As Niger expels U.S. troops, Declassified UK reveals British helicopters operated a taxi service for French forces in the uranium-rich African state, Phil Miller reports.
Silence surrounded the atrocities of Mahamat Deby’s military government, which last year killed at least 128 people during country-wide pro-democracy, anti-French protests, Pavan Kulkarni reports.
African states are one-by-one falling outside the shackles of neocolonialism. They are saying “non” to France’s longtime domination of African financial, political, economic and security affairs.
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.
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.
France and the U.S. have been blindsided by popular support for Niger’s coup, as the trend towards multipolarity emboldens Africans to confront neo-colonial exploitation, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar.