[Prefatory Note: The original interview on the coup in Niger with Zahra Mizrafarjouyan of Mehr Agency in Tehran was published on Aug. 14, 2023. A lot has happened since then that affects Niger, and how we understand its relation to that country, to West Africa’s Sahel region, to Africa generally, and to the geopolitical war of position that puts the U.S. rivalry with Russia and China in the foreground. I have taken ‘liberties’ with my interview answers to address this awareness of the broader context]
- What was the destructive colonial role of France in West African countries?
As elsewhere, but perhaps more crudely and more deeply, France dominated the post-colonial experience of West Africa that commenced in 1960, politically controlling and ruthlessly exploiting these countries economically whose populations were impoverished despite being resource rich. France more than other European colonial powers sought to replace the indigenous culture, including its language and cuisine, with what it claimed to be superior, which was of course, French culture. In Africa in particular France also created a set of conditions that made the society incapable of stable and equitable governance after formal independence was gained. As a result, a heavier residue of colonialism remained after independent statehood was achieved than in most other countries. Niger’s impoverishment, with an extreme poverty rate of over 40%, is a textbook case of ‘colonialism after colonialism.’ The differences between pre-independence colonialism and its post-independence sequel should be more than a matter of changing the flags and changing the racial features of the ruler, but even in the best of circumstances it is far less for decades than the exercise of the full right of self-determination for reasons long ago provided by Franz Fanon. The post-independence voluntary acceptance of Western military bases is indicative of the governance deficiencies of the native leadership capabilities when it comes to national security. In the case, of encroaching jihadist movements with their own territorial ambitions that have been encroaching on Sahel countries during the last twelve years. Analogous weaknesses, including capabilities, corruption and cooption, help explain the one-sided agreements on the production and marketing of resources is imprudently entrusted to the good will of the former colonizers.
The role of collaborative and corrupted national elites becomes indispensable to make the system of governance enjoy a semblance of political legitimacy that facilitates imbalanced resource related agreements that deprive the home country of its fair share. In the context of Niger, these foreign, non-African actors build further their case for interventions in such countries as Niger by pointing to the virtue of protecting democratically elected leaders against extra-legal coups of the sort that occurred on July 26th. The hypocrisy of the West is revealed when democratic elections produce a political mandate for radically nationalist leaders as with Chavez in Venezuela, or earlier Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. As with human rights, such enthusiasm for elected leaders is a selective policy instrument entrenching double standard, not a principled commitment to the rule of law, discrediting ideals that deserve more consistent respect if the peace and justice of the peoples of the world are to be served.
Niger, as with the earlier somewhat similar coups in Mali and Burkina Faso suggest, an important difference that distinguishes the two types of colonialism. It is that the post-colonial state, however beholden it remains in relation to its prior colonial master, has a strong sense of nationalist entitlement among non-collaborationist elites that is often shared with the armed forces and influential sectors of the population, and over time leads to a second anti-colonialism, an anti-colonialism after political independence. Such motivations seem present in the Niger coup leadership despite the fact that many of its members, including its apparent leader, General Abdurahman Tchiani, underwent extensive training by the U.S. armed forces, which usually produces compliant military leadership.
Besides personal ambition and a repudiation of ‘puppet’ leaders, the passage of time after independence leads portions of the elites and masses to grasp the connections between exploitation by the former colonial power and the poverty of the country that is giving away its potential prosperity.
2- It seems that France has kept its colonial role in the regional countries even after these countries gained their independence. What are the tactics that Paris uses to keep its influence in these countries?
The colonial era refused to educate and train an indigenous elite capable of running these West African countries without French assistance in the security, technological sophisticated, and economic policy spheres. When independence was granted in 1960 the French negotiated a series of self-serving arrangements that kept its troops in the country and its favorable and highly profitable and predatory relationship to the natural resources of each of the West African countries that had been its former colonies. Internal conditions prevailed in these countries that resulted in a new unspoken realism that I call ‘colonialism after colonialism.’ It is a way of underscoring the point that the structures of control and exploitation have persisted long after independent statehood, yet in more subtle forms, was achieved in the early 1960s, but without the stigma of ‘colonialism.’ As earlier explained, this process is greatly facilitated by the cooption and corruption of local elites that give a nationalist veneer to this reality of ‘stunted decolonization,’ but if the inequities are too gross a new surge of resistance to foreign exploitation begins to form, and will produce some kind of radical nationalist backlash.
3- What is the political, economic and military importance of Niger for France? Do you think that France whether France will be able to return to the African country?
