the ECOWAS proposed invasion, backed of course by the French and the US, not eventuate when the first deadline they imposed on Niger expired? The reason is that they realized then, and are realizing even more so now, that they would not only have to reckon with the military but also the people of Niger who have already had a taste of the dignity that comes with true independence and real sovereignty. In addition, these compromised Africans are afraid that their shameless and traitorous behavior will be even further exposed than it already is, and that this will cause greater unrest in their own countries.
The Niger coup leaders took the courageous and imperative step of not only kicking out their French neo-colonial masters but have threatened sanctions, withholding the supply of precious raw materials such as gold and uranium. This has sent shock waves throughout the imperialist world. The withholding of uranium is especially terrifying for the French government since uranium from Niger in part powers French nuclear power plants. The French State is the major shareholder in the multi-national mining company Orano (formerly known as Areva), that has been mining uranium in Niger for almost 50 years. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), Niger is the world’s seventh-largest producer of uranium and has Africa’s highest-grade uranium ores. Although Orano has already depleted some mines, they are determined to remain in the country, having set their sights on Niger’s Imouraren mine. Listed as the one of the world’s largest uranium deposits, Orano refer to it on their website as “Imouraren Project, the mine of the future.”
Despite this wealth of resources, Niger remains one of the poorest countries in the world, which tells you everything you need to know about France’s ill-gotten gains. In France, one out of every three light bulbs is lit thanks to Nigerien uranium, while in Niger, nearly 90% of the population has no access to electricity. Is this the democracy they want to restore in Niger?
To operate the fifty-six nuclear reactors in France’s eighteen power plants, an average of approximately 8,000 tons of uranium is required every year. This uranium comes mainly from three countries: Kazakhstan (27%), Niger (20%), and Uzbekistan (19%). Although Niger only accounts for 5% of global production, well behind Kazakhstan (43%), Canada (15%), Namibia (11%), and Australia (10%), and even though France could manage without Niger’s uranium, it is the precedent that Niger is setting that is most alarming for France and the entire Western world. Not since Muammar Qaddafi nationalised Libya’s oil companies in 1973, leading to a global oil supply crisis that resulted in desperate measures including carless days in major Western cities, have the imperialists been so afraid. As Francois Mitterrand boldly admitted in 1957, “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century.”
Africa is the world’s true superpower
As I have written in previous articles, there is nothing that the US and Western Europe fears more than a united Africa that is free and independent, and whose resources can no longer be extracted in an exploitative manner. We must never forget that the Western world’s development was possible as a result of hundreds of years of the free labour of captured and enslaved Africans, and the plunder of African resources since the onset of the colonial project right up to the present day. They know that a united and independent Africa would completely alter the balance of power globally. It is a well-documented fact that if Africa stopped the flow of all raw materials to the Western nations for just one week, these nations would grind to a halt.
In 2007, in Conakry Guinea, Qaddafi made a simple observation to a cheering crowd of thousands: “Whenever I ask people about Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola people immediately say it’s an American or European drink. This is not true. The kola is African. They have taken the cheap raw material from us, they’ve made it into a drink, and they sell it back to us for a high price. We should be producing it ourselves and selling it to them.”
This is exactly the point that the revolutionary leader, Ibrahim Traoré is making as he implements projects to increase the manufacturing and processing of raw materials in Burkina Faso. This is of course a fundamental step in the struggle to free any country from persistent poverty and dependence. You can only achieve economic freedom and prosperity for your people when you halt the export of raw materials and start to produce the final product locally.
At this critical juncture in history, Africa is finally realizing its immense power. These times represent a new opportunity because global events are transforming the balance of power and China and Russia are backing Africa’s attempt to take its rightful place on the world stage. This is a moment we cannot afford to miss or to be robbed of. Realizing our power is primarily a psychological transition, it is quite simply a matter of liberating ourselves from our mental incarceration. Almost every known natural resource needed to run the contemporary industrial/high tech economies—such as uranium, gold, copper, cobalt, coltan (for cell phones, video games, laptops), platinum, diamonds, bauxite, and especially large reserves of oil are located in Africa. Azania (South Africa) alone contains half the world’s gold reserves. Democratic Republic of Congo contains half of the world’s cobalt and 80% of the world’s known coltan reserves. One quarter of the world’s aluminum ore is found in the coastal belt of West Africa and the continent is awash in petroleum reserves.
A defining moment for Africa and Africans all over the world, we are getting a glimpse of the kind of power that Africa possesses. Ibrahim Traore, Assimi Goita and Abdourahmane Tiani embody the ideas of Garvey, Nkrumah, Sankara, Qaddafi and every great African freedom fighter who envisioned an Africa free from the bondage of colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism.
We must rally to support them as they face the age-old imperialist arsenal of weapons. The usual all-out campaign to demonise them has already been launched, their entire psych-ops will be based on a sophisticated program of deception. If that fails, which it will, given the current awareness worldwide that the emperor is indeed naked for all to see, the next move will be military intervention, using the neo-colonial satraps amongst us, such as President Tinubu of Nigeria, just as they have done in the past.
Compromised Africans come in many guises. Bola Tinubu is an obvious case, openly working in tandem with the imperialists and therefore easy to spot. However, I have seen many who should know better getting excited over the speeches of African leaders who remain conceptually incarcerated, and therefore also compromised, such as President William Ruto of Kenya. He is a good orator and his speeches are full of promise, much the same as Barak Obama’s speeches were. In fact, the vision of a free and independent Africa articulated recently by President Ruto sounded nothing short of revolutionary. I don’t wish to be a pessimist, but a good talker is one thing and decisive action is another, and sadly, there are so many contradictions with regard to President Ruto that I know he inevitably falls into the first category.
President Ruto is calling for a new financial arrangement but says nothing about dismantling the neo-liberal capitalist arrangement that the present financial model is based on. Why? Because the ideology that his center-right party, the United Democratic Alliance adheres to is neo-liberal capitalism. He wants to have a fair financial arrangement within an unfair arrangement. Totally impossible. He uses the word ‘Afrocentric’ but I’m certain he uses it as a substitute for ‘African’ rather than as an ideological concept. He is calling for betterment for our African homeland within a system that colonised and enslaved our ancestors and is still ravaging Africa to this day. This same system got rid of the leaders I mentioned above and frustrated every attempt they made to bring about a new and just economic and financial order. And it is the defenders and enforcers of this same system that are lining up against the revolutionary leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Herein lies the contradiction that renders his speeches nothing more than empty rhetoric.
Time for ‘us’ to put sanctions on ‘them’
It is time for Africa to finally rid itself of the last vestiges of colonialism and neo-colonialism. If we have to stop the flow of strategic resources to the Western capitals until they comply with our demands for self-determination, then so be it. It is time for us to apply sanctions on those Western capitals that refuse to respect our God-given rights. The way in which Western sanctions against Russia have completely backfired, resulting in an economically stronger Russia and an isolated West, now teetering on economic collapse, has shown the world that the pendulum has already swung. Western hegemony is over.
Africa has never been in a better position to finally take its place at the global table as an equal partner and demand prosperity for its people. The Worldwide Pan-African Movement and the African masses are crying out for this – the time is now. Africans everywhere must exert maximum pressure on their leaders to realize this power; we owe this much to all those who have gone before us, who have fought and died to realize this dream. Those African leaders who cannot get on board must be moved out of the way. An ECOWAS invasion of Niger must not be tolerated.
The global shift that is happening before our eyes is not a recent phenomenon, it has been building up for decades. The US and Western Europe have been in panic mode behind closed doors for a very long time. They thought that bombarding the world with anti-Russia and anti-China propaganda would work, but it has failed dismally, and much to their dismay, African youth are taking to the streets in greater and greater numbers waving Russian flags. The experience of the people throughout the Global South, especially in Africa, has of course run contrary to Western propaganda. Having experienced centuries of exploitation and genocidal policies by the West, they have never forgotten the fact that both Russia and China, who never had colonies in Africa or anywhere in the Global South for that matter, assisted them in their struggles to free themselves from Western domination and Apartheid in South Africa.
In an article that appeared in the Financial Times as far back as 2007, authors W. Wallis and G. Dyer, wrote: “Western powers real concern is that African States will opt for Chinese deals to free themselves from the punitive conditions of IMF/ World Bank loans and other forms of financial dependence on Europe and the Unites States. As the second largest source of oil in Africa, Angola is now in such a strong position that it is rejecting IMF loans completely. As one consultant put it, with all their oil revenue, they don’t need the IMF or the World Bank. They can play the Chinese off against the Americans.”
In another article titled, ‘China and USA in New Cold War over Africa’s Oil Riches. Darfur? It’s the Oil, Stupid…’ author William Engdahl points out: “Today China draws an estimated 30% of its crude oil from Africa. That explains an extraordinary series of diplomatic initiatives which have left Washington furious. China is using no-strings-attached dollar credits to gain access to Africa’s vast raw material wealth, leaving Washington’s typical control game via the World Bank and IMF out in the cold. Who needs the painful medicine of the IMF when China gives easy terms and builds roads and schools to boot? What does all this mean for Africa? Quite simply it means that we now have a choice in trading partners, and although all trading partners drive a hard bargain – some are giving better deals than others and in addition, respect our right to self-determination.
Black Power – African Power!
This is the moment to put all our efforts into the realization of Nkrumah and Qaddafi’s grand plan for a United States of Africa. As I write, I am heartened by news that Algeria has refused France’s request to use its airspace for a military operation in Niger. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune stated that “a military intervention could ignite the whole Sahel region and Algeria will not use force with its neighbors.” Only when we can achieve this level of unity and power, will we be able to take our rightful place in the world. At last, we will be able to engage with the rest of the world on our own terms and in our own interest. Backed by a population of 1 billion people, Africa will then be able to make demands that cannot be ignored.
In 2009, at a meeting of the AU in Addis Ababa, Qaddafi, commenting on West European and US attitudes to Africa, and had this to say: “If they do not want to live with us fairly, then they should know it is our planet and they can go to another planet.”
Fair and just is all we are seeking – only the unfair and unjust have anything to fear.
Imperialism can only be buried in Africa…
In an article in 2011, I invoked as its title Sekou Toure’s bold assertion: that imperialism will be buried in Africa. To Western commentators this might have seemed optimistic, and indeed some commentators asserted that it was not grounded in reality and that we were, if anything, being crushed by imperialism’s might. However, looking at it from a revolutionary Pan-African perspective one simply sees it as inevitable. Imperialism can only be defeated in Africa. Although there is a revolutionary fightback globally, and most notably throughout Central and South America, it is only when Africa is free that imperialism can finally be buried, since it is Africa that fuels the imperialist’s existence and their space age.
The onus is on revolutionary Pan-African organizations/movements, on the continent and in the Diaspora, to provide clear analysis and strategies capable of thwarting the enemies’ plans at every point. We must rid ourselves of the evil scourge of US and West European imperialism, their created, funded and facilitated so-called ‘jihadists’ (aka NATO’s foot soldiers) and the confusion and havoc they are spreading, and their neo-colonial regimes. There is no room or time for indecision leading to inaction. We must bury imperialism in Africa once and for all or we will surely perish.
Following the destruction of the Libyan Jamahiriya and the assassination of Muammar Qaddafi, veteran African freedom fighter and former president of Namibia, Sam Nujoma, was extremely critical of the African Union’s weakness, stating that they “had woefully failed to mobilize militarily to stop the bombing of Libya and that the African Union should have mobilized their forces in order to fight and defend the territorial integrity of Libya.” He offered the following advice: “Africans should talk war – the language best understood by Western countries… The imperialists understand no other words than fighting. We dislodged them from our continent by fighting them. If we did not fight in Namibia or in Zimbabwe or elsewhere, we would not be free today. We must now prepare to fight them again…” Certainly, the courageous revolutionaries of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have heeded his call and are leading the way. We salute them and pledge our support on every front. It was no coincidence that the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) theme for African Liberation Day, 2023, was “Smash Neo-colonialism, African People are Ready for Revolution.”
I end with the immortal words of Kwame Nkrumah:
“We have awakened. We will not sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world.”
The situation in the African Sahel for August 23 - September 1, 2023
September 2, 2023
Rybar
Clashes continue in the region between militants of the local branch of the Islamic State * and the al-Qaeda affiliate * Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin *, as well as government forces.
The greatest problems in the field of internal security remain in the area of the "triple border" , where radicals carry out attacks with almost impunity. At the same time, the active use of drones by the military personnel of Burkina Faso continues to show their extreme effectiveness in the fight against terrorists.
Negotiations are ongoing between ECOWAS and the military government of the Republic of Niger . There is increasing recognition in the West African bloc that forceful methods remain the last option for resolving the crisis.
However, in the event of military intervention, the current authorities have ordered the armed forces to go on high alert and allowed Mali and Burkina Faso to send their troops to Niger.
Mali
Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimeen militants have been blocking Timbuktu for two weeks , which has led to a shortage of food and humanitarian aid.
A local al-Qaeda affiliate is blocking roads into the city. A commission of about 30 religious and ethnic leaders has been set up to negotiate with the militants to lift the embargo.
In the east of the country, radicals attacked the village of Kombaka : eight civilians were killed, two were injured
According to United Nations experts , the Islamic State group has almost doubled its territory in the Republic of Mali in less than a year.
Mali's transitional president, Colonel Assimi Goita , has signed into law a new mining code that will allow the government to increase its ownership of gold concessions.
According to the government, the new code will allow the state and local investors to receive shares in mining projects up to 35% , compared with 20% now.
Burkina Faso
In the east of the country, militants from Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin carried out an attack near the village of Futuri in the province of Komonjari : about eight soldiers and 10 civilians were killed. In turn, government forces managed to neutralize at least five members of the terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, the armed forces of Burkina Faso continue to use Turkish Bayraktar TV2 UAVs to identify and eliminate militants in the country's border areas.
As a result of air strikes by drones in the north of the country near the city of Ursi in the Sahel region , a large number of terrorists of the Islamic State were neutralized .
