/View.info/ From Nigeria to Senegal: the military adventure can provoke a political tsunami…
The aggravation of the situation in West Africa continues to be one of the “main” plots not only in regional, but also to some extent in world politics. Let us recall that the countries that remained faithful to the pro-Western course and are part of the ECOWAS organization issued an ultimatum to the “National Front for the Defense of the Motherland” in Niger, demanding the immediate restoration of power to former President M. Bazum.
In response, there were mass actions in Niamey in support of the new government. It should be noted that the military that overthrew Bazum did not prevent his followers from holding rallies, but they were few in number compared to the tens of thousands of supporters of General Chiani’s military government, including with flags of Russia and North Korea.
In addition to the clearly weakening positions of the former metropolis in its traditional colonial area, as well as the hesitation of the US State Department, a lot also depends on the most populous country in the region – Nigeria (over 220 million people), which in one way or another is oriented towards your neighbors.
After unsuccessful attempts to get permission from parliament in Abuja to send troops, Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, who chairs ECOWAS this year, said that “diplomacy is the best way to solve the crisis with Niger”, which was highlighted by the president’s representative Ajuri Ngelale, adding that this position “is a consensus among ECOWAS heads of state”.
However, the meeting with Tinubu did not specify whether ECOWAS had refused to intervene in Niger, not revealing details.
Nigeria, one of the largest oil producers in the world, where production is carried out by transnational giants such as Shell, Chevron, Elf, Agip and Texaco, is an extremely complex country from an ethnic and confessional point of view. Hundreds of armed groups with separatist, religious, criminal and terrorist orientations operate on its territory.
In the 1960s, Nigeria claimed certain areas south of the Niger, but neighboring countries, supported by Paris and London, forced the then Lagos to give up its claims, and so far there is no news on the matter.
The civil war between 1967 and 1970 and the attempted secession of the “Republic of Biafra” (the southeastern states of Abia, Imo, Ebonyi, Enugu and Anambra, populated mainly by the Igbo people), in which more than two million people died, is considered one of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa’s post-colonial history.
The movement for the liberation of the lower Niger River (the main oil-producing region with a population of about 40 million people from about 150 ethnic groups) has a long history. One of his goals is to reduce oil production and drive foreign energy companies out of Nigeria. In this way, it is trying to make the government pay attention to the appalling socio-economic and environmental situation in the region.
Any intervention in the internal affairs of its northern neighbor, which is seeking to free itself from its colonial past, will meet with widespread opposition in Nigeria and, at worst, an ethnic and sectarian conflict of unprecedented magnitude.
A significant part of the Nigerian army, which to some extent resembles an armed militia, speaks the Hausa language and is unlikely to fight against its compatriots in Niger.
It is no coincidence that there have been rumors of a plot in the making by the military to topple President Tinubu, which have been somewhat confirmed by the High Command of the Nigerian Army. There, it was claimed that conspiracies existed in various quarters to encourage the army to overthrow the current administration.
However, the press secretary of the Nigerian Ministry of Defense refuted these rumours, assuring that the military is not unhappy with the current government and has no intention of taking any action against it.
Due to the above factors, Nigeria is the most powerful country in West Africa where there are no French military bases. It is also not part of the Paris-controlled area of the West African franc covering most ECOWAS members, including its expelled Mali, Burkina Faso and the now military regime of Niger.
According to some observers, Nigeria has no interest in restoring colonial dictates over Niamey, thereby sabotaging Macron’s attempts to consolidate control over the region in one way or another.
It is also known that in the north, north-east and east of Nigeria, near its borders with Niger, Cameroon and Chad, jihadist, separatist groups, numerous armed gangs, whose existence is a direct result of the efforts of Western imperialists to find cause for interference in the internal affairs of colonies, as was the case in Mali and elsewhere.