French interests, also reinforced by Western interests, particularly by the U.S., are especially important in Niger. To begin with, as a spillover from the NATO regime-changing intervention in Libya, an alleged jihadist presence in the country became a target in counterterrorist agenda of the Global North and a pretext for the deployment of Western military forces, and the construction and maintenance of expensive military bases. For France in particular, Niger was a major source of uranium for its nuclear power facilities. It also had gold mines and oil reserves, both controlled by foreign corporations made profitable by low labor costs and pricing well below market values. Niger is also seen as strategically important to ensure that African countries keep aligned to and dependent upon the West as part of its multi-dimensional struggle with Russia and China for geopolitical primacy in the world. Africa has evolved into becoming an arena of this unfolding rivalry that has risen to the surface of global awareness in the course of the Ukraine War of the nuclear dangers of confrontations in the Global North, and offers a semi-peripheral seemingly less dangerous terrain to carry on the new cold war.
4- Some African countries are ready to wage war against Niger in fact to the benefit of France despite the fact that they themselves have been suffering from France colonialism. Why?
On the basis of available information, it is difficult to respond convincingly, especially as various African countries have distinct national motivations in such a complex situation and belatedly faced the fact they lacked the capability to ensure their own territorial security much less take part in an intervention of a sister African country. At the same time seems that many African states have grown worried about their own stability, and do not want to create another precedent of a successful West African coup as occurred in Mali, Burkina Faso. In addition, corrupted elites are fearful of their own vulnerability resulting from the spread of these expressions of anti-Western national radicalism. Part of the reality of colonialism after colonialism are habits of dependence that are difficult to break, especially if intertwined with corrupting incentives and threats to collaborating national elites that act as bonding ties to the former colonial power.
There is also issues arising from non-African interventions by external actors if Africa does not act to reverse the outcome of the coup. There is a growing fear that Africa could become an battleground for the geopolitical rivalry involving the U.S., Russia, and China if a second cold war continues to unfold. As observed, Ukraine War has raised concerns in the Global North about dangers of nuclear war that seem to be giving rise to temptations to shift armed struggles to the Global South as was the case in the Cold War.
So far, various states have acted with caution, with Russia taking the lead in urging non-intervention. The United States seemed at first ready to condemn the coup and suspend economic aid, but later has been sending mixed messages, including refraining
from calling the July 26 takeover of the government a coup despite have the features of a coup. If declared a coup then by legislative mandate, economic assistance would be suspended until civilian government is restored. It raises the question, ‘when is a coup not a coup?’ The answer is simple, a coup is not a coup if strategic interests so dictate.
Such a moderation of pressures may also reflect the position of the new Nigerien leadership which has sent signals that it is receptive to diplomacy and wants a renegotiation not a rupture with France.
5- Do you think that war will be waged in the region?
It is hard to tell, and partly depends on the type of pressure exerted by the U.S. and Europe, and the flexibility of the new civilian leader of Niger, a former Finance Minister, Ali Mawawan Lamine Zeine and the junta. And partly about how worried other African governments are about the danger of coups in their own country or already threatened by extremist insurgencies. Neighboring Nigeria that has been leading the effort to reverse the outcome in Niger is key to whether a diplomatic compromise can be negotiated, or a war erupts.
A central issue is whether foreign troops will be allowed to remain in Niger. A major outcome of the earlier similar recent coups in Bukina Faso, Mali, and Guinea each development provoked by the presence of foreign troops of France and the U.S. Each of these coups resulted in the demands for the removal from the country. At present, there are French, U.S. and Italian bases and detachments of armed personnel in Niger. it may be seen as a victory for the national military that launched this latest coup if these foreign forces are removed, and a humiliating setback if they are allowed to stay, or it may not if national forces are unable to contain the extremist group already occupying national territory.
The deposed President of Niger, Mohamed Bazoumi, is lauded in the West as the first democratically elected president in the country and condemned by the coup leadership as massively corrupt and coopted. There is no doubt that a war in Niger would be a tragedy for the country and the region, given its already impoverished population and the overall low rankings for these Sahel West African countries on the Human Development Index.
5- In case of any war, what will be Russia’s reaction as you know many Russian Wagner forces are stationed there?
The Wagner Group’s role and response is part of the overall uncertainty, greatly accentuated by the death of its leader Prigozhin in a plane crash. So far Russia’s official position have in general supported the coup and opposed intervention from without. Whether the Wagner Group even with a mission of defending Niger possesses sufficient capabilities to alter the relation of forces in Niger or West Africa is unknown. There is a danger of a proxy war, which would prolong the combat and raise the stakes of winning and losing, with dire consequences for the people of Niger, and elsewhere in the region.