Defense Minister of Burkina Faso, Colonel Kassoum Coulibaly said that the Council of Ministers had authorized the dispatch of a military contingent to the Republic of Niger to support the neighboring country.
Niger
An ECOWAS delegation arrived in Niger for talks with the military authorities. Former Nigerian President Abdusalam Abubakar , who heads it, said that there is room for discussion and diplomacy between the parties, and armed intervention remains the last option.
The Niger Military Council banned the UN and various NGOs from working in the zones of military operations due to the "current security situation" without specifying specific regions.
The head of the transitional government, General Abdurrahman Chiani , signed an order allowing the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso to send troops to Niger to help defend against a possible invasion.
The military government also ordered the country's armed forces to go on high alert . The statement said that this would allow for an adequate response in the event of any attack and "avoid surprise."
Niger has ordered French Ambassador Sylvain Itte to leave the country within 48 hours. The country's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the decision was a response to the actions of Paris, which "contradict the interests of Niger."
According to French President Emmanuel Macron , the ambassador will remain in the African country despite pressure from the current authorities.
In response, the military authorities cut off water and electricity at the French embassy, banning food delivery . Similar actions were taken by the country 's leadership with respect to the French consulate in the city of Zinder .
The visas of the French ambassador to Niamey, Sylvain Itte, and his family have already been cancelled , and the police have been ordered to expel him from the country if Itte leaves the embassy premises.
Hundreds of supporters of the coup in Niger gathered on Saturday near the French military base in Niamey and celebrated the anniversary of the overthrow of President Mohamed Bazum .
And on August 31, at the same place, a large group of women organized a so-called “noisy” demonstration.
The participants in the events chanted anti-French slogans, accusing Paris of interfering in the affairs of the country, and threatened to storm the French embassy and its military base if the French troops and its ambassador did not leave the country.
Demonstrations also took place in the north of the country in the city of Agadez . On them, demonstrators carried Russian flags and demanded that American troops leave Air Force Base 201 .
Against the backdrop of protests, the US Air Force began developing plans to evacuate two military bases from Niger. Washington is considering the option of "relocating its armed forces to the territory of partner states in the regions of the Sahara and the Sahel."
The European Union is preparing the legal grounds for imposing sanctions against the participants in the coup in the Republic of Niger, as stated by EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell .
But at the same time, the foreign ministers of the Union countries refrained from answering the question of whether they would support the military actions of the regional forces to restore the overthrown government.
Niger: UN Agencies, NGOs Banned From Working in Operation Zones
Niger's military junta announced the suspension of the international organizations' activities within the military zones. Sep. 1, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@felixtiih
In recent years, a new center of insecurity has emerged in the extreme southwest of Niger, a region known as the "three borders" (Niger-Mali-Burkina Faso) where terrorist groups often carry out deadly attacks targeting both military and civilian population.
On Thursday, Niger's Interior Ministry stated that UN agencies and non-governmental organizations have been barred from working in military "operation zones."
Without specifying the affected regions, the ministry broadcasted the statement on national radio which read: "Due to the current security situation and operational commitment of the Nigerien armed forces, the ministry informs international organizations, national and international NGOs and UN agencies present in Niger that all activities and or movements in the zones of operations are temporarily suspended."
Niger has been, in some of its border areas, suffering atrocities of terrorist organizations including armed groups and criminals who have controlled the southern region of Libya since the overthrow of the Muammar Gaddafi regime in 2011.
There are also terrorist groups based in northern Mali.
In recent years, a new center of insecurity has emerged in the extreme southwest of Niger, a region known as the "three borders" (Niger-Mali-Burkina Faso) where terrorist groups often carry out deadly attacks targeting both military and civilian population.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu proposed that the neighboring state of Niger can transition back to democracy for a period of nine months, similar to the nine-month period through which his country was in the late 1990s.
Sanctions were imposed on Niger by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) after President Mohamed Bazoum was ousted in a coup by the troops on July 26. The country was threatened with military intervention by the bloc as a last resort if civilian rule was not restored after talks.
Mali: UN Peacekeepers Complete First Phase of Withdrawal
Withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces from Mali. Sep. 1, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@allafrica
Published 1 September 2023
"Menaka was the last of the four MINUSMA bases scheduled for closure during the first phase of the mission's downsizing and definitive withdrawal from Mali, in accordance with the request of the transitional authorities."
On Thursday, a UN spokesman said that the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali completed the initial phase of its total withdrawal from the West African country.
According to Stephane Dujarric, chief spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the last convoy from the mission, known as MINUSMA, left the Menaka camp in northeastern Mali on Aug. 25, arriving in Gao Wednesday.
"Menaka was the last of the four MINUSMA bases scheduled for closure during the first phase of the mission's downsizing and definitive withdrawal from Mali, in accordance with the request of the transitional authorities," Dujarric said, adding that "the temporary base at Ogossagou was closed on Aug. 3, followed by Ber on Aug. 13 and Goundam three days later."
Dujarric also stated that El-Ghassim Wane, the special representative of the secretary-general and head of the UN mission in Mali, reported that the timely conclusion of this first phase of MINUSMA's drawdown plan is the result of sustained work by UN teams and good coordination with the Malian authorities.
"He added that with these base closures, we have reduced our geographical footprint in Mali by 25 percent, and we are determined to persevere with this momentum to conclude the withdrawal by the end of the year," Dujarric said.
"Transitional authorities" was a reference to the military junta governing Mali since an August 2020 coup, deposing President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
Sudan: The War Affected the Education Institutions
The Ministry of Education has not yet determined the fate of the secondary school exams for the current year 2023. Sep. 1, 2023. | Photo: Radio Dabanga
Published 1 September 2023
The Ministry of Education says that “in the state of Khartoum, all public universities with their faculties, in addition to more than ten private universities, two semipublic universities, and twenty university colleges, have been systematically targeted.
The Sudanese Teachers Committee called on the Ministry of Education to determine the fate of the new academic year 2023-2024, in light of the ongoing war between the army and Rapid Support Force (RSF), which broke out five months ago, without looming solutions at the present time.
The Sudanese Minister of Education in charge, Mahmoud Sir Al-Khatim Al-Houri, had canceled the primary certificate exams and transfer exams for high-level education (primary, intermediate, and secondary) in all states affected by the war. Al-Houri’s decision was to transfer all sixth-grade students directly to the intermediate stage and transfer students to the next semester without exams.
The official spokesman for the Sudanese Teachers Committee, Sami Al-Baqer, said in press statements that the Ministry of Education should announce a clear decision regarding the educational process and the new academic year 2023-2024.
The Ministry of Education has not yet determined the fate of the secondary school exams for the current year 2023.
The Sudanese Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research stated that “since the clashes erupted, all institutions of higher education and scientific research in Khartoum State and a number of other states have been affected by sabotage. These institutions, totaling 104 public and private higher education institutions, research centers, and the National Fund for Student Welfare, have been totally or partially affected.”
The statement added, “The Presidency of the Ministry was also affected by the fire in many departments and the burning of many offices.” The ministry continued that “many universities, with their various faculties, were also damaged in the infrastructure of laboratories, libraries, halls, and administrative offices by burning, looting, and breaking.”
It stressed that “in the state of Khartoum, all public universities with their faculties, in addition to more than ten private universities, two semipublic universities, and twenty university colleges, have been systematically targeted.” The statement said that “the property and residences of faculty members and workers have been attacked in many areas of the capital and some states.”
Somali Activists Call For Strong Action Against Climate Change
In Somalia, 6.5 million people are expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity and 1.3 million people to be displaced by conflict or climate shocks. Sep. 1, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@UNDPArabStates
Published 1 September 2023
Ahmed Abdi Osman, a climate change official from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Somalia, noted that the country is one of the most affected by climate change.
On Thursday, young activists from Somalia wrapped up a three-day training session in the capital of Mogadishu, calling for effective action to combat the negative impacts of climate change on vulnerable groups across the country.
According to a statement issued Thursday evening, the 22 young activists who spoke at the UN-backed training on the nexus between human rights and climate change stated that the country has been experiencing a humanitarian crisis due to climate shocks which have led to widespread drought and flooding.
"Floods which are a result of climate change destroy farms and damage crops, which leads to food insecurity and malnutrition," said Abdilatif Hussein Omar, executive director of Action for the Environment, a civil society organization.
The training was part of a wider effort to help create a vibrant cohort of young Somali environmental activists. "The next step forward is actually to create a network of young climate activists that are coming from different sectors, from the academia, civil societies, media and student clubs so that they can continue advocating for effective climate change response in relation to human rights issues," Abdifatah Hassan Ali, a human rights official with UN Assistance Mission in Somalia, said in an official statement.
Ahmed Abdi Osman, a climate change official from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Somalia, noted that Somalia is one of the countries most affected by climate change.
He also said that there are plans underway to address the impacts; and, some 8 million people in the East African country are in need of urgent assistance, with 6.5 million expected to face high levels of acute food insecurity and 1.3 million displaced due to conflict or climatic shocks, according to the UN.
Furthermore, some of the participants noted that the training session would complement some of the advocacy already being carried out by young Somalis.
According to official data, most of the participants were primarily made up of university students and academics and civil society representatives studying or working on climate change issues. They focused on a range of human rights topics interlinked with climate change, such as the right to a healthy environment.
Niger Accuses France of Mobilizing for War
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 13, 2023
Pavan Kulkarni
Protest outside the French military base in Niger’s capital Niamey on September 2. Photo: EPA/ISSIFOU DJIBO
The commander of French forces in the Sahel has discussed disengagement from Niger, yet Macron has refused to withdraw troops, whose continued presence in Niger was deemed ‘illegal’
Questioning the “sincerity” of France’s comments about the withdrawal of its troops from Niger, the transitional military government, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP), has accused the former colonizer of mobilizing for war.
CNSP spokesperson Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane said on September 9 that a “hundred or so rotations of [French] military cargo planes unloaded large quantities of war material and equipment” in multiple member countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
He added that “two A400M type military transport aircraft and a Dornier 328 were deployed as reinforcements in Ivory Coast”, and “two Super Puma type multi-role helicopters” and “around forty armored vehicles” have been deployed “in Kandi and Malanville in Benin”.
He alleged that “France has continued to deploy its forces in several ECOWAS countries, as part of the preparations for an aggression against Niger that it is planning in collaboration” with the sub-regional bloc.
The AFP quoted an unnamed French military source denying the accusation, saying, “None of this is in preparation or intention. There is no intervention, no attack planned against Niger”. France had earlier extended support to ECOWAS, which has threatened to use military force if the CNSP does not restore France’s ally Mohamed Bazoum as Niger’s president.
Bazoum, whose regime had instituted a crackdown on the mass protest movement against the presence of French troops in their country, was removed from presidency on July 26 in a military coup that has received popular support.
French troops in Niger are “in a position of illegality”, maintains Niger’s PM
Following the coup, on August 3, the CNSP, canceled the agreements on the basis of which the French troops were present in the country. The one-month notice period in these agreements expired on September 3, following which the French troops in Niger are “in a position of illegality”, the CNSP-appointed Prime Minister, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, said at a press conference on September 4.
He added that the “ongoing exchanges should allow these forces to withdraw from our country very quickly”. According to Abdramane’s CNSP communique on Saturday, Niger’s Chief of Staff and the commander of French forces in the Sahel met on September 1 “to discuss a plan for the disengagement of French military capabilities from Niger.”
Earlier last week, the AFP quoted an unnamed source in the French defense ministry confirming that “discussions on the withdrawal of certain military elements have begun.” Le Monde had also reported that “Paris has discreetly opened discussions with the ruling military in Niamey on ‘the withdrawal of certain elements,’ after initially refusing to comply with the junta’s demands”.
However, “no progress has been made in implementing an agreement,” Abdramane criticized on September 9, questioning “the sincerity of the announcement of the French withdrawal plan”. He explained the reasons for CNSP’s skepticism, saying that “this withdrawal announcement comes from an operational level. It was not made by the French armed forces general staff, not by the French government, nor was it the subject of any official, written, or declaratory press release as is always customary in such circumstances.”
During a press conference on Sunday, September 10, after the conclusion of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, India, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated that “We do not recognize any legitimacy in the statements” of the CNSP, which he referred to as “the putschists”.
“If we redeploy anything, I will only do it at the request of President Bazoum and in coordination with him, not with officials who today are taking a president hostage,” he said. “As for the rest, I have no intention as long as the situation is this. It sort of freezes everything, since the only person we have to legitimately talk to is President Bazoum.”
Anti-French protests continue
In the meantime, demonstrations which began soon after the coup in support of the CNSP, demanding withdrawal of French troops, have now become an almost daily event. Thousands continue to gather outside the French base in capital Niamey, in a protest against the former colonizer’s intransigence.
After threatening late month to storm the French bases if its troops did not leave the country, protesters sacrificed a goat dressed in the French tricolor and symbolically buried a coffin draped in its national flag outside its base in Niamey earlier this month. Up to 1,500 French troops are deployed in this base and two others in Ouallam and Ayorou.
US on the retreat while China offers to moderate
The US, which has another 1,200 of its own troops in two bases in the country, is taking a more cautious approach than France. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said at a press briefing on September 7 that the US is “repositioning some of our personnel and some of our assets from Air Base 101 in Niamey to Air Base 201” further north in Agadez.
Reiterating that the US hopes “that the situation on the ground gets resolved diplomatically,” she added that although “there is no perceived threat…to US troops”, they are being relocated as “a precautionary measure”. Politico reported on September 8 that the US military is “preparing to cut its presence in Niger nearly in half in the next few weeks,” citing unnamed Defense Department officials.
In the meantime, the Chinese ambassador to Niger Jiang Feng, said at a meeting with Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine that the Chinese government “intends to play the role of good offices, a role of moderator, with full respect for the regional countries.” Feng added that China “stands with Nigeriens”.
Mali: 49 Civilians, 15 Soldiers Killed in Dual Terrorist Attack
The Malian army said on social networks that the boat had been attacked on the stretch of the Niger River between Timbuktu and Gao, in the north of the country. | Photo: @WamapsENG
Published 8 September 2023
The assailants attacked the boat with "at least three missiles launched against the engine," Comanav, the Malian state-owned shipping company to which the vessel belonged stated on several reports.
