Nothing happens by chance in politics. The French don’t understand why French-speaking Africans suddenly reject them. They console themselves by accusing Russia of dark machinations. In reality, they are only reaping the fruits of what they have sown for 12 years. This has nothing to do with what colonialism and Françafrique were. This is exclusively the consequence of making the French army available to US strategy.
The old refrains about colonial exploitation are not convincing. For example, we note that Paris exploits uranium from Niger, not at the market price, but at a ridiculously low one. However, the putschists never raised this argument. They are talking about something completely different. The accusations of Russian manipulation are no more credible. Firstly because Russia does not seem to stand behind the putschists in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger or Gabon, but above all because the evil long predates their arrival. Russia only arrived in Africa after its victory in Syria in 2016, even though the problem dates back to at least 2010, if not 2001.
As always, what makes the situation illegible is forgetting its origins.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States assigned a role in Africa to its vassal, France. It was a matter of maintaining the old order there while waiting for AfriCom to establish itself there and for the Pentagon to be able to extend to the Black Continent the destruction of political institutions that it was already carrying out in the “Broader Middle East”1. Gradually, Republican policies gave way to tribal policies. From one point of view, it was an emancipation from heavy French aid, from another, it was a formidable step backwards.
In 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, probably on the advice of Washington, took the initiative to resolve the Ivorian conflict. While the country was crossed by a tribal conflict, an operation led first by ECOWAS, then by the Kenyan Prime Minister, cousin of Barack Obama2, Raila Odinga, is trying to negotiate the departure of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo. Their problem is not Gbagbo’s authoritarian regime, but the fact that he transformed himself from a submissive CIA agent into a defender of his nation. Paris intervenes militarily after the presidential election to arrest Gbagbo – allegedly to stop a genocide – and replace him with Alassane Ouattara, a long-time friend of the French ruling class. Subsequently, Laurent Gbagbo will be judged by the International Criminal Court which, after an interminable trial, will recognize that he never committed genocide and that, de facto, France was not justified in intervening militarily.
In 2011, President Nicolas Sarkozy, advised by Washington, engaged France in Libya. This time again, it is officially a question of stopping a genocide committed by a dictator against his own people. To make this accusation credible, the CIA, which is behind France, is organizing false testimony before the Human Rights Council in Geneva. In New York, the United Nations Security Council authorizes the great powers to intervene to stop the massacre which does not exist. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev turns a blind eye. The United States President, Barack Obama, wanted AfriCom to finally begin its operations in Africa where he did not reside, its soldiers still being stationed in Germany. But at the last moment, the AfriCom commander refused to fight against Muamar Gaddafi alongside the jihadists who had fought his comrades in Iraq (the US military has still not admitted the double game of the CIA which supports the jihadists against Russia, often to the detriment of Westerners). Barack Obama therefore appealed to NATO, forgetting that he had previously promised not to mobilize it against a country of the South. Still, Muammar Gaddafi was tortured and lynched, while Libya was dismembered. However, the Libyan Arab Jamahariya, which was not a dictatorship at all, but a regime inspired by the French socialists of the XNUMXth century and the Paris Commune, was the only African force aiming to unite Arabs and blacks. Gaddafi wanted to liberate the continent as he had liberated his compatriots from Western colonialism. He was even preparing to pilot, with the director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a currency common to several African states. His fall awakened his enemies. Black people were once again massacred by Arabs, even when they were of Libyan nationality, and reduced to slavery, under the insensitive eyes of the Western victors. Poor African states economically supported by Libya collapsed, first and foremost Mali3. Arab jihadists, whom NATO had placed in power in Tripoli, supported certain Tuaregs against blacks in general. The problem has gradually become widespread throughout Sahelian Africa.
However, unable to learn the lessons of these crimes, French President François Hollande organized a new regime change in Mali. In March 2012, when the mandate of President Amadou Toumani Touré was coming to an end and he was not running for re-election, a group of officers trained in the United States overthrew him, without being able to explain their action. He interrupted the ongoing presidential campaign and appointed Dioncounda Traore, “transitional president.” This sleight of hand was endorsed by ECOWAS… now chaired by Alassane Ouattara. Unsurprisingly, transitional president Dioncounda Traore called on France for help to fight against the jihadists who are attacking him. Paris’ idea was to station troops in Mali to be able to attack Algeria, its real target, from the rear. This is “Operation Serval”. Aware that they were next on the list, Algerian generals harshly repressed a hostage-taking by jihadists at the In Amenas oil site. In doing so, they discouraged France from intervening against their people.
