[News] In Africa They Say, ‘France, Get Out!’
Anti-Imperialist News
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Thu May 9 11:06:22 EDT 2024
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*In Africa They Say, ‘France, Get Out!’: The Nineteenth Newsletter (2024)*
Liby Ousmane Lougué (Burkina Faso), /Papa Roger/, 2020.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
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On 2 October 1958, Guinea declared its independence from France.
Guinea’s President Ahmed Sékou Touré clashed against France’s President
Charles De Gaulle, who tried to strong arm Touré into abandoning the
project for independence. Touré said of De Gaulle’s threats, ‘Guinea
prefers poverty in freedom to riches in slavery’. In 1960, the French
government launched a covert operation called Operation Persil to
undermine Guinea and overthrow Touré. The operation was named after a
laundry detergent, used to wash away dirt. This provides a clear window
into the French attitude toward Touré’s government. France’s weapons
shipment to opposition groups in Guinea was interdicted in Senegal,
whose President Mamadou Dia complained to the French government. France
would not tolerate African independence, but the people of Africa would
not tolerate French dominion.
That fervour for African sovereignty remains intact. ‘France, get out’
was the slogan then and remains the slogan now, from Senegal to Niger.
To better understand recent developments in this struggle, the rest of
this newsletter features a briefing from No Cold War
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and the West Africa Peoples’ Organisation
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on the manifestation of that sentiment in the Sahel.
Briefing 13: The Sahel Seeks Sovereignty.
The call ‘/La/ /France degage!’ /(‘France, get out!’), against the
ongoing legacy of French colonialism in the region, has long echoed
across West Africa. In recent years, this call has reached a new pitch
of intensity, from the 2018 grassroots movements in Senegal and newly
elected President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s campaign promise to unshackle
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his country from the neocolonial monetary system of the CFA franc to the
popularly supported military coups
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in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger and the ejection of French military
forces from these countries between 2021 and 2023.
The military-led governments of the central Sahelian states (Mali,
Burkina Faso, and Niger) have taken steps to wrestle their sovereignty
from Western monopolies – such as reviewing mining codes and contracts
and expelling foreign militaries – and to establish new regional
cooperation platforms. On 16 September 2023, the governments of Burkina
Faso, Mali, and Niger signed the Liptako-Gourma Charter
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a mutual defence pact that established the Alliance of Sahel States.
This trilateral partnership is a response to the threats of military
intervention and economic sanctions that have been levied against Niger
by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) following the
July 2023 popular coup that took place in the country.
A few months after reaching this defence cooperation agreement, the
three countries withdrew from the ECOWAS regional bloc. Some political
commentators have claimed
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that these events – combined with the ejection of French military forces
from the region – ‘spell trouble’ for regional social security, economic
development, political stability, and regional integration. What is
behind the tidal wave sweeping through the Sahel, and what does it mean
for the region?
Suncréa (Mali), /Racines /(‘Roots’), 2016.
The Legacy of French Colonialism
Anti-imperialist sentiment has been brewing in the Sahel for years. To
look at the case of Niger, which is emblematic of the wave of resistance
in the region, during the July 2023 coup, the people took to the streets
against the French colonial hangover that has facilitated rampant,
structural corruption and disenfranchised large sectors of the population.
Much of this corruption has taken place in Niger’s mining sector, which
represents one of the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposits. For
instance, in 2014, prior to the coup, then Nigerien President Mahamadou
Issoufou lowered taxes on mining activities that directly benefited
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French monopolies, receiving indirect pay outs in return. Meanwhile, the
French military in Niger operated as the gendarme for mining companies
and against those seeking to migrate to Europe.
Société des Mines de l’Aïr (Somaïr), a purported ‘joint venture’ between
Niger and France in the uranium industry, is yet another example of the
continued French influence in the region and on the continent. While
France’s Atomic Energy Commission and two French companies own
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85% of the company, Niger’s government owns a mere 15%. While close to
half of Niger’s population lives
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below the poverty line and 90%
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lives without electricity, as of 2013 uranium from Niger powers
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one in three lightbulbs in France. It should come as no surprise that,
shortly after the 2023 coup, Nigerien citizens seized the French embassy
and military base in the capital of Niamey. France withdrew its troops
soon after.
Amy Sow (Mauritania), /Énergie durable /(‘Sustainable Energy’), 2015.