On Thursday, the Malian government said in a statement that at least 49 civilians and 15 soldiers were killed during a dual terrorist attack in northern Mali.
According to the statement, the two attacks, claimed by the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), targeted the passengers of the boat "Tombouctou" and a military camp of the Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) in Gao region.
"In response to this double attack, a combined air-land action by our valiant FAMa made it possible to neutralize around 50 terrorists," the statement said.
The Malian army said on social networks that the boat had been attacked on the stretch of the Niger River between Timbuktu and Gao, in the north of the country.
The assailants attacked the boat with "at least three missiles launched against the engine," Comanav, the Malian state-owned shipping company to which the vessel belonged stated on several reports.
According to official reports, immediate arrangements were made to evacuate all passengers and secure the places which are still the subject of sweeping and surveillance.
Moreover, a few hours after the attacks, Mali's interim president, Assimi Goita, declared a three-day national mourning starting Thursday.
Since 2012, Mali has been plagued by insurgencies, jihadist incursions, and inter-community violence that have left thousands of people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
Ethiopia’s Filling of Nile Dam a Violation of Agreement -Egypt
Ethiopia started filling the dam in 2020 despite the opposition of Egypt and Sudan. Sep. 11, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@HannibalFene
Published 11 September 2023
According to the ministry, the Declaration of Principles stipulates that the three countries must agree on the rules for the filling and operation of the GERD before starting the filling process.
On Sunday, the Egyptian government declared that Ethiopia's filling of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) reservoir without consensus with Egypt and Sudan, the two downstream countries, is a violation of the Declaration of Principles, a tripartite agreement previously signed.
On Sunday, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on social media X, formerly known as Twitter, the completion of the fourth and final filling of the GERD reservoir.
"This is a violation by Ethiopia of the Declaration of Principles signed by the three sides in 2015," the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
According to the ministry, the Declaration of Principles stipulates that the three countries must agree on the rules for filling and operating the GERD before commencing the filling process.
He also stated that taking such unilateral measures constitutes a disregard for the interests and rights of the downstream countries and their water security under the rules of international law.
"This move and its negative effects place a burden on the resumed negotiations, which have been set for four months to conclude," the ministry said.
On Aug. 28, the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation announced that the latest round of negotiations on the GERD dispute concluded in Cairo with no "tangible results."
Ethiopia started filling the dam in 2020 despite the opposition of Egypt and Sudan, which eventually led to the suspension of relevant tripartite negotiations in 2021.
Ethiopia started to build the GERD in 2011 and expects the giant hydropower project to generate more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity, but Egypt and Sudan have been worried that it might reduce their proportion of Nile water.
Tuareg attack in Mali and a new “headache” for Russia
September 13, 2023
Rybar
On Monday, the Coordination Movement of Azawad in northern Mali, consisting mainly of Tuareg rebel groups , declared war on the country's government.
The militants demand independence from Mali ( not for the first time ), announced mobilization and called on residents of the northern regions to evacuate from the sites of future battles in order to quickly seize territory.
Immediately after this, the separatists announced that they had established control over a military camp in the city of Burem , but then retreated, allegedly killing 96 Armed Forces soldiers. However, their statements are most likely disinformation and an attempt to create an image of a formidable force in the Western (primarily French ) media - we have seen this more than once with the example of militants in the Central African Republic. And the real successes of the Tuaregs are evidenced by recently published photos of destroyed rebel equipment.
The Mali government, in turn , reports that as a result of the repulsed attack, 46 militants were killed and two leaders of the Azawad movement were eliminated .
Tensions between the rebels and the military government have continued to rise for months, raising fears of a breakdown in the so-called Algiers Peace Agreement , which ended major armed clashes between the sides in 2015 .
Probably, against the background of the destabilization of the situation in Niger and the attempts of the Russian Defense Ministry to absorb the assets of the Wagner PMC in Africa, the militants, with tacit approval from Paris, decided to take advantage of the uncertainty in the region. Let’s not forget that it was the Tuareg uprising that became the formal reason for the French Armed Forces to send troops to Mali in 2013.
In addition, the Tuaregs of Azawad are far from the only force in the region that can take advantage of instability - we regularly write about the rampant activity of various terrorist groups in our digests on the Sahel.
At the moment, as Prince Cherkassky reports , taking into account all the logistical difficulties that the Russian Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry have organized , the Wagner units remaining in the territory will have to act on their own and be limited to local reserves from Mali and Burkina Faso.
One way or another, after the tour of the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to the countries where the Wagner PMC is present, the Russian Defense Ministry also needs to mobilize some of the resources to support the government of Mali, otherwise we risk receiving another reputational blow in the African direction.
Is Russia Returning to Africa?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 14, 2023
Vladimir Shubin
Given that the adoption of the decisions of the Second Russia-Africa Summit was accompanied by the development of a mechanism for their implementation, and in light of the high professional level of the leaders and employees of the Russian Foreign Ministry who were called upon to coordinate it, there is every reason to believe that these decisions will be implemented, and that Russia’s cooperation with African countries in many areas will yield new prospects.
“Russia is returning to Africa” — this phrase is usually used by those who talk about our country’s activities on this continent. But this phrase is incorrect: Russia, the heir of the Soviet Union, never left Africa; for example, although several Russian embassies and consulates were closed in the early 1990s, more than 30 Russian diplomatic missions continued to operate in African countries. However, things were worse in terms of economic and humanitarian ties: almost all trade missions and most cultural centres were closed.
The abandonment of unilateral orientation towards the West in Russian foreign policy is usually attributed to the early 2000s. But signs of it appeared as early as 1996, when Evgeny Primakov took the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, and this return became obvious after his legendary “U-turn over the Atlantic”, when he ordered his plane to return to Moscow after the beginning of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Then, in 2007, Vladimir Putin gave his famous speech at the Munich conference, where he stated that “for the modern world, the unipolar model is not only unacceptable, but also completely impossible.”
Almost simultaneously, in the early 21st century, the “pivot to the East” began to emerge in Russia’s foreign policy strategy. While sometimes it is seen as intensification of relations with the Afro-Asian world as a whole, it primarily meant cooperation with Asian countries, especially China. Only much later did an understanding arise of the need to intensify relations with the countries of Africa; not only Northern Africa, which Russia previously did not ignore, but also sub-Saharan Africa. Even the term “Pivot to the South” was coined, although it was not very common.
A concrete expression of this understanding was the statement Vladimir Putin made in Johannesburg during the BRICS summit in 2018 on holding the Russia-Africa summit. This summit meeting, held in Sochi in October 2019, as well as the Economic Forum that was part of it, were undoubtedly successful. But the implementation of the plans was largely hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, which began literally two or three months after the meeting in Sochi. This was followed by a sharp deterioration in international diplomacy, caused by the unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West against Russia in the wake of Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. Developments in the African countries themselves had an impact, too; for example, the list of cities where the second Russian-African summit could take place included Addis Ababa, but an armed conflict broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray province.
As a result of all of this, the second summit took place not in Africa, as planned, but in St. Petersburg, and not three years after Sochi, but on July 27-28, 2023. Justifiably, the forum addressed not only economic issues, but also humanitarian ones.
The recent developments convincingly showed the importance of all-round good relations with Africa for Russia. Suffice to say, not a single African country imposed sanctions against Russia, and despite pressure and threats from the West, 48 countries were represented at the second summit, including 27 at the level of presidents or the second-highest ranking leader. The attendance figures for the Summit and the Economic and Humanitarian Forum are quite impressive: about 5,000 participants and media officials attended, including more than 1,850 representatives of official delegations. There were 457 speakers and 161 concluded agreements.
At the same time, the Media Forum, the Congress of University Rectors, sessions of the Supreme Audit Institutions of Russia and African countries, sessions of the Creative Business Forum and the Healthy Society Forum were also held. Before the summit, on July 25, a conference of the Valdai Discussion Club was held, titled “Russia and African Countries: Established Traditions of Interaction and Prospects for Cooperation in a New World”. However, in order for the thoughts and proposals expressed at such conferences to become available to those summits and forums in the future, it is advisable to hold them not the day before, but several weeks earlier.
On July 28, 2023, the main Declaration of the Second Russia-Africa Summit was adopted, as well as three declarations on important issues of international development: on preventing an arms race in outer space; on cooperation in the field of ensuring international information security, and on strengthening cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
The preamble to the main declaration of the Summit states that it is based “on historically established and time-tested friendly ties between the Russian Federation and African states, mutual respect and trust, and traditions of joint struggle for the eradication of colonialism and the establishment of independence of African states.” In this context, it is appropriate to quote the words of Vladimir Putin, who, answering a question from journalists after the summit, said: “At some point in Soviet times, I remember this well, in our society (author’s note: more precisely, in part of society) there was an opinion that we were spending money in vain. Well, why are we spending money on Africa? Where is this Africa? We have many problems of our own. And now, when I communicate with our friends from Africa, I think with gratitude about those people who pursued such a friendly policy in Africa. They created a powerful foundation of strength, friendly relations with African countries, which… I don’t know if they themselves were counting on such a result or not (author’s note: I can’t speak for all my comrades, but those with whom I worked to strengthen ties between the Soviet Union and African countries for three decades, were confident). And this, of course, was done then, and our attempts to work in Africa today are being made in the interests, first of all, of Russia.”
Another provision in the preamble deserves special attention: opposition to aggressive nationalism, neo-Nazism and neo-fascism, Afrophobia, Russophobia, and all forms of racism.
This declaration further contains 74 points suggesting the development of cooperation in various fields: political and legal, trade and economic, environmental and climate protection, scientific and technological, humanitarian, cultural, sports, youth and information cooperation and cooperation in the field of education and health care. It is fundamentally important, however, that it not only outlines specific proposals for cooperation in these areas, but also develops a partnership mechanism.
The Russia-Africa Partnership Forum was named the system-forming element of multilateral Russian-African cooperation that implements the decisions of the summit. In addition to the existing formats of dialogue with the current, previous and future chairs of the African Union, it is planned to hold annual political consultations between the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation and the Chair of the African Union Commission, as well as between the ministers of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation, African states and African Union Commission.
Moreover, the creation of a permanent Russian-African dialogue mechanism at the highest level is being initiated, which will operate within the framework of the Strategy for the Development of Multilateral Partnerships of the African Union, to coordinate efforts and solve problems in various areas. Unfortunately, the declaration does not indicate a time frame for the formation of such a mechanism.
Along with the aforementioned declaration, the Action Plan of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum for 2023–2026 was published on the same day, expanding and complementing its provisions. This Plan defines in detail (and maybe too much detail — the Plan has 181 points!) the priorities and measures aimed at realising the potential of the Russian-African partnership in areas of mutual interest. Again, as when adopting the summit declarations, its participants did not limit themselves to listing them, but also determined the mechanism for implementing the Plan.
It is indicated that the Plan is carried out by relevant ministries, departments, organisations and structures, while its progress is considered within the framework of the existing (author’s note: and those to be created) mechanisms of the Russia-Africa dialogue partnership. At the same time, separate bilateral and multilateral roadmaps, programmes and projects are being developed and implemented; the implementation of the provisions of the Action Plan will be coordinated by the secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
Given that the adoption of the decisions of the Second Summit was accompanied by the development of a mechanism for their implementation, and in light of the high professional level of the leaders and employees of the Russian Foreign Ministry who were called upon to coordinate it, there is every reason to believe that these decisions will be implemented, and that Russia’s cooperation with African countries in many areas will yield new prospects.
Libya: As the Magnitude of the Disaster Becomes Clear, Fatality Estimates Reach 20,000
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 14, 2023
Rescuers are burying victims in “three mass graves” due to a lack of time and space, a local emergency worker reported
The death toll in the eastern Libyan port city of Derna following catastrophic flash flooding could reach 20,000, the local mayor told TV outlet Al Arabiya on Wednesday.
Video: Moment deadly flood hit Libyan city, killing thousands
Abdulmenam al-Ghaithi said he believes between 18,000 and 20,000 people may have died, given the extent of the destruction caused by floods in a number of districts. The city’s population prior to the disaster was around 125,000.
Video: Storm Daniel causes deadly floods in eastern Libya
On Tuesday, authorities from the divided country’s eastern government estimated that at least 5,300 people had already died, with an estimated 10,000 missing. The fierce Mediterranean storm collapsed two dams on Sunday and swept entire neighborhoods into the sea.
Video: Thousands dead as floods batter Libya
Hichem Abu Chkiouat, the minister of civil aviation in the administration that runs eastern Libya, told Reuters on Wednesday that more than 5,300 had been confirmed dead so far, adding that the number was likely to double.
“[The] sea is constantly dumping dozens of bodies,” Chkiouat told Reuters on Wednesday.
“I am not exaggerating when I say that 25% of the city has disappeared. Many, many buildings have collapsed,” he said.
Spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, Lieutenant Tarek al-Kharraz, told the AFP news agency that 3,190 people had already been buried. At least 400 of those killed were foreigners, mostly from Sudan and Egypt.
Video: Libya storm death toll rises to 8,000
Rescuers are burying the victims in “three mass graves” because of a lack of time and space to bury them individually, said Osama Ali, a spokesman for Libya’s Ambulance and Emergency Center, according to a Financial Times report.
Teams from Egypt, Türkey, and Qatar have arrived in the North African nation to participate in ongoing search-and-rescue operations.
Since Muammar Gaddafi’s assassination in 2011, Libya has been divided between two competing authorities, with the internationally recognized Government of National Unity based in the western city of Tripoli and the parallel administration in the east, where Derna is located.
In a statement on Wednesday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk urged the political factions to “act collectively in ensuring access to relief.”
The UN World Food Program announced the delivery of its first shipment of food aid to Libya, where it already assists more than 52,000 people, including internally displaced people, returnees, and migrants in urban areas.
On Tuesday, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said a fund of $10 million had been set aside to assist those impacted by floods.