Whether the coup in Niger represents the last stage of decolonization or is just one more chapter in the under-narrated story of colonialism after colonialism remains to be seen.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Slouching Toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East
22 DecThe Geopolitical Foreground
There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several NATO countries and the promotion of governing regimes hostile to Russia in such countries as Ukraine and Georgia seems to exhibit Cold War nostalgia, and is certainly not the way to preserve peace.
Add to this the increasingly belligerent approach recently taken by the United States naval officers and defense officials to China with respect to island disputes and navigational rights in the South China Seas. Such posturing has all the ingredients needed for intensifying international conflict, giving a militarist signature to Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia.’
These developments are happening during the supposedly conflict averse Obama presidency. Looking ahead to new leadership, even the most optimistic scenario that brings Hilary Clinton to the White House is sure to make these pre-war drum beats even louder. From a more detached perspective it is fair to observe that Obama seems rather peace-oriented only because American political leaders and the Beltway/media mainstream have become so accustomed to relying on military solutions whether successful or not, whether dangerous and wasteful or not, that is, only by comparison with more hawkish alternatives.
The current paranoid political atmosphere in the United States is a further relevant concern, calling for police state governmental authority at home, increased weapons budgets, and the continuing militarization of policing and law enforcement. Such moves encourage an even more militaristic approach to foreign challenges that seem aimed at American and Israeli interests by ISIS, Iran, and China. Where this kind of war-mongering will lead is unknowable, but what is frighteningly clear is that this dangerous geopolitical bravado is likely to become even more strident as the 2016 campaign unfolds to choose the next American president. Already Donald Trump, the clear Republican frontrunner, has seemed to commit the United States to a struggle against all of Islam by his foolish effort to insist that every Muslim is terrorist suspect Islam as a potential terrorist who should be so treated. Even Samuel Huntington were he still alive might not welcome such an advocate of ‘the clash of civilizations’!
Historical Deep Roots
It has taken almost a century for the breakup of the Ottoman Empire to reap the colonialist harvest that was sown in the peace diplomacy that followed World War I. In the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement diplomats of England and France in 1916 secretly negotiated arrangements that would divide up the Middle East into a series of artificially delimited territorial states to be administered as colonies by the respective European governments. Among other wrongs, this devious undertaking representing a betrayal of promises made to Arab leaders that Britain, in particular, would support true independence in exchange for joining the anti-Ottoman and anti-German alliance formed to fight World War I. Such a division of the Ottoman spoils not only betrayed wartime promises of political independence to Arab leaders, but also undermined the efforts of Woodrow Wilson to apply the principle of ethnic self-determination to the Ottoman aftermath.
As a result of diplomatic maneuvers the compromise reached at Versailles in 1919 was to accept the Sykes-Picot borders that were drawn to satisfy colonial ambitions for trade routes and spheres of influence, but to disguise slightly its colonialist character, by creating an international system of mandates for the Middle East in which London and Paris would administer the territories, accepting a vague commitment to lead the various societies to eventual political independence at some unspecified future time. These Sykes-Picot ‘states’ were artificial political communities that never overcame the indigenous primacy of ethnic, tribal, and religious affinities, and could be maintained as coherent political realities only by creating oppressive state structures. If World War II had not sapped European colonial will and capabilities, it is easy to imagine that the societies of the Middle East would remain subjugated under mandate banners.
After World War II
Is it any wonder, then, that the region has been extremely beset by various forms of authoritarian rule ever since the countries of the Middle East gained their independence after the end of the Second World War? Whether in the form of dynastic monarchies or secular governments, the stability that was achieved in the region depended on the denial of human rights, including rights of democratic participation, as well as the buildup of small privileged and exploitative elites that linked national markets and resources to the global economic order. And as oil became the prime strategic resource, the dominance of the region became for the West led by the United States as absolutely vital. From these perspectives the stable authoritarianism of the region was quite congenial with the Cold War standoff between the United States and Soviet Union that was interested in securing strategic and economic partnerships reflecting the ideological rivalries, while being indifferent to whether or not the people were being victimized by abusive and brutal governments.
The American commitment to this status quo in the Middle East was most vividly expressed in 1980 after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution of the prior year by the enunciation of the Carter Doctrine. President Carter in his State of the Union Address was warning the Soviet Union by a strong diplomatic signal that the United States was ready to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf by force, which because of supposed Soviet superiority in ground warfare was understood at the time as making an implied threat to use nuclear weapons if necessary.