Therefore, an invasion of Niger could provoke a great activity of these destructive forces, and this scenario could easily translate into the expansion of the operational capabilities of the French military bases in Chad and Niger (while they still de facto exist) in the neighboring regions of Nigeria with the prospect of declaring the next “Biafra”.
So far in Abuja, they say they are introducing “new financial sanctions against people and entities linked to the latest coup in Niger”, while President Tinubu has “intensified consultations on this issue on the international scene as well as in Nigeria, including with the governors of the states bordering Niger”.
ECOWAS neighbors (with the exception of Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, whose membership of the organization has been suspended) still announce sanctions against Niger, including closing borders, banning commercial flights, suspending financial operations, freezing assets, freezing exports of electricity and foreign trade transit.
Other members of the organization include the Portuguese-speaking Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, the English-speaking Ghana, Gambia and Sierra Leone, the fully pro-American Liberia.
If the latter two countries, as well as the “French” Ivory Coast, support the possible intervention in Niger, then Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde have recently sought to react to the events in this country more adequately – apparently they are also not completely interested in strengthening the position of the French in this part of Africa.
According to available information, similar trends have recently been seen in the positions of Ghana and The Gambia. It should be noted here that in 1982 Senegal, where a large French military base is still located (near the capital Dakar) and geographically surrounding The Gambia, forced it into a confederation, and only in 1989, under the pressure of threats to a military invasion by its neighbors, Gambia’s independence was restored.
However, in 2017, Senegal’s troops again tried to “expropriate” Gambia, which failed due to the consistent position of ECOWAS, Great Britain and France, and its neighbors Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea- Bissau, Cape Verde.
It can be assumed that all these countries assess the possible consequences of an intervention in Niger in the interests of Paris, which contributes to a more balanced position, regardless of the external political orientation and the current conjuncture.
Separately, it is necessary to mention the position of Chad, which is not a member of ECOWAS, but has a strong army. France strongly expects Chad to intervene in support of the Bazoum regime, which has already been relegated to the background of history.
However, neutrality was maintained in N’Djamena, despite the French side’s apparent hopes for their old allies.
The recent visit to Chad by Niger’s new prime minister, Ali Mahamana Lamine Zeina, suggests some loyalty from his eastern neighbor to the National Front for the Defense of the Motherland.
During the recent meeting “Russia-Africa”, the leader of the transitional government of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traore, spoke about the ambiguous position, to put it mildly, of the leaders of some African countries.
These leaders do not provide support to those who struggle against Western colonialism. It is believed that the situation will change, because engaging in Western geopolitical games is a direct path to disaster. And the evidence of this is not limited to events in Africa, but can be seen all over the world.
According to the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, in Moscow they continue to closely monitor the development of events in the Republic of Niger and “support the mediation efforts of ECOWAS aimed at finding ways out of the crisis that has occurred.
At the same time, according to available information, on August 10, at an emergency summit in Abuja, a decision was taken by the Community to prepare for the deployment of an ECOWAS reserve force that could carry out an armed invasion of Niger with the aim of freeing M. Bazuma.
Niger’s military has declared its readiness to resist any foreign interference. In addition, they announced the creation of a transitional government, which includes representatives of civil society…
The military path to settle the crisis in Niger could lead to prolonged opposition in this African country, as well as to a sharp destabilization of the situation in the Sahara-Sahel region as a whole.”
In the event that destructive forces prevail, such a prospect can become completely real and lead to consequences comparable to the little-known in Russia and the world “Second Congo War”, which affected nine countries and claimed the lives of at least five million people.
(1) The Soviet Union traditionally supported the territorial integrity of Nigeria and the independence of The Gambia, which was also confirmed during the visits of the Gambian leader to Moscow in 1973, 1975 and 1981.
In the second half of the 1960s, the USSR and the GDR provided military technical assistance to the central government of Nigeria for the liquidation of the separatist “Republic of Biafra”, which emerged not without the participation of the West.
Translation: SM
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