As death toll in Libya skyrockets, many charge NATO’s 2011 overthrow of government with responsibility
The crumbling infrastructure destroyed during the recent cyclone is a result of the illegal destruction of a sovereign state, some say
September 14, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch
According to the mayor of Derna, at least 20% of the city has been destroyed.
Latest reports on the devastating floods in Libya confirm 11,300 deaths, with 10,100 still reported missing following the cyclone that hit the city of Derna, destroying two dams. Victims are being buried in mass graves as many lose hope of finding still-missing loved ones. Rescue and relief efforts have been impeded by the flooding, which has cut off the most affected areas.
According to the mayor of Derna, at least 20% of the city has been destroyed. The nearby coastal towns of Bayda, al-Marj, Tobruk, and Taknis have also been affected. At least 20,000 people have been displaced.
Many are pointing to the crumbling infrastructure in the country as a source of blame. However, some have criticized Western media coverage of the flooding for omitting the Western role in the destruction of Libyan state structures in 2011, ultimately leading to crumbling infrastructure. “It would be helpful if [the BBC] told the truth about what really happened to Libya,” wrote European Parliament member Mick Wallace on Twitter. “This country was illegally destroyed by NATO in 2011 and the entire region is still suffering from the impact. Sadly those responsible have not been held to account.”
On September 12, US President Joe Biden sent his condolences to the Libyan people. The Barack Obama administration spearheaded the NATO push to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, resulting in the utter destruction of Libya and the creation of, what some deem a “modern-day slave state”. “We join the Libyan people in grieving the loss of too many lives cut short, and send our hope to all those missing loved ones,” Biden wrote on Twitter.
“The US will overthrow your [government], completely destroy your infrastructure, leave your country in a state of violence and instability—then when the consequences come back around 10+ years later, absolve itself of responsibility and only offer thoughts and prayers,” wrote Liberation News editor Amanda Yee.
Libya has been experiencing a political crisis ever since the toppling of Gaddafi’s administration and NATO invasion in 2011. Whilst the UN Support Mission in Libya had promised that through its dialogue efforts elections would be held in December 2021, they have been postponed since then with no clear resolution in sight. The country has been plagued by violence as there are two rival governments backed by opposing militias and military establishments vying for power in the nation.
Abahlali baseMjondolo, a South African social movement of shack dwellers, expressed solidarity with the Libyan people, as well as the Moroccan people who have fallen victim to a devastating earthquake. “In all African countries the rich continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. The poor and working class are the ones that build these cities but are left to die like flies,” Abahlali baseMjondolo stated. “The life of the poor does not count at all in a government that is only interested in profit maximization, whether via capitalist means or political and government corruption. We are angry when the poor and working class perish in the manner in which the people in Morocco and Libya have been killed by the earthquake and the flood.”
Sudan’s South Darfur: At Least 40 Killed In Airstrikes
At least 40 more people were killed on Wednesday in Nyala. Three days ago some 47 were killed in a Khartoum market. Sep. 14, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@matnashed
Published 14 September 2023
According to official data, the Al-Wohda health center in Nyala received "a large number" of trauma patients, some of whom were already dead when rushed there while some others died after arrival.
On Wednesday, at least 40 civilians were killed in Nyala, the capital city of southwestern Sudan's South Darfur State, in airstrikes on a popular market and civilian neighborhoods, according to eyewitnesses and medical sources.
"Warplanes launched intensive strikes targeting residential areas, including the Al-Sad Al-Ali, Al-Riyadh, and Texas neighborhoods" earlier in the day, an eyewitness said in an official report.
"An air strike also targeted the popular Al-Malaja market in Nyala," the eyewitness said.
The eyewitness said about 40 civilians were killed in the airstrikes and that the number of fatalities could further increase.
According to official data, the Al-Wohda health center in Nyala received "a large number" of trauma patients, some of whom were already dead when rushed there while some others died after arrival.
Also on Wednesday, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) issued a statement accusing the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) of targetting civilians in air raids in the state capital, killing 40 people and injuring hundreds.
The RSF further said that the search is still continuing for bodies under the rubble.
Sudan has been witnessing deadly clashes between the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum and other areas since April 15, resulting in at least 3,000 deaths and more than 6,000 injuries, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry.
France to Withdraw Troops From Niger by Year End: Macron
The sign reads, "France get out of my country." | Photo: X/ @XtreemNetwork
Published 24 September 2023
"We are ending our military cooperation with the de facto authorities of Niger," the French president said.
Speaking in a televised interview on Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would withdraw its troops deployed in Niger by the end of 2023.
He said that the 1,500 French soldiers deployed in Niger to fight against terrorism in the Sahel region would return in an orderly manner by the end of the year.
"We are ending our military cooperation with the de facto authorities of Niger because they no longer want to fight against terrorism," Macron said, adding that France would consult with the military junta to make the withdrawal "done peacefully."
"We will continue to support the African continent in the fight against terrorism, but we only do so if it is at the request of democratically elected powers and regional authorities," he said.
The text reads, "Faced with the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali alliance, France must withdraw its troops from Niger. It will probably deploy them to vassal countries to try to destabilize liberated countries using, for example, the fight against terrorists, as the United States does against ISIS in Syria."
The French president also confirmed that the French ambassador to Niger would return shortly to France.
The military junta in Niger had demanded the departure of the French ambassador after the coup, but France refused. The junta then ordered the expulsion of the French ambassador at the end of August.
Relations between Niger and France took a cliff-like drop after the coup in Niger. France has suspended visa deliveries in Niger and evacuated its citizens, while Niger has closed its airspace for all French-registered aircraft.
France must accept the new reality
September 25, 15:32
The President of Burkina Faso, against the backdrop of Macron’s capitulation in Niger (Macron, having failed to organize an intervention against Niger, yesterday agreed to withdraw troops and recall the ambassador from Niger, as demanded by the new authorities) called on France to accept the new reality and build relations with African countries on an equal basis, refusing from colonial habits.
France is already being told in plain text that its neocolonial empire in Africa has come to an end. This is actually a new stage in the decolonization of Africa, which began back in the 50s and 60s through the efforts of the USSR, paused in the 90s until the 20s, and continued, including through the efforts of Russia, in the 20s.
At the same time, the United States and China clearly show that they are not at all against the destruction of the French neocolonial empire, although all the main players have different goals in Africa. But situational interest creates a bizarre situation where everyone benefits from Macron’s next failure.
It is worth noting that Macron’s current activity in Armenia is an attempt to take revenge on Russia for humiliation in Africa, where, thanks, among other things, to Russia, France lost control over the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon.
Macron wants to get even by tearing Armenia out of Russia’s sphere of influence, so he supports Pashinyan in every possible way. The Armenians here are simply expendable for Macron. Macron will not fight for them against Aliyev and Erdogan. The price of these attempts by Macron for Armenia will be a little predictable.
PS. On other African matters.
1. The Il-76 that crashed in Mali belonged to the Mali military. Probably was hit by a MANPADS.
2. France is now actively funding separatists from Azawad to provoke the division of Mali. We can expect an intensification of hostilities in the north of the country.
3. In the CAR, the country's president confirmed that his country will continue active political and military-technical cooperation with the Russian Federation.
4. In the remaining countries under French control, there is now a wave of suspicion against the military, who could potentially carry out new military coups following the example of their neighbors. French intelligence has intensified its work on personalities. Afraid of the next dominoes falling.
5. The United States is actively putting pressure on the Guinean authorities to officially abandon plans to build a Chinese naval base on the Atlantic coast. China did not abandon these plans.
Amnesty International Pushes Regime Change in Eritrea with Dubious, Unverifiable Report
Amnesty’s new report accusing Eritrea’s government of gruesome war crimes relies heavily on anonymous testimony, grainy satellite images, and zero field investigation. It is the latest salvo in the West’s campaign to topple the country’s independent government.
Eritrea is a small country with a geostrategically significant coast on the Red Sea. Fiercely independent, it is one of only two African nations that refuse to collaborate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command. Committed to an incremental, self-reliant development strategy, it has chosen not to saddle itself with IMF or World Bank debt. It was also the only African nation to vote against the March 2, 2022 UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw unconditionally.
Not surprisingly, Eritrea is constantly under attack by the Western human rights industrial complex that serves the interests of NATO states. On September 4, one of the organizations at the forefront of this soft power network, Amnesty International, published a report claiming that Eritrean troops were guilty of rape, sexual slavery, and extrajudicial execution in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray Region near the end of the two-year Tigray War and thereafter.
That war began on November 3, 2020, when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a longtime US ally, attacked an Ethiopian national army base in the Tigray Region, then fired on Eritrea, which responded by entering the war on the side of Ethiopia. Together Ethiopia and Eritrea had effectively defeated the TPLF by November 2022.
However, Mike Hammer, US Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa, swept into Tigray’s capital on a US Air Force jet and flew TPLF leadership off to peace talks in Pretoria, South Africa. There, Hammer made sure that the TPLF would be allowed to survive as the regional authority in Tigray, placing them firmly in control at the time Amnesty researched its report.
The report’s headline threatens, “Today or tomorrow, they [Eritrea’s leadership] should be brought before justice.” While exempting the US-backed TPLF leadership from scrutiny, Amnesty demands that Eritreans be tried before an international tribunal. Indictments in international courts lead to international warrants and arrests, or set the stage for regime change war, as was seen with the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was murdered by jihadist bandits armed by the West during the height of NATO’s bombing campaign in 2011.
Back in 1990, Amnesty International published a lengthy report based on the claims of a Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah, who told US Congress that Iraqi troops had stormed into hospitals in her hometown, yanked babies from their incubators, thrown the babies on the floor, then stolen the incubators. Amnesty was forced to retract its report when Nayirah was revealed to be the niece of Kuwait’s ambassador to the US, who had hired an army of public relations firms to craft her testimony, which turned out to be a complete fabrication. But by then, the damage had been done: Then President George H.W. Bush cited Amnesty’s report repeatedly during a nationally televised address to justify his initiation of the first Gulf War.
Because Amnesty’s new report on Eritrea, a target of US empire, is based entirely on the testimonies of anonymous people and satellite images taken from Google Earth, it is impossible to assess their credibility. What is clear is that Amnesty relies on tabloid-style techniques to paper over the organization’s failure to conduct any field investigation at a time when travel to the region was unhindered.
Telephone calls to anonymous witnesses
The Amnesty report was based on 49 telephone interviews with anonymous witnesses and some grainy satellite photos generated by Google Earth. Though Ethiopian Airlines flights from Addis Ababa to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, had resumed more than five months earlier, on December 28, 2022, Amnesty declined to send a single field researcher to the area.
The report’s executive summary leads with a large font, boldfaced quote attributed to “37-year-old Bezawit, woman who was held captive by the EDF in her house for three months:”
“They told me, ‘Whether you shout or not, no one is going to come and rescue you.’ And then they raped me for around three months since then. They were taking turns on me, just like a doorkeeper.”
A large boldface, all-caps section titled “RAPE AGAINST WOMEN IN KOKOB TSIBAH” is followed by another boldface section called, “SEXUAL SLAVERY INSIDE EDF’S MILITARY CAMP.” Once again, Amnesty relies on a boldfaced, large font, indented quote from “a mother of three who was kept in EDF camp for nearly three months.” She declared, “They [EDF soldiers] took turns on me, for the entire three months”.
This claim is followed by many more such testimonies of gang rape, all boldfaced for effect and indented to draw the reader’s eye.
Ensuing, subheaded sections on “SEXUAL SLAVERY AND RAPE IN RESIDENTIAL HOUSES,” “GANG RAPE,” “IMPACTS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE,” contain more boldfaced, indented quotations, all footnoted with attribution to anonymous witnesses and the dates they were interviewed by phone.
Ensuing sections introduced with the largest, all caps boldface type are “EXTRAJUDICIAL EXECUTIONS OF CIVILIANS” and “PILLAGE OF CIVILIAN PROPERTIES.” Like the others they include one shocking boldfaced, indented quote after another, all footnoted, again, with attribution to anonymous sources identified as survivors, victims, witnesses, residents, social workers, health workers, medical experts, government officials.
Multiple satellite photos are also offered as evidence of Eritrea’s monstrous treatment of Tigrayans. The photos arrive with the reassurance that they have been examined by Amnesty’s “Evidence Lab,” yet they consist of nothing more than grainy, vaguely geographic images marked up with dots, circles, squares, rectangles, and arrows to indicate locations that further the report’s narrative.
None of the photos or testimonies contained in Amnesty’s report on Eritrea are independently verifiable. Readers are therefore expected to accept their veracity based upon the moral authority of the human rights industry’s leading light.
Unverifiable Amnesty satellite images intended to reinforce the charge that Eritrea committed extrajudicial executions.
Amnesty ignores critical questions
Why did Amnesty investigators neglect to fly its staff to Tigray to speak to witnesses in person? The organization said it conducted telephone interviews between May 13 and July 15, five to seven months after flight service had been resumed.
Amnesty staff might not have been welcomed by customs in Addis Ababa if they identified as such, but it is hard to believe that investigators could not have entered Tigray one way or another during the past eight months. When I flew into Addis at the end of March 2022, I simply identified as a journalist and no one stopped or even questioned me. When I traveled from one airport to another inside the country, no one asked for anything but my identification card.
Most serious investigators would be intrepid enough to risk a denial of visa, and Ethiopia would have nothing to gain by jailing anyone flashing Amnesty credentials.
It is even harder to believe that Amnesty investigators researching crimes allegedly committed by the Eritrean Defense Forces would not have been welcomed with open arms by the TPLF, who were firmly back in power in Tigray Region thanks to the US diplomatic intervention. Throughout the war, the TPLF had cried “Tigray genocide!” and demanded help from the “international community,” and they still have not given up their grievances, most of all their grievances against Eritrea.
Stranger still, Amnesty had, on August 18, published a demand that independent investigators and media be admitted to Ethiopia’s Amhara Region, where the national government declared a state of emergency because government troops are engaged in a conflict with the ethnic Amhara Fano militia. Why make telephone calls to a region you could fly into and then demand access to a region where you could not?
