West Africa

Africa

Podcast: flashpoint Niger

In Episode 186 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the coup d’etat in Niger, which now threatens to plunge West Africa into regional war—with potential for escalation involving the Great Powers. Lines are drawn, with the Western-backed ECOWAS demanding the junta cede power, and Russian-backed Mali and Burkina Faso backing the junta up. Pro-junta demonstrators in Niger’s capital, Niamey, wave the Russian flag—probably to express displeasure at US and French neo-colonialism. The Wagner Group, which already has troops in Mali and Burkina Faso, has expressed its support for the junta, and offered fighters to help stabilize the regime. Elements of the tankie pseudo-left in the West are similarly rallying around the junta. Amid this, leaders of the Tuareg resistance in Niger have returned to arms to resist the new regime, and the country’s mine workers union is also demanding a return to democratic rule. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map: PCL)

Africa

Military coup d’etat consolidated in Niger

Niger’s national broadcaster identified Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani as president of the country’s new military government following a coup that deposed elected President Mohamed Bazoum. The country’s new ruling junta, called the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland, was formed out of Niger’s presidential guard, which carried out the coup. The AU, EU, US and Russia have all condemned the coup as unconstitutional. However, Wagner Group commander Yevgeni Prigozhin lauded the coup as part of “the struggle of the people of Niger [against] their colonizers,” and and offered his fighters’ services to bring order. Pro-coup protesters in Niger have been photographed with Russian flags. (Map: PCL)

Africa

Ghana: cease forced return of Burkinabé refugees

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said it is concerned about reports that hundreds of Burkinabé refugees fleeing to Ghana, including women and children, are being deported. According to UNHCR, more than 17,500 Burkina Faso nationals have fled to neighboring countries, including Niger, Mali and Ghana, since January 2021 as a result of the ongoing internal conflict. Ghana is accused of having forcibly deported more than 500 Burkinabé seeking protection along the border. A video on Twitter showing expelled women and children sitting in a parking lot near the border has been widely circulated. The UNHCR called on Ghana to stop the deportations, saying that they amount to a violation of the non-refoulement principle. (Photo: Leonardo Perez Aranda via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

Fulani pitted against rebels in Cameroon conflict

Amnesty International urged Cameroon’s authorities to investigate human rights violations committed in the country’s conflicted Anglophone regions, the North-West and South-West. According to a new report, armed separatists and the military alike are responsible for killings, torture, rape and destruction of property. In the North-West in particular, long-standing conflicts between Mbororo Fulani herders and sedentary farmers have been fuelling armed violence. As the situation has deteriorated over the past years, militias, mainly composed of Mbororo Fulani and supported or tolerated by the authorities, have committed atrocities against civil populations. The official security forces have responded to this situation with further rights violations. (Photo: Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

Togo extends regional state of emergency

Togo’s National Assembly voted to extend a “state of security emergency” in the northern Savanes region of the country for another year. The measure follows a recent increase in incursions by militant groups along Togo’s northern border. The measure is a further extension of President Faure Gnassingbé’s initial state of emergency decreed in June 2022. The decree is intended to give security forces more “flexibility” in order to combat attacks by militants in the zone. Areas across the border in Burkina Faso are now said to be effectively controlled by jihadist groups. (Map: Togo Department of Health)

Planet Watch

Podcast: against global paramilitarism

In Episode 168 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the suddenly booming global phenomenon of paramilitarism—the official armed forces of a given state or its repressive apparatus seeking an extension in the private sector, citizen militias, or irregular forces. This is a method generally resorted to when state power is in crisis, and contributes to a general militarization of society. Examples from Russia, West Africa, Sudan, Burma, Ecuador, Israel and finally Texas point to a dangerous and ultimately fascistic new model of both imperialism and internal policing and repression. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Contagio Radio)