After the Cold War
When the Cold War ended, the United States unthinkingly promoted the spread of capitalist style constitutional democracy wherever it could, including the Middle East. The Clinton presidency (1992-2000) talked about the ‘enlargement’ of the community of democratic states, implying that any other political option lacked legitimacy (unless of course it was a friendly oil producer or strategic ally). The neocon presidency of George W. Bush (2000-2008) with its interventionist bent invoked ‘democracy promotion’ as its goal, and became clear in its official formulation of security doctrine in 2002 that only capitalist democracies were legitimate Westphalian states whose sovereign rights were entitled to respect.
This kind of strident militarism reached a new climax after 9/11. The White House apparently hoped to embark on a series regime-changing interventions in the Middle East and Asia with the expectation of producing at minimal cost shining examples of liberation and democratization, as well as secure the Gulf oil reserves and establish military bases to undergird its regional ambitions. The attacks on Afghanistan, and especially Iraq, were the most notorious applications of this misguided approach. Instead of ‘democracy’ (Washington’s code word for integration into its version of neoliberal globalization), what emerged was strife and chaos, and the collapse of stable internal governance. The strong state that preceded the intervention gave way to localized militias and resurgent tribal, clan, and religious rivalries leading domestic populations to wish for a return to the relative stability of the preceding authoritarian arrangements, despite their brutality and corruption. And even in Washington one encounters whispered admissions that Iraq was better off, after all, under Saddam Hussein than under the kind of sectarian and divisive leaders that governed the country since the American occupation began in 2003, and now threaten Iraq with an implosion that will produce at least two states replacing the shattered one.
The Arab Spring
Then came the Arab Spring in 2011 creating an awkward tension between the professed wish in Washington for democracy in the Arab world and the overriding commitment to upholding strategic interests throughout the Middle East. At first, the West reacted ambivalently to the Arab uprisings, not knowing whether to welcome, and then try to tame, these anti-authoritarian movements of the Arab masses or to lament the risks of new elites that were likely to turn away from neoliberal capitalism and strategic partnerships, and worst of all, might be more inclined to challenge Israel.
What happened in the years that followed removed the ambiguity, confirming that material and ideological interests took precedence over visionary endorsements of Arab democracy. The reality that emerged indicated that neither the domestic setting nor the international context was compatible with the existence of democratic forms of governance. What unsurprisingly followed was a series of further military interventions and strategic confrontations either via NATO as in Libya or by way of its regional partners, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates as in Iran, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen. With few tears shed in Washington, the authentic and promising democratic beginnings in Egypt that excited the world in the aftermath of the 2011 Tahrir Square were crushed two years later by a populist military coup that restored Mubarak Era authoritarianism, accentuating its worst features. What amounted to the revenge of the urban secular elites in Cairo included a genuine bonding between a new majority of the Egyptian people and its armed forces in a bloody struggle to challenge and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood that had taken control of the government by winning a series of elections. Despite its supposed liberalism the Obama leadership played along with these developments. It obliged the new Sisi-led leadership by avoiding the term ‘coup’ although the military takeover was followed by a bloody crackdown on the elected leadership and civil society leadership. This Orwellian trope of refusing to call a coup by its real name enabled the United States to continue military assistance to Egypt without requiring a new Congressional authorization.
The folk wisdom of the Arab world gives insight into the counterrevolutionary backlash that has crushed the populist hopes of 2011: “People prefer 100 years of tyranny to a single year of chaos.” And this kind of priority is shared by most of those who make and manage American foreign policy. Just as clearly as the Arab masses, the Pentagon planners prefer the stability of authoritarianism to the anarchistic uncertainties of ethnic and tribal strife, militia forms of governance that so often come in the wake of the collapse of both dictatorial rule and democratic governance. And the masters of business and finance, aside from the lure of post-conflict markets for the reconstruction of what has been destroyed militarily, prefer to work with dependable and familiar national elites that welcome foreign capital on lucrative terms that benefit insiders and outsiders alike, while keeping the masses in conditions of impoverished thralldom.
In many respects, Syria and Iraq illustrate the terrible human tragedies that have been visited on the peoples of these two countries. In Syria a popular uprising in 2011 was unforgivably crushed by the Basher el-Assad regime in Damascus, leading to a series of disastrous interventions on both sides of the internal war that erupted, with Saudi Arabia and Iran engaged in a proxy war on Syrian soil while Israel uses its diplomatic leverage to ensure that the unresolved war would last as long as possible as Tel Aviv wanted neither the regime nor its opponents to win a clear victory. During this strife, Russia, Turkey, and the United States were intervening with a bewildering blend of common and contradictory goals ranging from pro-government stabilization to a variety of regime changing scenarios. These external actors held conflicting views of the Kurdish fighters as either coveted allies or dangerous adversaries. In the process several hundred thousand Syrians have lost their lives, almost half the population have become refugees and internally displaced persons, much of the country and its ancient heritage sites devastated, and no real end of the violence and devastation is in sight.