Never mind ! France is reorganizing its system, it is “Operation Barkhane”. The French army is placed at the disposal of its American overlord. Everything is organized by AfriCom, still stationed in Germany. French troops, now supported by members of the European Union (Denmark, Spain, Estonia, United Kingdom, Sweden and Czechia), destroy the targets indicated to them by AfriCom. In this region, formerly French, the French soldiers have good contact with the population while the Americans face a language barrier.
At this point, the first remark is that Operation Barkhane, regardless of its results, is not legitimate. Of course, it is officially a question for Westerners of containing the jihadists, but any Sahelian understands that it is these same Westerners who created the jihadists in the region by destroying Libya. And that’s not all.
Let’s go back. Let us remember that all this began with the Pentagon’s desire to destroy African political structures with AfriCom as it had begun to destroy those of the “Broader Middle East” with CentCom. On May 11, 2022, the US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Straussian Victoria Nuland, brought together in Morocco the 85 states participating in the coalition against Daesh. She announced to them the rest of the program: the jihadists are reforming Daesh in the Sahel. They have weapons, officially intended for Ukraine. Soon the whole region will be nothing but a huge inferno4. In November, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari confirmed the massive influx, into the hands of jihadists in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin, of US weapons initially intended for Ukraine.
It is in the face of this existential risk that soldiers from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger took power to defend their people.
It must be understood that for years, African leaders have complained about France’s support for the jihadists it is supposed to fight. This is not to blame the French military, but the role of its secret services working for the United States.
From the start of Operation Serval, Syrian jihadists complained of having been abandoned by France in favor of their Sahelian counterparts. And President François Hollande had to hold back his troops until the Qatari instructors of the Malian jihadists withdrew. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, discussed it with his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, who responded with a laugh: “It’s our realpolitik!”
A sanctuary of Al-Qaeda military camps has been formed between the towns of Ghat (near the Algerian border) and Sabbah (near Niger) in the Fezzan desert, southern Libya. According to the very serious Canard Enchainé, these jihadist academies were organized by the British and French secret services.
Three years ago, on October 8, 2021, the Malian Prime Minister, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, gave an interview to RIA Novosti5 which has been widely reported and commented on throughout the region, but not in France where no one knows it, except our readers.
According to Yaou Sangaré Bakar, Nigerien Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cooperation and Nigeriens Abroad, who wrote to the Security Council (Ref. S/2023/636), last month, French agents released terrorists who were prisoners. They were grouped in a valley in the village of Fitili (28 km northwest of Yatakala) where a planning meeting was held with the aim of attacking military positions in the three-border area. Terrorist leaders, sixteen in number, were apprehended in three operations, including two in Nigerien territory and one in Malian territory.
Incidentally, Yaou Sangaré Bakar’s letter raises important questions about the role of ECOWAS6 ; questions which are not new and have arisen since the change of the Ivorian regime. This international institution has just taken sanctions against Niger and mobilized troops to restore constitutional order. But the ECOWAS statutes do not authorize it to take these sanctions, any more than the UN charter authorizes it to act militarily against one of its members.
The cases of Guinea and Gabon are a little different. These are not the States of Lake Chad, nor of the Sahel. They are not yet threatened. Their soldiers first rebelled against authoritarian regimes, that of Alpha Condé in Guinea and Ali Bongo in Gabon. Both refused to leave power against the advice of their population. But the putschists from both countries quickly questioned the French military presence. Quite simply because they can predict, without risk of being mistaken, that the French army will defend neither the interests of the Gabonese, nor even those of the French, but only those of Washington.
A war is brewing years in advance. Today the United States is transferring weapons in the shadow of the conflict in Ukraine. Tomorrow, it will be too late.
In this context, it is surprising to say the least to hear French President Emmanuel Macron preaching the defense of constitutional order. On the one hand because all these States are in immediate danger and on the other hand because by placing the French army at the service of the ambitions of the US leaders, it itself betrayed its own Constitution.
source: Voltaire Network