Elections in the country during the dynasty’s decades in power were followed by protests, then security force crackdowns and ultimately silence, writes Douglas Yates. Until Wednesday, when the Bongo regime was finally overthrown.
Military officers in Gabon on Wednesday overthrew and arrested the country’s president, whose family ruled since 1967. It is the fourth coup in a former French African colony in the past three years as pressure mounts on Paris.
The military government in Niamey has ordered French troops to leave by Sept. 2. With Macron refusing to withdraw and backing possible ECOWAS military intervention, tensions are rising.
Alexander Mercouris of The Duran discusses the implications for the future resulting from the BRICS summit last week in South Africa.
The BRICS summit in Johannesburg that ended Thursday took on six new members but in other ways failed to live up to its billing, as explained in this episode of George Galloway’s MOATS.
Most countries of the Sahel were under French rule for almost a century before they emerged from direct colonialism in 1960, only to slip into neocolonial structures persisting today, writes Vijay Prashad.
Niger faces a “messy” situation rather than a revolutionary situation. Perhaps, certain Bonapartist elements are discernible — for which, of course, there is plenty of blame to go around, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar.
The entire BRICS project is centred around the question of whether countries at the nether end of the neo-colonial system can break free through mutual trade and cooperation, writes Vijay Prashad.
The animosities toward the French abroad among Nigeriens have been widely reported. But history is only part of the story, and not the largest part. Those who led the coup in Niger are facing forward, not backwards.
Rather than send troops in response to the coup, France and the U.S. seem to favor a “Rwanda” type solution applied in Mozambique, writes Vijay Prashad. Only this time ECOWAS would apply force.