Africa

Ghana’s northern borderlands militarized

The government of Ghana is rushing hundreds of troops to the northern town of Bawku, where a long-simmering conflict between two ethnic groups over control of the local chieftaincy has exploded into open warfare. The fighting began in December, when members of the Mamprugu people installed a “parallel” chief, refusing to recognize the incumbent from the Kusasi ethnicity. Since then, some 30 local residents have been slain—many civilians killed in ethnically targeted attacks. The town lies just south of the border with violence-torn Burkina Faso, and authorities are concerned that jihadist insurgents will exploit the chaos in the zone to infiltrate into Ghana. Bawku is already swollen with some 6,000 refugees who have fled terror attacks by militants in Burkina Faso. (Photo via Africa Fest GH)

Africa

French forces out of Burkina Faso, into Ivory Coast

France has officially ended its operations in Burkina Faso a month after the ruling junta there terminated a military accord that allowed the former colonial power to fight jihadists. French forces remain in the greater region, however. The move came as French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu visited Côte d’Ivoire, pledging to boost military support as jihadist attacks hit coastal West African states. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Africa

Podcast: West Africa’s forgotten wars

In Episode 161 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the under-reported conflicts in West Africa, where government forces and allied paramilitary groups battle multiple jihadist insurgencies affiliated either with ISIS or al-Qaeda on a franchise model. Horrific massacres have been committed by both sides, but the Western media have only recently started to take note because of the geopolitical angle that has emerged: both Mali and Burkina Faso have cut long-standing security ties with France, the former colonial power, and brought in mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group. In both countries, the pastoralist Fulani people have been stigmatized as “terrorists” and targeted for extra-judicial execution and even massacre—a potentially pre-genocidal situation. But government air-strikes on Fulani communities in Nigeria have received no coverage in the Western media, because of the lack of any geopolitical rivalry there; Nigeria remains firmly in the Anglo-American camp. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Sahara Reporters)

Africa

Ethnically targeted killings in Burkina Faso: report

A human rights group in Burkina Faso reported that 28 people were found shot dead in the town of Nouna, in apparently ethnically targeted killings at the hands of a volunteer militia group. The Collective Against Impunity & Stigmatization of Communities (CISC) said the killings were perpetrated by members of the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP). The VDP allegedly killed 21, including children, in a year-end attack in a part of Nouna inhabited by the minority Fula community. The report stated that the VDP appears to have targeted “resourceful” or “influential” people in the community. The report further found that similar extrajudicial executions were carried out by the VDP in the same community earlier in December. The VDP is a citizen militia formed to help the Burkina Faso military fight jihadist rebels. (Photo of VDP fighters: Henry Wilkins/VOA via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

African intrigues over Wagner Group

Burkina Faso’s ruling military authorities summoned Ghana’s ambassador over accusations that they have hired Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group to help fight jihadists. Speaking alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo said: “Today, Russian mercenaries are on our northern border. Burkina Faso has now entered into an arrangement to go along with Mali in employing the Wagner forces there.” Calling the mercenaries’ presence “distressing,” Akufo-Addo also alleged that Burkina Faso had offered Wagner control of a gold mine as payment. Meanwhile, a Russian national said to be closely linked to the Wagner Group was injured in an apparent assassination attempt in the Central African Republic. Wagner Group’s parent company Concord named French agents as behind the attack. Burkina Faso, Mali and the CAR alike have recently broken long-standing security ties with France, their former colonial ruler—with Russian mercenaries moving in as French soldiers go home. (Photo of CAR army troops wearing the Wagner Group insignia via Corbeau News Centrafrique)

Africa

Qaeda franchise claims deadly assault in Togo

The Group for Support of Islam & Muslims (JNIM by its Arabic rendering), al-Qaeda’s West African franchise, claimed credit for an assault on Togolese forces that left at least 17 soldiers dead near the border with Burkina Faso. Togolese media reported that fighters in large columns of vehicles mounted with heavy machine-guns raided a military outpost at Tiwoli village, in northern Savanes region. This is the second such claim of responsibility for an attack within Togo by JNIM in the last two weeks, and the third this year. The attacks are raising fears of insurgency spreading from conflict-torn Burkina Faso into West Africa’s littoral states. (Map: Togo Department of Health)