Sovereignty, Security, and Terrorism
On 16 March 2024, the Nigerien government revoked a decade-old military
agreement with the United States, just two days after a US delegation
met with local authorities to raise concerns over the nation’s
partnerships with Russia and Iran. In a public statement
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the government of Niger ‘forcefully condemne[d] the condescending
attitude, accompanied by the threat of retaliation, from the head of the
US delegation towards the government and people of Niger’. The statement
added that ‘Niger regrets the intention of the US delegation to deny the
sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and the
types of partnerships that are capable of truly helping them fight
terrorism at a time when the United States of America has unilaterally
decided to suspend all cooperation’. The government also cited the
following as reasons for revoking the agreement with the US: the cost it
has inflicted upon Nigerien taxpayers, the lack of communication around
domestic operations and US military base activities, unauthorised
aircraft movements, and the ineffectiveness of its so-called
counter-terrorism work.
The US has established the single largest foreign military presence on
the African continent, beginning with the 2002 Pan-Sahel Initiative and
followed by the creation of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007,
which set up a significant network of US military bases
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across the Sahel (of which there are nine in Niger alone as well as two
in Mali and one in Burkina Faso). In 2007, US State Department adviser
J. Peter Pham defined
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AFRICOM’s strategic objective to US House of Representatives Committee
on Foreign Affairs as follows:
It is unlikely that any amount of public relations work will fully
quench anti-imperialist concerns that AFRICOM is fundamentally an
attempt to erect a bulwark in Africa against trans-national
terrorism and China’s appetite for Africa’s oil, minerals, and
timber… The proposed structure of AFRICOM, consisting of four or
five relatively small bases with no force deployments, means that
these will be largely invisible even in their host countries and
societies.
In the aftermath of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) war
on Libya led by France and the US, the Sahel region has been embroiled
in conflicts, many of them driven by emerging forms of jihadist armed
activities, piracy, and smuggling. France and the US have used these
conflicts as a pretext to increase their military interventions across
the region. In 2014, France set up the G5 Sahel (a military arrangement
that included Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) and
expanded or opened new military bases in Gao, (Mali), N’Djamena (Chad),
Niamey (Niger), and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). In 2019, the US began
conducting
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drone strikes and aerial surveillance across the Sahel and the Sahara
Desert from its Air Base 201 outside Agadez (Niger) – the largest
construction effort in US Air Force history.
The Global Terrorism Index found
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that the Sahel region was the most impacted by terrorism in 2023,
accounting for nearly half of all terrorism-related deaths and 26% of
terrorist incidents worldwide. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger each ranked
among the top ten countries most impacted by terrorism, a fact often
held up to allege the failure of the new military-led governments.
However, this reality predates the coups of 2021–2023 and instead speaks
to the impact of US and French military intervention. Between 2011 (the
year of NATO’s war on Libya) and 2021 (the year of the first of the
recent wave of Sahelian coups, in Mali), Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger
soared
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from positions 114, 40, and 50, respectively, on the index of countries
most impacted by terrorism to 4, 7, and 8. It is clear that the US and
French ‘war on terrorism’ has done little to improve security in the
region and has in fact had the opposite effect.
Niankoye Lama (Guinea), /Marché de Zali /(‘Zali Market’), 2022.
Seeking New Partners and Paths
The people of the Sahel have grown disillusioned not only with the
West’s military strategies, as seen by the increasing security
cooperation agreements with other countries, but also with Western
economic policies that have yielded little social development. Despite
the region’s abundant energy resources (including Niger’s aforementioned
uranium reserves), the Sahel has some of the world’s lowest levels of
energy generation and access, with at least 51%
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of the population unable to access electricity.
Though the Alliance of Sahel States began as a defence pact, political
autonomy and economic development are a core focus. This includes, for
instance, pursuing joint energy projects and exploring the possibility
of establishing regional civil nuclear power initiatives. Burkina Faso
has already signed agreements with Rosatom, a state-owned Russian
company, to build new power plants while Mali is advancing its
application of atomic energy through the National Nuclear Programme,
overseen by the Malian Radiation Protection Agency.
Ultimately, the Alliance of Sahel States represents an attempt to uphold
the demands of sovereignty and the right to self-determination – an
agenda that the people of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali have poured into
the streets to support.
Ibrahim Chahamata (Niger), /Emity Na-Zahir/ (‘Climate Change’), 2015.
Events in the Sahel are unfolding at a rapid pace, but as the Malian
novelist Aïcha Fofana wrote in /La fourmilière/ (‘The Anthill’) in 2006,
modernisation is tempered by the rigidities and wisdom of the old ways.
‘We have always been generous’, the griot in /La fourmilière /says to a
young man who has many ideas about transforming society. Patience is
necessary. Change is coming. But it is coming at its own pace.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
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Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research · Shadipur · New Delhi,
NCT 110008 · India
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