Why did all of Amnesty’s interviews have to be conducted anonymously? It’s understandable that rape victims might not want to provide their identities, even if they are now safe within TPLF-controlled territory, but more difficult to comprehend why witnesses to extrajudicial execution would fear being identified.
Doctors and social and humanitarian workers were also quoted anonymously. Why would they too be afraid to go on record from within TPLF-controlled territory?
Should Amnesty not have noted the possibility that any or all of these anonymous witnesses could have been coached by the TPLF? Shouldn’t they have noted that a report based on all but wholly anonymous telephone testimony might beggar belief? Finally, what were Amnesty’s satellite images supposed to prove? They were no more than dots, circles, squares, rectangles and arrows pointing to this and that spot on a blurry, vaguely geographic background.
On September 10, I submitted these questions to the Amnesty e-address for inquiries on the report. I then called the UK telephone number on the report three times, leaving detailed messages requesting an answer.
At the time of publication, I have yet to receive any reply.
Distinct bias toward TPLF narratives
Amnesty’s report demonstrates a distinct deference towards TPLF narratives, just as Western press and officialdom did throughout the war. On the historic significance of the city of Axum in Tigray Region, Amnesty cites the highly partisan, Tigrayan publication Omna Tigray, which reads:
“Since November 2020—and following the invasion, occupation, destruction, and siege of Tigray—the city that was once a symbol for Ethiopia’s independence has become victim to the violence of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s genocidal war.”
With regard to the two-year civil war, Amnesty falsely declares that it began not with the TPLF’s attack on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, but with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s response:
“The armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, which later extended into neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions, began on 4 November 2020 when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a ‘law enforcement operation’ against TPLF-led security forces in the Tigray region, following an attack on the Ethiopian National Defense Force’s Northern Command based there.”
Was the Prime Minister supposed to avert a war by responding passively to an armed attack on a national army base? By that logic, he should have held his troops back when the TPLF marched on Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
“Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong”
Danish journalist Rasmus Sonderris first traveled to Ethiopia in 2004 and has since spent seven of the last 18 years living there. This September, Sonderris published “Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong,” a free e-book, in which he painstakingly recounts every unverified allegation of genocide, rape, extrajudicial execution, and starvation that Western press, officialdom, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International launched at Ethiopia and Eritrea throughout the two-year Tigray War. The veteran reporter pointed to the collaborative effort of legacy Western press and Western governments as the source of a massive disinformation campaign that has shaken his liberal worldview to its foundation.
Sonderris questions Amnesty’s evidence-gathering methods on what came to be known as the Axum Massacre, for which Ethiopian and Eritrean forces were blamed:
“So how did Amnesty gather this information? With the war still raging, there was no question of traveling to Axum. Instead, eleven days were spent talking to “41 witnesses and survivors of the massacre,” who could not be named “given security concerns.” Testimonies were either delivered face-to-face in a refugee camp of Tigrayans in Sudan, or by means of “numerous phone interviews with witnesses in Axum.” Crucially, it says nothing about how these 41 persons were identified or by whom, which obviously raises suspicion that they were selected and coached by the TPLF.”
Sonderris says that while he does not know for certain what happened in Axum, determining the truth “calls for hard-nosed investigators on the ground.”
While Amnesty might not have been able to travel to Axum while the war was still raging, there is no such justification for its latest report, which was published eight months after flights to Mekelle had resumed and the TPLF regained political and military control of the Tigray Region.
With regard to the charge of mass rape, Sonderris writes:
“Rape is even more taxing on the human heart than murder. We feel both empathy with the horrified victim and revulsion that a mind could be so sick as to obtain sexual gratification, or whatever it is, from such a misdeed. So when a woman accuses a man of rape, we do not jump to the defense of the accused, but listen to the accuser. This is how it should always be.
. . .
“When it comes to sexual violence in a war scenario, however, lying does not require a crazy or vindictive woman, but merely a cold political calculation. And rather than one person shouldering the burden of deceit, a propaganda department can be at hand to reward and organize it.”
The inflammatory, dubiously-sourced allegations contained in Amnesty’s report on Eritrea bring to mind former US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice’s tales of Viagra use by Libyan troops accused of every international crime during the run-up to NATO’s destruction of Libya in the name of stopping genocide. Rice’s accusations were eventually revealed as pure fiction: a fabricated story spun out by the Libyan opposition, and fed to the West through the Al Jazeera Network of the Qatari monarchy, which was funding the Islamist rebels. But by the time the lie was exposed, it was too late, as NATO bombing was well underway.
Though the West did not attack Eritrea and Ethiopia directly, it relied on the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front as a proxy force as it attempted to dislodge their independent governments. And it helped this sectarian army launch a global propaganda campaign, painting it disingenuously as the target of a genocide, even after it initiated the conflict.
The manufacturing of #TigrayGenocide
Within 24 hours of the TPLF’s November 3, 2020 attack on Ethiopia’s Northern Command base, the hashtag #TigrayGenocide appeared on Twitter, and Tigrayans quickly attained favored victim status from the West.
Throughout the war, Western press and officialdom focused almost exclusively on Tigrayan suffering while Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch branded their plight as ethnic cleansing.
When the Associated Press reported on Samantha Power’s trip to the region, it nudged readers with the headline, “US genocide expert to press Ethiopia on Tigray aid blockade.” The Washington Post joined in with an opinion piece entitled, “Why the U.S. should call the famine and violence in Tigray a genocide.” A parade of articles echoed the inflammatory narrative, including from the putatively left-wing Nation Magazine. Democracy Now produced a series of similarly slanted reports alleging genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the use of rape as a weapon in Tigray, relying heavily on CNN reporter Nima Elbagir.
(The Sudanese-born Elbagir relentlessly pushed the narrative of genocide perpetrated by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, and in September 2022 won an Emmy Award for her documentary “Ethiopia: Hallmarks of a Genocide.” She is reportedly married to the current British ambassador to Iraq, Mark Bryson-Richardson).
When the TPLF invaded Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar Regions, Western press generally looked the other way, giving Amhara and Afari victims only occasional mention.
From April to June 2022, I traveled through Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar Regions and saw immense suffering in many overcrowded IDP camps, where deeply traumatized Amharas and Afaris told me that the TPLF had murdered their family members and taken all they had until they fled. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated that there were over 5.1 million IDPs in Ethiopia in 2021, the highest annual figure ever recorded for a single country at that time.
Western Media Glorifies TPLF Mob Violence Against Eritrean Festivals
While ignoring the TPLF’s crimes, including its initiation of the conflict and attempt to seize power by force in Addis Ababa, Amnesty’s report portrays Eritrea’s military as a collection of bestial, irrational monsters.
The report therefore reads like a companion to President Joe Biden’s September 9 renewal of Executive Order 14046, the Declaration of a National Emergency with Respect to Ethiopia, which alleges massive human rights abuses by Ethiopia and Eritrea, and provides justification for ongoing US sanctions on both countries.
Of these, the harshest sanctions, such as exclusion from the SWIFT system for conducting international financial transactions, are reserved for Eritrea. These unilateral measures not only violate international law; they punish the entire Eritrean population, whose annual per capita income is $650. Oddly, Amnesty International has nothing to say about these human rights violations.
NATO Destroyed Libya in 2011; Storm Daniel Came to Sweep Up the Remains: The Thirty-Eighth Newsletter
SEPTEMBER 21, 2023
Shefa Salem al-Baraesi (Libya), Drown on Dry Land, 2019.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the meeting, al-Trabelsi warned about the poor condition of the dams. As he wrote on Facebook that same day, over the past decade his beloved city has been ‘exposed to whipping and bombing, and then it was enclosed by a wall that had no door, leaving it shrouded in fear and depression’. Then, Storm Daniel picked up off the Mediterranean coast, dragged itself into Libya, and broke the dams. CCTV camera footage in the city’s Maghar neighbourhood showed the rapid advance of the floodwaters, powerful enough to destroy buildings and crush lives. A reported 70% of infrastructure and 95% of educational institutions have been damaged in the flood-affected areas. As of Wednesday 20 September, an estimated 4,000 to 11,000 people have died in the flood – among them the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi, whose warnings over the years went unheeded – and another 10,000 are missing.
Hisham Chkiouat, the aviation minister of Libya’s Government of National Stability (based in Sirte), visited Derna in the wake of the flood and told the BBC, ‘I was shocked by what I saw. It’s like a tsunami. A massive neighbourhood has been destroyed. There is a large number of victims, which is increasing each hour’. The Mediterranean Sea ate up this ancient city with roots in the Hellenistic period (326 BCE to 30 BCE). Hussein Swaydan, head of Derna’s Roads and Bridges Authority, said that the total area with ‘severe damage’ amounts to three million square metres. ‘The situation in this city’, he said, ‘is more than catastrophic’. Dr Margaret Harris of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the flood was of ‘epic proportions’. ‘There’s not been a storm like this in the region in living memory’, she said, ‘so it’s a great shock’.
Howls of anguish across Libya morphed into anger at the devastation, which are now developing into demands for an investigation. But who will conduct this investigation: the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, headed by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and officially recognised by the United Nations (UN), or the Government of National Stability, headed by Prime Minister Osama Hamada in Sirte? These two rival governments – which have been at war with each other for many years – have paralysed the politics of the country, whose state institutions were fatally damaged by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombardment in 2011.
Soad Abdel Rassoul (Egypt), My Last Meal, 2019.
The divided state and its damaged institutions have been unable to properly provide for Libya’s population of nearly seven million in the oil-rich but now totally devastated country. Before the recent tragedy, the UN was already providing humanitarian aid for at least 300,000 Libyans, but, as a consequence of the floods, they estimate that at least 884,000 more people will require assistance. This number is certain to rise to at least 1.8 million. The WHO’s Dr Harris reports that some hospitals have been ‘wiped out’ and that vital medical supplies, including trauma kits and body bags, are needed. ‘The humanitarian needs are huge and much more beyond the abilities of the Libyan Red Crescent, and even beyond the abilities of the Government’, said Tamar Ramadan, head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies delegation in Libya.
The emphasis on the state’s limitations is not to be minimised. Similarly, the World Meteorological Organisation’s Secretary-General Petteri Taalas pointed out that although there was an unprecedented level of rainfall (414.1 mm in 24 hours, as recorded by one station), the collapse of state institutions contributed to the catastrophe. Taalas observed that Libya’s National Meteorological Centre has ‘major gaps in its observing systems. Its IT systems are not functioning well and there are chronic staff shortages. The National Meteorological Centre is trying to function, but its ability to do so is limited. The entire chain of disaster management and governance is disrupted’. Furthermore, he said, ‘[t]he fragmentation of the country’s disaster management and disaster response mechanisms, as well as deteriorating infrastructure, exacerbated the enormity of the challenges. The political situation is a driver of risk’.
Faiza Ramadan (Libya), The Meeting, 2011.
Abdel Moneim al-Arfi, a member of the Libyan Parliament (in the eastern section), joined his fellow lawmakers to call for an investigation into the causes of the disaster. In his statement, al-Arfi pointed to underlying problems with the post-2011 Libyan political class. In 2010, the year before the NATO war, the Libyan government had allocated money towards restoring the Wadi Derna dams (both built between 1973 and 1977). This project was supposed to be completed by a Turkish company, but the company left the country during the war. The project was never completed, and the money allocated for it vanished. According to al-Arfi, in 2020 engineers recommended that the dams be restored since they were no longer able to manage normal rainfall, but these recommendations were shelved. Money continued to disappear, and the work was simply not carried out.
Impunity has defined Libya since the overthrow of the regime led by Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942–2011). In February–March 2011, newspapers from Gulf Arab states began to claim that the Libyan government’s forces were committing genocide against the people of Libya. The United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions: resolution 1970 (February 2011) to condemn the violence and establish an arms embargo on the country and resolution 1973 (March 2011) to allow member states to act ‘under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter’, which would enable armed forces to establish a ceasefire and find a solution to the crisis. Led by France and the United States, NATO prevented an African Union delegation from following up on these resolutions and holding peace talks with all the parties in Libya. Western countries also ignored the meeting with five African heads of state in Addis Ababa in March 2011 where al-Gaddafi agreed to the ceasefire, a proposal he repeated during an African Union delegation to Tripoli in April. This was an unnecessary war that Western and Gulf Arab states used to wreak vengeance upon al-Gaddafi. The ghastly conflict turned Libya, which was ranked 53rd out of 169 countries on the 2010 Human Development Index (the highest ranking on the African continent), into a country marked by poor indicators of human development that is now significantly lower on any such list.
Tewa Barnosa (Libya), War Love, 2016.
Instead of allowing an African Union-led peace plan to take place, NATO began a bombardment of 9,600 strikes on Libyan targets, with special emphasis on state institutions. Later, when the UN asked NATO to account for the damage it had done, NATO’s legal advisor Peter Olson wrote that there was no need for an investigation, since ‘NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya’. There was no interest in the wilful destruction of crucial Libyan state infrastructure, which has never been rebuilt and whose absence is key to understanding the carnage in Derna.
NATO’s destruction of Libya set in motion a chain of events: the collapse of the Libyan state; the civil war, which continues to this day; the dispersal of Islamic radicals across northern Africa and into the Sahel region, whose decade-long destabilisation has resulted in a series of coups from Burkina Faso to Niger. This has subsequently created new migration routes toward Europe and led to the deaths of migrants in both the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea as well as an unprecedented scale of human trafficking operations in the region. Add to this list of dangers not only the deaths in Derna, and certainly the deaths from Storm Daniel, but also casualties of a war from which the Libyan people have never recovered.
Najla Shawkat Fitouri (Libya), Sea Wounded, 2021.
Just before the flood in Libya, an earthquake struck neighbouring Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, wiping out villages such as Tenzirt and killing about 3,000 people. ‘I won’t help the earthquake’, wrote the Moroccan poet Ahmad Barakat (1960–1994); ‘I will always carry in my mouth the dust that destroyed the world’. It is as if tragedy decided to take titanic steps along the southern rim of the Mediterranean Sea last week.