The Iraq experience is only marginally better. After a dozen years of punitive sanctions following the 1991 ceasefire that exacted a heavy toll on the civilian population, the ‘shock and awe’ of US/UK attacks of 2003, an occupation began that rid the country of its cruel and oppressive leader, Saddam Hussein, and his entourage. What followed politically became over time deeply disillusioning, and actually worse than the overthrown regime, which had been hardly imaginable when the American-led occupation began. The Iraqi state was being reconstructed along sectarian lines, purging the Sunni minority elites from the Baghdad bureaucracy and armed forces, thereby generating a widespread internal violent opposition against foreign occupation and a resistance movement against the Iraqi leadership that had gained power with the help of the American presence. This combination of insurgency and resistance also gave rise to widespread feelings of humiliation and alienation, which proved to be conducive to the rise of jihadi extremism, first in the form of al-Qaeda in Iraq and later as ISIS.
Toxic Geopolitics
It is impossible to understand and explain such a disastrous failure of military interventionism without considering the effects of two toxic ‘special relationships’ formed by the United States, with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The basic feature of such special relationships is an unconditional partnership in which the Israelis and Saudis can do whatever they wish, including pursuing policies antagonistic to U.S. interests without encountering any meaningful opposition from either Washington or Europe. This zone of discretion has allowed Israel to keep Palestinians from achieving self-determination while pursuing its own territorial ambitions via constantly expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, fueling grassroots anti-Western sentiment throughout the Arab world because of this persisting reliance on a cruel settler colonialist approach to block for seven decades the Palestinian struggle for fundamental and minimal national rights.
The special relationship with Saudi Arabia is even more astonishing until one considers the primacy of economic strategic priorities, especially the importance of oil supplied at affordable prices. Having by far the worst human rights record in the region, replete with judicially decreed beheadings and executions by stoning, the Riyadh leadership continues to be warmly courted in Western capitals as allies and friends. At the same time, equally theocratic Iran is hypocritically bashed and internationally punished in retaliation for its far less oppressive governing abuses.
Of course, looking the other way, is what is to be expected in the cynical conduct of opportunistic geopolitics, but to indulge the Saudi role in the worldwide promotion of jihadism while spending trillion on counter-terrorism is much more difficult to fathom until one shifts attention from the cover story of counter-terrorism to the more illuminating narrative of petropolitics. Despite fracking and natural gas discoveries lessening Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, old capitalist habits persist long after their economic justifications have lapsed and this seems true even when such policies have become damaging in lives and financial burdens.
Finding Hope is Difficult
In such circumstances, it is difficult to find much hope in the current cosmodrama of world politics. It is possible, although unlikely, that geopolitical sanity will prevail to the extent of finding a diplomatic formula to end the violence in Syria and Yemen, as well as to normalize relations with Iran, restore order in Iraq and Libya, although such sensible outcomes face many obstacles, and may be years away. The alternatives for the Middle East in the near future, barring the political miracle of a much more revolutionary and emancipatory second Arab Spring, seems to be authoritarian stability or anarchic strife and chaos, which seems far preferable if the alternative is the deep trauma associated with enduring further American military interventions. If you happen to hear the Republican candidates give their prescriptions for fixing the Middle East it comes down to ‘toughness,’ including the scary recommendations of ‘carpet bombing’ and a greatly heightened American military presence. Even the more thoughtful Democrats limit their proposals to enhanced militarism, hoping to induce the Arab countries to put ‘the boots on the ground’ with nary a worry about either igniting a regional war or the imaginative collapse that can only contemplate war as the recipe for peace, again recalling the degree to which Orwellian satiric irony is relied upon to shape foreign policy prescriptions by ambitious politicians. Imaginative diplomacy, talking and listening to the enemy, and engaging in self-scrutiny remains outside the cast iron cage of the military mentality that has long dominated most of the political space in American foreign policy debates with the conspicuous help of the passive aggressive mainstream media. In this respect, American democracy is a broken reality, and conscientious citizens must look elsewhere as a prison break of the political imagination is long overdue.
Tags: Arab Spring, Arab uprisings, authoritarianism, Egypt, geopolitics, jihadism, Middle East, militarism, Syria, U.S. foreign policy