A tragic mood settled deep within the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi. On 10 September, before being swept away by the flood waves, he wrote, ‘[w]e have only one another in this difficult situation. Let’s stand together until we drown’. But that mood was intercut with other feelings: frustration with the ‘twin Libyan fabric’, in his words, with one government in Tripoli and the other in Sirte; the divided populace; and the political detritus of an ongoing war over the broken body of the Libyan state. ‘Who said that Libya is not one?’, Al-Trabelsi lamented. Writing as the waters rose, Al-Trabelsi left behind a poem that is being read by refugees from his city and Libyans across the country, reminding them that the tragedy is not everything, that the goodness of people who come to each other’s aid is the ‘promise of help’, the hope of the future.
The rain
Exposes the drenched streets,
the cheating contractor,
and the failed state.
It washes everything,
bird wings
and cats’ fur.
Reminds the poor
of their fragile roofs
and ragged clothes.
It awakens the valleys,
shakes off their yawning dust
and dry crusts.
The rain
a sign of goodness,
a promise of help,
an alarm bell.
“We Will Not Stand Idly By:” Mali Warns Against Repeat of NATO’s Libyan War in Niger
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 27, 2023
Peoples Dispatch
Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop speaks at the UN General Assembly. Photo: UN Photo
At the UN General Assembly, Mali and Burkina Faso reiterated their rejection of a military intervention against Niger, recalling the devastating 2011 NATO-led war on Libya and its role in fueling violence in the Sahel
France’s ambassador to Niger, Sylvain Itté, left Niamey early on September 27, three days after Paris announced that it would also withdraw its 1,500 troops from the West African country by the end of the year.
Niger has joined its regional neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso, in expelling French troops from its soil. The three countries have since forged a pact for collective defense and mutual cooperation, known as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), amid rising attacks by armed groups in the region.
The AES was formed just days before the 78th session of the United National General Assembly.
Niger’s envoy was not granted the necessary credentials to attend the meeting. A spokesperson for the military leaders condemned the move stating, “With the complicity of France and two-French speaking heads of ECOWAS, the secretary general of the United Nations went astray in the exercise of his mission by obstructing the full participation of Niger in the work of the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly.”
The meeting nevertheless saw strong statements by Mali and Burkina Faso regarding the situation in Niger.
“As you will recall, in 2011, despite the firm opposition and warnings of African leaders, the UN Security Council unfortunately decided to authorize a NATO military intervention in Libya, whose consequences have permanently destabilized this fraternal country as well as the entire region,” Abdoulaye Diop, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Mali, told the plenary.
This war “is the root of the spread of terrorism and violent extremism in the Sahel region… And so, in the name of the victims from 2011 to today, the tens of thousands of deaths, the millions of displaced people and refugees, we demand justice, we demand reparation. But, above all that, we demand that the international community assumes it’s responsibility and learns the full lessons from this hazardous military intervention”
“It is crucial to avoid repeating in Niger the mistakes made in Libya,” Diop said, reiterating Mali’s rejection of an ECOWAS-led military intervention and its broader impact. “We will not stand idly by,” he declared.
This was also emphasized by Burkina Faso’s Minister of State, Bassolma Bazié, who called upon the people in the region and across Africa to mobilize “in brotherhood and solidarity in order to prevent the imperialists from setting fire to Niger like the case of Libya.”
Diop, in his address, also denounced the interference of “certain powers who continue to facilitate the criminal activities of terrorist armed groups” in the region. In August 2022, Mali had approached the UN Security Council accusing France of violating its airspace and providing arms to terrorist groups.
Diop echoed the allegations made by Niger in August, when it had accused France of releasing captured “terrorist elements” in the tri-border area shared by the AES members.
Paris’ actions in the Sahel also received sharp criticism in the French National Assembly on September 26. “With [the] coups in Niger and Gabon this summer, your neocolonial and imperialist policy in Africa has experienced one of the greatest setbacks. The fault of a policy geared to our economic interests, from uranium to oil,” said Jean-Paul Lecoq, a deputy from the French Communist Party (PCF).
“In the Sahel, you asked the military to do humanitarian work. You’ve asked the humanitarians to play politics, and the diplomats to act as a sounding board for the Elysee Palace and French multinationals… [The African people] want to achieve their second independence, that of economic and financial sovereignty. We must listen to them and close the French military bases in Africa, and do away with the CFA franc.”
Meanwhile, Diop told the UNGA, “We denounce and reject the double standards that are exercised by certain powers in certain regional organizations, and even by certain international organizations, including the UN… Some of these organizations are used beyond any legal framework, they are being used as weapons against countries and populations.”
“[They] are therefore being transformed into organizations that perpetuate the colonialist and hegemonic order,” he added.
The Malian official also denounced sanctions and other coercive measures imposed on his own country and on Niger. ECOWAS has imposed sweeping restrictions on Niamey since the July 26 coup, including border closures and the freezing of financial transactions.
“These organizations are founded on solidarity and fraternity, and should not be used to punish one’s own brothers, one’s own people, prohibiting them from obtaining food and medications,” he added.
Earlier in his address, the minister had also noted that part of France’s “hostile acts” were its actions to delay and prevent the approval of Mali’s requests for financing at the sub-regional, regional, and international levels.
Mali and Burkina Faso also called for an overhaul of the existing international order.
Affirming Mali’s commitment to multilateralism, Diop called for the need for changes in existing economic, financial, and political global governance mechanisms to ensure fair and inclusive participation. He also welcomed the African Union’s membership of the G20 as well as the formation of the BRICS alliance, adding that the bloc’s New Development Bank offered an alternative tailored to the development needs of the Global South.
Kambale Musavuli Discusses Rising Violence and the Presence of Foreign Forces in the DRC
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on SEPTEMBER 27, 2023
For peace in the Congo, US and UK must hold their allies accountable
Kambale Musavuli talks about the rising anger against the presence of foreign forces in the Congo and how for a sustainable political solution, the US and the UK must hold their allies Rwanda and Uganda to account
Analyst Kambale Musavuli talks about the latest developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo where anger is mounting against the presence of foreign forces. He talks about the recent repression of those protesting the presence of UN forces and explains that the country needs a political situation. This calls for the US and UK to hold to account their allies Rwanda and Uganda who are backing rebel groups in the Congo.
Kambale also talks about the recent actions of DRC President Felix Tshisekedi, the distance between his words and deeds, and his close collaboration with Israel.
Congolese forces killed 56 people in the DRC city of Goma during a protest against the presence of UN and East African Community (EAC) security forces in the region. The eastern provinces of the country have been under a state of siege amid a resurgence of attacks by the Rwanda-backed M23. Kambale Musavuli of the Center for Research on the Congo explains the current situation in the DRC.
Zambia's Minister of Mines, Paul Kabuswe, praised NFCA for transforming the Chambishi mine, closed for 13 years, into a vibrant and focused mining enterprise through the introduction of appropriate technology and expertise.
On Monday, China-Zambia joint venture, Non-Ferrous Corporation Africa Mining PLC (NFCA), marked its 25 years of operation in Zambia's Chambishi district in the Copperbelt Province with a promise to increase its investment in its operations.
According to Li Zhanyan, chairman of NFCA, the company plans to invest about 400 million U.S. dollars and increase its annual copper production to 110,000 tonnes per year. The company's current cumulative investment was 1.5 billion dollars, which has resulted in the creation of 5,600 local jobs, Li said. "Our commemoration of NFCA's 25th anniversary is a new starting point for us to accelerate our progress in building a world-class mining company."
Zambia's Minister of Mines Paul Kabuswe commended NFCA for transforming the Chambishi mine, which was once closed for 13 years, into a vibrant and focused mining company through the introduction of appropriate technology and expertise.
Furthermore, he also said that the company's investment was a perfect example of China's efforts to catalyze investments in projects of strategic and critical minerals to build more transparent, predictable, secure and sustainable supply chains that will drive the energy transition and climate-smart economy.
He pledged the government's commitment to continuously implementing various policy and legislative measures aimed at providing an enabling environment for the mining sector to thrive. "As a government, we are headed in the right direction. This is because the prospects for the mining sector are positive, and we are committed to ensuring that the mining sector continues to play its role in national development."
Xi Zhengping, chairman of China Non-ferrous Metal Mining Group, the parent company of NFCA, commended the NFCA for its technological advancement of the mining industry in the southern African nation. He said the company has adhered to the principle of extensive consultations, joint contributions, and shared benefits, and actively participated in Zambia's economic development.
"This has unlocked the value of Zambia's non-ferrous metal mineral resources development and promoted the upgrading of the mining and smelting industries," he said. He noted that the visit by Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema to the company's headquarters during his recent visit to China, which resulted in the signing of relevant projects with the company, has injected new impetus into Zambia's economic and social development.
Tunisia: 106 People Arrested Last 48 Hours, Illegal Immigration
Tunisia is one of the most popular transit points for illegal immigration to Europe. Sep. 27, 2023. | Photo: X/@mwineedgar
Published 27 September 2023 (14 hours 45 minutes ago)
According to Tunisian authorities, over 37,000 irregular migrants were arrested in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Tunisian National Guard said that it arrested 16 organizers of several migrant smuggling networks over the past 48 hours.
According to the Tunisian National Guard Facebook page statement, the arrest operations were carried out in the southeastern province of Sfax and central Tunisia to crack down on illegal immigration.
In addition, official data indicate that 90 other wanted persons, 19 boats and a "significant" sum of money in different currencies were also seized in the operations.
Located in the central Mediterranean, Tunisia is one of the most popular transit points for illegal immigration to Europe.
Although Tunisian authorities have adopted rigorous measures to tackle the problem, the number of illegal immigrants heading to Italy has been on the rise.
Official data shows that Last Wednesday, twenty-three migrants were also arrested for illegal residency in the country.
According to official reports, for many years now, North African countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, and Morocco have witnessed attempts by migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, to reach Europe, hoping for a better life.
According to Tunisian authorities, over 37,000 irregular migrants were arrested in 2022.
NATO Brings Death to Libya a Decade After Its Barbaric Intervention
SEPTEMBER 26, 2023
People walk past the body of a flash flood victim in Derna, eastern Libya, on September 11, 2023. Photo: AFP.
By Eva Bartlett – Sep 24, 2023
If the country’s infrastructure hadn’t been destroyed in the 2011 bombings, the dams may have held
Just over a decade ago, Libya was in the news, with Western leadership celebrating the murder of Muammar Gaddafi, following a months-long NATO bombing campaign, all in the name of protecting the Libyan people. Now, the destroyed North-African country is back in the news after a devastating hurricane and flooding.
Hurricane Daniel hit northeastern Libya on September 10. Subsequent extreme flooding has caused the deaths of a reported 3,252 people, according to Libya’s health ministry as of September 17, with the UN reporting that almost three times more may have died. Following the collapse of two dams, the city of Derna bore the brunt of the disaster. Another 40,000 people are reportedly displaced.
Many of the same Western leaders who brought about Libya’s demise are now feigning concern for the people of the country they destroyed in 2011, and where they set the stage for an ensuing decade of chaos. Most notable is Barack Obama, whose foundation is raising money for Libya relief efforts. That’s very benevolent of him – and might not have been necessary if NATO hadn’t destroyed its infrastructure. It was, after all, Obama’s then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who cackled gleefully, “We came, we saw, he died,” of the sodomizing and killing of Gaddafi.
NATO set the stage for Libya’s current crisis
Only Western leadership and corporate media would have the audacity to not only pretend the 2011 bombing campaign never happened, but to blame Libya for the rupture of the dams near Derna.
The Washington Post did just that, stating, “The volatility of recent years meant the country’s separate regimes and their feckless officials have left critical infrastructure in a state of neglect.” This included the dams, which, it wrote, experts warned could soon fail. While it did briefly mention the extended NATO bombing of Libya, the thrust of its article was to absolve NATO nations of responsibility.
More honest reporting in Media Lens pointed out that those dams in 2007 began undergoing maintenance, which was interrupted precisely due to the West’s so-called humanitarian intervention. “These dams were built in the 1970s to protect the local population. A Turkish firm had been contracted in 2007 to maintain the dams. This work stopped after NATO’s 2011 bombing campaign. The Turkish firm left the country, their machinery was stolen and all work on the dams ended.”
The same article highlighted what nearly all Western corporate media obfuscated: That, prior to NATO’s war against Libya, it had been “one of Africa’s most advanced countries for health care and education,” which it ceased to be after NATO destroyed it.
Death-toll estimates for the 2011 Libyan war and NATO intervention vary widely, with some researchers placing it at over 20,000, hundreds of them civilians killed by NATO airstrikes. What’s worse, having deposed (and, indirectly, killed) Gaddafi, the Western powers created a power vacuum and triggered years of infighting that plunged the country into chaos and left key infrastructure – a lot of which was already damaged or destroyed by those same airstrikes – in disrepair and requiring maintenance.
Now, perhaps in an effort to whitewash its crimes against the Libyan people, the US said it will send $11 million in humanitarian assistance to Libya, which, in contrast to the $1.65 billion the US reportedly spent destroying Libya in 2011, is peanuts. Insult upon injury.
Typical propaganda
Canadian lawyer and journalist Dimitri Lascaris pointed out that Canada spent just shy of $350 million “to participate in NATO’s destruction of Libya” and will now spend “a paltry $5 million to aid Libyans in their moment of dire need.”
The hypocrisy of NATO member states is entirely expected and not at all surprising. However, Canadian journalist Yves Engler explained why Western corporate media has largely omitted mention, much less serious emphasis, of NATO’s destruction of Libya.
“To maintain public support for NATO’s proxy war with Russia, it’s important to erase its history of violence. The Canadian media’s refusal to mention NATO’s role in Libya’s instability partly reflects the requirements of Ukraine propaganda.”
Engler noted that Canadian media has done exactly this, whited-out NATO’s role in Libya. Particularly bold-faced is the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) which, Engler wrote, did a ten-minute-long report basically blaming Libya and failing “to even mention NATO’s six-month war, which included Canadian fighter jets, naval vessels, and special forces.”
Engler explains why global media and public figures have written NATO out of current reporting on Libya. “We’ve been bombarded with the claim NATO is a defensive alliance representing no threat to anyone. Repeated endlessly over the past 20 months, media personalities from Andrew Chang to Geoffrey York don’t dare mention NATO’s role in destroying Libya.”
Maintaining the “defensive alliance” myth goes hand in hand with propaganda supporting the proxy war in Ukraine: that Russia’s military operation there was an act of ‘unprovoked aggression’ and that Western powers hadn’t been aiding and abetting Kiev in its war against the people of Donbass in an effort to turn the country into a staging ground against Russia.
In the end, the Wests’ wars are never, ever, about protecting the population in question, much less “bringing democracy” to the countries targeted. Just look at Iraq, Libya, Syria…or Ukraine.
“More than 60 percent of diphtheria cases in Nigeria occur among children aged 1 to 14 years,” said Rownak Khan. | Photo: @UNICEF_Nigeria
Published September 27, 2023 (9 hours 50 minutes ago)
Nigeria has a number of 2.2 million minors who have not received a single dose of the vaccine.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned this Wednesday about the diphtheria outbreak in Nigeria that has caused more than 450 people to die and around 7,000 to be infected, while calling for humanitarian funding.
“A worrying statistic: more than 60 percent of diphtheria cases in Nigeria occur among children aged 1 to 14 years. As a community, we must unite and make a change,” said the entity's representative in the African country, Rownak Khan.
The official said that “the devastating impact of this diphtheria outbreak is a grim reminder of the importance of vaccination,” while urging that minors be vaccinated.
“Together we can safeguard their future,” he said, while noting that Nigeria has 2.2 million minors who have not received a single dose of the vaccine, the second highest number of this type in the world.
The United Nations agency reported that diphtheria is easily transmitted between people.
People who have been in close contact with a confirmed case of diphtheria should report early to the nearest healthcare facility for immediate treatment. Early notification and treatment saves lives, she added.
The head of Communication and Partnership Promotion, Unicef Nigeria, Rajat Madhok, noted that on September 18 he attended “a diphtheria treatment center in Kano and that the rooms were full of young children suffering from a disease that could have been easily prevented if they had been vaccinated. In the last 24 hours, ten unvaccinated children succumbed to this disease here.”
OCTOBER 2, 2023 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR Putin orders regrouping of Wagner for combat missions
Libyan leader Marshal Khalifa Haftar (C) was accorded a ceremonial welcome attended by Russian Defence Minister Gen. Yunus-Bek Yevkurov at a Moscow military airfield, September 26, 2023
In a significant development, the strongman of eastern Libya, Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the supremo of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF), was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.
Haftar “met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in the Russian capital Moscow”, the LAAF announced, without giving details. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the event, adding “The situation in Libya and the region as a whole was discussed”, without elaborating.
Moscow has maintained close relations with Marshal Haftar, who backs the Tobruk administration that rivals the UN-backed government in Tripoli. Haftar’s meeting with Putin was important enough to merit a Kremlin readout — it was the first meeting between the two men since 2019 — but Moscow’s reticence marks a high degree of sensitivity.
However, on Friday, Kremlin issued a readout of Putin meeting with two high-ranking Russian security officials whose names are closely linked to the Wagner — Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Andrei Troshev (who was a participant in Wagner’s combat missions previously.)
During his visit to Moscow, Haftar also held talks with Yevkurov who is known to have been the “point person” for Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, and was a regular visitor to eastern Libya in recent years, most recently on September 17 when he met Haftar in Benghazi.
Haftar’s abortive 2019 assault on Tripoli relied heavily on Wagner fighters but failed to overcome Turkish-backed armed forces. A UN report in 2020 said up to 1,200 Wagner fighters were backing Haftar. Experts say hundreds have since remained active in the east, which is also the oil terminal zone, and in southern Libya, the gateway to the Sahel region, which is turning toward Moscow as provider of security, replacing western powers.
How far Haftar’s Moscow visit is linked to his expected renewed bid to capture Tripoli is a moot point, but, without doubt, it signals Russia’s decision to reassert its influence in Africa despite Prigozhin’s absence and the preoccupations in Ukraine notwithstanding.
The coup in Niger with its pronounced anti-western slant may have rejuvenated Russian interest in Libya, which holds attraction for Moscow in strategic terms. The web of international entanglements in Libya has changed lately and leading protagonists — Turkey as well as key Arab and European powers — are showing signs of retrenchment. For Europe too, anything that stabilises Libya and curbs the migration wave will be deemed a positive development. Thus, Moscow likely senses that it has a relatively free hand.
The big question is whether the US intends to “return” to Libya after its abrupt disengagement in September 2012 following the devastating attack by members of the extremist group Ansar al-Sharia on the US Special Mission in Benghazi in which the American ambassador and three other US citizens lost their lives.
That makes the surprise visit to Benghazi by Gen. Michael Langley, the four-star chief of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) located at Stuttgart, Germany, and his meeting with Hafter virtually on the eve of the latter’s Moscow tour more than coincidental. Possibly, Langley reminded Haftar not to put all his eggs in the Russian basket.
An article in the Intercept magazine recalled last week that Gen. Langley’s visit to Benghazi (September 20-21) was “the latest twist in America’s on-again, off-again relationship” with Haftar, once a favourite of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who, in the late 1980s, joined a US-backed group of dissidents seeking to topple his former boss.
The article says, “After their coup plans fizzled and the rebels wore out their welcome on the African continent, the CIA evacuated Haftar and 350 of his men to the US, where he was granted citizenship and lived in suburban Virginia for the next 20 years.”
Over the years, the US sent mixed signals to Haftar. The CIA at one time trained his fighters as special forces. Langley said after meeting with Haftar, “The United States stands ready to reinforce existing bonds and forge new partnerships with those who champion democracy.” Which is a rather contradictory statement. Don’t be surprised if Haftar briefed the Russian officials on his interaction with the AFRICOM chief.
An AFRICOM press release merely said Langley’s visit aimed “to further cooperation between the United States and Libya.” Langley said afterward, “It was a pleasure meeting with civilian and military leaders throughout Libya.” The backdrop could be that the coup in Niger has motivated Washington to attempt to fill the void left by France.
Now that the much talked-about ECOWAS intervention in Niger is no longer on the agenda — and with Nigeria backing away from any such misadventure — Washington and the coup leaders in Niamey have renewed the US-Niger agreement on combating terrorism.
Thus, Washington recognises the transitional government in Niger and maintains its military presence — while relocating the US contingent from the 101st base in the capital Niamey to the 201st air force base in the city of Agadis, which is the sole drone base in Sahel built at a cost of over $100 million and of pivotal importance.
Washington’s decision to be friends with the new authorities in Niamey upsets France and the EU, but then from the very beginning, the US took a much more cautious and expectant position on the coup in Niger given its prioritisation of counterterrorist operations in the Sahel region.
Looking ahead, the intriguing question is how far these dramatic circumstances would trigger a convergence of interests between the US and Russia. Some American analysts had signalled that a co-habitation with Wagner in post-coup Niger might be possible.
Moscow likely estimates that the US will not seek major influence in Libya at this point given American public sensitivities due to past US failures there — as well as a perceived lack of trust in Libyan authorities — and Biden administration may not oppose Russia’s support for Haftar’s takeover bid in Libya.
Certainly, Putin’s meeting on Friday (the day after he received Haftar) with two key Russian officials associated with Wagner suggests that the Kremlin is speeding up the move to reorganise the militia’s combat missions abroad. Putin repeated that Wagner fighters will be put on par with regular soldiers as regards their salary and other perks and privileges (which have been made very attractive in the past year.)
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) with Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Andrei Troshev, Sept 29, 2023
Putin also said that convicts serving jail sentences who joined Wagner’s combat missions would be eligible for the attractive “social guarantees.” This time around, surely, they will be known differently and organised as “volunteer units” reporting to Yevkurov, himself a hardened veteran in counterterrorist operations in North Caucasus, answerable to the defence ministry’s foreign military intelligence agency (which was originally created under its current form by Josef Stalin in 1942 after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.)
Interestingly, at the Kremlin meeting on Friday, Putin paid fulsome praise to Andrei Troshev and elicited his views “on creating volunteer units which will fulfil various combat missions, including in the zone of the special military operation”.
Putin told Troshev: “You fought in one of such units yourself for over a year. You know what it is like, how to do it, and what issues should be addressed in advance to ensure the best possible and the most successful fulfilment of combat missions.”
It is entirely conceivable that Haftar’s visit underscored the urgency of regrouping Wagner forces for undertaking combat missions in Libya and elsewhere in Sahel in the worsening security situation linked to militant Islamist groups.
“The West’s domination… is coming to an end” says leader of Niger’s Revolutionary Organization for New Democracy
Peoples Dispatch spoke with Sani Adamou to discuss the recent coups which he claims are expressions of widespread discontent
October 04, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch
Protesters with sign that reads: Down with France, long live the CNSP (National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland).
On July 26th 2023, Mohamed Bazoum, the President of Niger, was ousted in a coup d’état. This coup came after similar coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea over the past three years. The coup in Niger was met with popular enthusiasm as the new military junta denounced the French military presence in Niger, a source of deep resentment amongst many in the African nation. The coup was immediately denounced by France, the European Union, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), who threatened military intervention unless former president Bazoum was restored to power.
Niger has long been important in the expression of French power in the region, housing a French military base with 1,500 troops. After taking power, the military junta in Niger demanded that France remove all troops from Niger and abandon their military base. This was met with great enthusiasm by the people of Niger and sparked months of mass mobilizations and protests against the French military presence. Finally, on September 24, French president Emmanuel Macron announced that they will begin the withdrawal of all 1,500 troops stationed in Niger along with the French Ambassador to Niger.
Peoples Dispatch spoke with Sani Adamou, Secretary General of Niger’s Revolutionary Organization for New Democracy, to discuss the root causes of the recent coups and the future of democracy in Niger.
Sani Adamou: There are many reasons for coups d’état in Africa. But recently, what we are experiencing, especially in French-speaking countries, can be attributed to the exhaustion of the neo-colonial model. You know, it’s been over 60 years since our states became independent. But to date, the development of our countries has not been strong. Attempts were made in the early days of independence, but without success. And then, around the 1990s, it was said to be a new era of democratization, liberal democracy.
It has been said that democratization, liberal democracy, could be the solution to our problems. 30 years later, it’s the same story of failure. Democratization in Africa has not produced the expected results. Our institutions are hollow; the people are not participating. The people remain miserable. Our institutions are not representative and the coups d’état are expressions of this.
In truth, instead of coups d’état, we needed to have popular revolutions. However, there is a low level of organization amongst the people and coups d’état instead take their place. What’s happening in the Sahel should have led to insurrection, but the low level of political consciousness made this difficult. This is why we instead had coups d’état follow one another.
So coups d’état express a deep discontent in Africa. The fact is that our experiments in democratization have failed. Sixty years after independence, we are even more dependent on foreign powers today than we were yesterday. So we have a problem of sovereignty and a problem of democratization. And it’s this problem that has led to coups d’état.
Coups d’état are not the solution, but they express widespread discontent amongst the people of Africa.
PD: Why did these coups become so popular?
SA: Coups d’état have become popular because the governments have done nothing for the people. And so, as far as the people are concerned, they’re fed up. And when these regimes are overthrown, the people are relieved, because they hope for something better.
They don’t agree with the way they’ve been governed all these years. Because people have become poorer. More so today than after independence. So what is the point of policies in which the people suffer and gain nothing? So when regimes like that are overthrown, the people applaud.
Governments that don’t represent the people are no good. We have to stop. We have to find a solution. That’s why the people agree with coups d’état.
PD: Are there alternative ways for the people to reject the dominant regimes other than coups d’état?
SA: Yes, in truth, there are two means. I told you that coups d’état happen because our institutions don’t work. Democratic institutions don’t work. They’re hollow. In a democracy, it’s the people who are supposed to decide. However, the people do not participate in political decision-making. The people do not participate in policy-making. The people don’t even know how these policies are defined. The people are excluded.
In a democracy, the people are supposed to be the arbiters. Normally democratic institutions should make this possible, but these institutions don’t work. They only work for a handful of elites. They are corrupt. They have no credibility. And so they’re hollow. It’s as if there aren’t any democratic institutions at all.
The Assembly doesn’t play its role because it’s in the pay of the president. The judiciary is controlled by the president. There are no institutions that function independently. So how are the people going to complain? Who’s going to take charge of anything? It doesn’t work.
The solution is for all the people to rise up and make a revolution. Which is very difficult when there’s no revolutionary organization capable of doing it. The other alternative is for coups d’état to happen when democratic institutions don’t function as they should. There is no other choice.
PD: What do you think of the posture of the African Union and ECOWAS?
SA: Clearly, ECOWAS is not playing its part. ECOWAS says it wants to prevent coups d’état. But it doesn’t want to examine the reasons behind coups. This means that ECOWAS is not concerned with how our democratic institutions function. It only reacts when heads of state are overthrown.
But what happens every day? Every day, there are coups d’état in Africa. Because every day, a president violates the Constitution. Those in power do as they please. Justice is not independent. The laws are not respected, because the Constitution is not respected. This is the equivalent of a coup d’état. ECOWAS defends heads of state; it’s a union of heads of state. They are not the representatives of the peoples of West Africa.
ECOWAS doesn’t understand. Nigeriens have had enough. They want to take charge of their own destiny. They want to assert their sovereignty by demanding the departure of foreign military bases. Nigeriens want to use our resources, like uranium and oil, to improve people’s living conditions. Because until now, these resources have not been used for the betterment of the people of Niger.
Niger is one of the poorest countries on the planet. So the people of Niger are on their feet today. They want to assert their sovereignty by calling off the military bases, demanding their departure and seeking to control mining resources and initiate a new development model. So, if ECOWAS doesn’t understand, well, that’s too bad.
Because in a democracy, it’s the people who are sovereign. Come and organize a referendum in Niger and you’ll see what the people want. Do the people of Niger want Bazoum back? No. Only France wants Bazoum back, because Bazoum has only worked in France’s interests. And ECOWAS works for the interests of France, not for the people of Africa.
So if we want peace to prevail in Niger and Africa, we have to respect the people’s choice. Firstly, the illegitimate and illegal sanctions must be rejected. Secondly, there can be no military intervention. The military threats are not really coming from ECOWAS, it’s France that’s behind it.
If we want to help the people of Niger, we have to stop the escalation. To say that we need military intervention in Niger is out of the question. If we want to help the people of Niger, we have to stop these unjust sanctions. And the people of Niger, as they are accustomed to doing, will organize themselves, consult each other and find the most appropriate ways out of the current crisis.
This is how we can get out of the crisis. Any other solution seems to us to be alien to the concerns of the people of Niger, alien to the interests of the people of Africa, and favorable to that of French imperialism, which is the cause of the crisis.
PD: What is the current situation in Niger and what are your recommendations for peace?
SA: The current situation in Niger is that since the coup d’état, the people of Niger have come out en masse to say that they are relieved. To say that they’ve had enough and that they want their sovereignty. Of course, ECOWAS can’t understand this. Because ECOWAS is concerned with the survival of heads of state, whereas the people of Niger want their sovereignty. They supported the coup because Bazoum came to power illegally.
It’s a hold-up. The election of Bazoum was the first time that weapons have been used to snatch ballot boxes. Weapons were used to snatch ballot boxes in Niger. ECOWAS didn’t notice. Eight people were killed, including members of the electoral commissions. ECOWAS didn’t notice. But in fact, ECOWAS doesn’t notice because it doesn’t want to notice. Because most of the leaders of ECOWAS came to power this way.
Buying votes is forbidden by the Constitution. Buying consciences is not democratic.
PD: What do you think of the Cold War imposed on China by the United States?
SA: The United States doesn’t want to accept that it has dominated the world for centuries, but no longer has the means to continue that domination. The whole American strategy has been to prevent the emergence of a second superpower in the world. What they call containment.
Well, it’s not working. American hegemony today is being challenged. American hegemony is being challenged because capitalism, the capitalist system itself, is in deep crisis. It no longer has the strength to continue. So, as the Americans are wont to do, when they’re in trouble, they go to war.
They want to impose war on everyone. They want to impose a climate of war on China, they’re maneuvering in the China Sea, they’re making all kinds of provocations that show they’re not ready to accept that they’re losing, and that the center of gravity of the world economy is shifting to Asia. It’s no longer the West, and only the West.
The West’s domination of the world is coming to an end, which the United States refuses to accept and is why the world today is under so many threats from the United States. However, their threats cannot stop the course of history. The United States is wasting its time. Many powers are going to emerge, and we’re in favor of a multipolar world.
We don’t want a world dominated by one power. We want a world where everyone can assert themselves. Where Africa can be a pole too. So we want a multipolar world, free from the domination of one superpower. A much more united world. And this contradicts the interests of American imperialism, the interests of NATO, and the interests of many other forces. And so, for us, it’s a rearguard action that the United States is waging.
The future belongs to the liberation of peoples, to a multipolar world and a world of solidarity.
Biden Administration Provides $80 Million Worth of High Performance Helicopters to Right-Wing Government in Zambia While It Carries Out Campaign of Repression Against Country’s Socialist Party
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - October 5, 2023
AFRICOM chief, General Michael Langley, and Major General Oscar Nyoni, Deputy Commander of the Zambia Air Force with Zambian Air Force pilots. [Source: military.africa]
Socialist Party Leader Fred M’membe Has Been Arrested Numerous Times by Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema. He Received the Helicopters As a Reward for Allowing U.S. Corporations to Plunder Zambia’s Copper Wealth
The Biden administration has gifted Zambia with four state-of-the-art high-performance Bell helicopters, valued at approximately $80 million (1.5 billion kwacha), alongside a comprehensive three-year training program for staff.
The announcement was made by United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) Commander General Michael Langley during an Africa senior leaders conference in which General Langley and Zambian military commanders discussed ways in which they would strengthen the U.S.-Zambian security partnership.
Officially, the new helicopters are supposed to be used in international peacekeeping, disaster relief, and to help avert conflict in neighboring African countries.
However, the helicopters may be used to repress Zambia’s Socialist Party (SP), which has been targeted in a campaign of repression by the ruling United Party for National Development (UPND).
The latter is closely aligned with the United States, enacting economic policies that favor U.S. corporate investors in Zambia’s mining sector.
Zambia is a leading producer of copper, a crucial metal in the transition to a clean energy economy, which is a key electrical conductor and component for solar and wind power plants, electric vehicles and batteries, and energy-efficient buildings. Zambia is also rich in lithium, cobalt and manganese.
Residents go about their daily routine with the pollution caused by the Mopani copper mines in the background. [Source: trendsnafrica.com]
Rising global copper prices have fueled a bonanza of foreign investment in Zambia. At the U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington last December, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced 14 deals worth about $15 billion, far more than what was committed during the U.S.-Africa Summit of 2014.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo at the U.S.-Africa Summit last December. Source: commerce.gov]
The Lusaka Times reported that a U.S.-based company, KoBold Metals, in one of those deals, was investing $150 million in mining exploration and develolpment in the Copperbelt (Kitwe).
The Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals, which owns 80% of the massive Kansanshi copper mine outside Solwezi, is also planning a $1.25 billion expansion. Its shareholders include J.P. Morgan Chase, the L.A.-based Capital Group, and Blackrock, one of the world’s largest asset management firms and a major donor to the Democratic Party.
First Quantum shares jump on refinancing
Processing plant at Kansanshi mine owned by First Quantum Minerals of Vancouver, B.C., in Canada. [Source: mining.com]
Reversing an attempt by his predecessor, Edgar Lungu, to nationalize portions of the mining sector, UNDP leader Hakainde Hichilema gave Zambia’s copper mines a de facto tax holiday after his election in August 2021 by making the mineral royalty tax (MRT) a tax-deductible expense for purposes of computing corporate tax.
President Hakainde Hichilema is the richest man in Zambia, with a net worth of $389 million. [Source: Steve Brown]
Hichilema is a millionaire cattle rancher who profited from corrupt privatization schemes in the 1990s. He was listed in the Paradise Papers, leaked documents exposing politicians that used tax havens, as the owner of AfNat Resources Ltd., which explored for nickel and other metals in Zambia.[1]
In 2020, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)—an off-shoot of the CIA—spent $313,000 in Zambia to finance civil society groups that may have included some of Hichilema’s supporters. Then in 2021, the NED provided $601,025 in grants, including to bloggers supportive of Hichilema and opposed to Edgar Lungu in the 2021 election.
According to Sean Tembo, writing in The Zambian Observer, the effect of Hichilema’s tax holiday is that “the little which the mines used to pay [in taxes] previously has now further been diminished. The President’s argument is that the tax holidays will attract more investment into the mining sector. But what about the Zambian people? When are they going to begin to benefit from their minerals?”
Currently, 60% of Zambia’s 16 million people live below the poverty line and earn less than $1.90 per day. Zambia stands as the fifth hungriest nation in the world after the Central African Republic, Chad, Madagascar and Yemen.
Many kids are undernourished in Zambia despite the country’s great mineral wealth. [Source: themastonline.com]
In 2011, after the Lusaka High Court ordered London-based Vedanta Resources and one of its subsidiaries to pay $1.4 million to residents in Chingola because sulphuric acid and other chemicals spilled into the Kafue River, the judge stated that Zambians “should not be dehumanized by greed and crude capitalism which put profit above human life.”
Pollutants from copper mines flow into Zambia’s Kafue River. [Source: victoriafalls24.com]
Unfortunately, as of this moment, this is precisely what is happening. Leo Mulenga, a 65-year-old Copperbelt resident said in 2015: “We used to grow cabbages, potatoes, tomatoes and bananas but now, there’s no future here—only poverty and suffering for everyone because this land is damaged and spoiled [due to the greed of the mining companies and Wall Street banks that own them].”
Protest against Vedanta Resources for polluting the Kafue River and looting Zambia’s wealth. [Source: theguardian.com]
Campaign of Repression Against the Socialists
As noted, Hichilema’s pro-corporate policies have coincided with a mounting campaign of repression targeting the SP, which has developed a progressive manifesto pledging to reverse Zambia’s slide into privatization and de-industrialization—which has damaged social life.
Scene of poverty in Zambia. [Source: lusakavoice.com]
When the Socialist Party ruled Zambia from 1964 to 1991 under founding father Kenneth Kaunda, the copper mines were nationalized and state revenues were used to develop the country’s economy and to provide social services to the people, including free education and health services and agricultural subsidies.[2] For a brief period Zambia’s economy flourished, with its GDP catching up to that of Portugal.
Kenneth Kaunda: President and founding father of Zambia | The Independent
Kenneth Kaunda, the father of Zambia who was president from 1964 to 1991, nationalized the country’s copper mines. [Source: independent.co.uk]
The current leader of Zambia’s SP, Dr. Fred M’membe, was arrested in late August and charged with inciting political violence in Serenje when members of the SP were attacked by UNPD thugs during a political rally—fitting a precedent of UNPD-instigated violence in other towns.
Fred M’membe in the center. [Source: peoplesdispatch.org]
M’membe was also charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm, though he said that he fired shots into the air to disperse the unruly mob that had attacked SP cadres.
After he was arrested, M’membe said that two other SP leaders from Lusaka Central were arrested for simply arriving at the police station to show support for him.
M’membe said after his arrest that “[Hichilema] is destroying this country with tribalism like we have never seen before, with very high corruption…we are seeing an increasing abuse of police [powers]…Every regime in this country that has attempted to use the police for politics has failed, Hichilema is no exception.”
Members of the SP gather to denounce police actions against president Fred M’membe under the corrupt U.S.-backed Hichilema regime. [Source: peoplesdispatch.org]
Two weeks before his arrest on incitement of violence and gun charges, M’membe had been arrested on libel charges, accused of the “offense of communication of certain information contrary to Zambian law” and “intent to defame the Deputy Inspector General of Police.”
Graphael Musamba, the Inspector General of the Zambian Police, said statements made by M’membe that were “published in some tabloids and various social media platforms” were “inclined at nothing but inciting the peace loving people of Zambia so that they lapse into civil disobedience in order for them to gain scarce political mileage.”
Musamba went on to threaten that “the Zambia Police Service has an obligation to defend the constitution at any cost and that it will do, even if it takes some stern measures such as smashing the rebellion which we know is carefully being instigated by [the] Socialist Party…As a reminder to the Socialist Party, if you check the history of this country, people with frivolous dreams such as yours have been defeated.”
Hakainde Hichilema and Graphael Musamba [Source: lusakatimes.com]
M’membe responded to the Police Inspector General’s comments by writing that “the Zambian people already know the suffering they are facing under Mr. Hichilema’s one-term regime. Let Mr. Hichilema know that the Zambian people don’t need anyone to incite them; they are fully awake to the suffering he has put them through so far….What is likely to incite Zambians is the hunger and untold suffering they are being subjected to as their President continues to work very hard to serve imperialists and transnational corporations. What has caused Zambians to lose faith and confidence in Mr. Hichilema and his far-right UPND government are the gross inequalities and injustices that Mr. Hichilema is reinforcing and then commanding his Inspector General of Police to defend.”
In an article entitled “Hichilema: Zambia’s First Puppet President,” M’membe further denounced Hichilema for aligning Zambia with U.S. foreign policy positions despite the country having a tradition of non-alignment, including by recognizing Morocco’s colonization of Western Sahara and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
Within Zambia, M’membe wrote that, “as an example of how far he is willing to carry out the wishes of the imperialists and their institutions, Mr. Hichilema was commanded by the IMF to phase out subsidies on maize production. Expensive maize production will mean expensive mealie meal—a staple, which is not just food, but sits at the heart of our culture as Zambians. To take mealie meal out of the reach of a Zambian is no different to being ordered to point a gun at their head.”
In another article published on July 29, M’membe denounced the UPND administration’s two years in office as being “disastrous,” marked by the arrest of opponents and “selective justice,” and by the government being a “puppet of Western governments” by allowing an AFRICOM “office” in Lusaka, while backtracking on its promises.
M’membe added that “the problems this regime finds itself with today emanate from its own lies, deception, or simply put, unfulfilled promises and shameless puppetry by a President and regime eager to serve Western and transnational corporation interests at the expense of its own people, many of whom can now only dream of half a meal a day.”
These comments provide a strong rebuke to the neo-liberal economic paradigm advanced by Hichilema and his foreign sponsors intent on plundering Zambia’s mineral wealth. The vast inequality and social misery can only be advanced by ratcheting up state repression—which the shiny new helicopters should help facilitate.
Hichilema’s career has long been supported by the Brenthurst Foundation—funded by the billionaire Oppenheimer family in South Africa—which has holdings in the De Beers and Anglo-American mining conglomerates. ↑
Kaunda was a close friend of Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel, Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fidel Castro, each of whom offered hope to oppressed peoples. The CIA plotted a coup against Kaunda in 1981, identifying his successor, Frederick Chiluba, who privatized Zambia’s copper mines and stole millions of dollars from the state treasury, as a promising future leader around that time. ↑
Kambale Musavuli: Niger, Burkina and Beyond – All Across West Africa a Wave is Growing
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 4, 2023
The West African countries of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali are in rebellion against their former colonial masters, while the imperialists of the Global North try desperately to contain the situation. But the portrayal of these developments as mere “coups” hides the depth of popular anger, particularly against the French? What almost no one else is telling is the story of popular movements and organizations in West Africa who are supporting the military transition governments. Where do they come from? Could this spill over into other African countries? Where does pan-Africanism fit in? Where do Russia and China fit in, if at all? To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Kambale Musavuli, an activist, writer, and analyst with the Center for Research on the Congo.
