Can ECOWAS convince Burkina Faso to return to civilian rule?
But some of those statements are true. The French government subsidized the unconstitutional postponement of elections in Chad following a military coup in early 2021 and, months later, called for sanctions against Mali when coup plotters postponed the elections. Most defense agreements between France and West African countries do not materialize. public, leaving other people suspicious of what was agreed between France and its former colonies.
The post-colonial character of relations between France and West African countries persists in various forms. The apparent maxim is the CFA currency – used in many West African countries – which dates back to colonial times and continues to take advantage of French companies. These realities mean that West Africans have reason to question Western interventions in the Sahel. But why is so many other people Russia a better partner?
Even in spaces that suffer terrorist attacks, other people have doubts about the interventions of the Western army.
In my research, I explore how other people living in spaces where terrorist teams operate understand the counterterrorism interventions of the Western military. Between January and May 2022, I conducted 42 one-hour interviews with others who had fled conflict-affected spaces in western Niger and are now in regional capitals or travelling to a regional capital to work. The organization interviewed included pastoralists, farmers, chiefs, principals and students. Along with those qualitative interviews, I analyzed knowledge from the Armed Conflict Events and Location Data Project (ACLED), which collects real-time information on all reported occasions of political violence and protests around the world.
The Nigerians I interviewed had doubts about the true objective of Western troops operating in their localities. These doubts were not in Russian propaganda but in direct experience.
One example is the German army’s operations in Tahoua, a region west of Niger bordering Mali. The Germans built a military base there in 2018 and began educating Niger’s special forces. Since then, the lack of trust in the Tahoua region has increased massively. years before the status quo of the German base, ACLED’s knowledge shows that the annual average of attacks on civilians through armed teams or army workers in Tahoua is zero. Since 2018, the annual average of attacks on civilians has reached 16. From 2022 to date, the knowledge base has documented forty-five attacks on civilians.
Are coups contagious?
True, the German base is located in a domain where the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) began to activate in 2018, making it a strategic location for counterterrorism operations. But for those who live in the domain around the base, it was not so.
During the status quo of the base, the ISGS began to cross the border of Mali, in the domain around the base. At first, the organization demanded zakat (Islamic tax) from the Tuareg and Peuhl communities and confiscated cattle when others refused to pay. Tensions escalated and, in March 2021, ISGS forces killed almost everyone in 3 Tuareg camps, one of which is located about 15 miles from the German base. According to my interviews and ACLED data, another 144 people were killed. In the following months, the Tuareg militias, believing that the Peuhl herdsmen were involved in the ISGS attacks, carried out revenge attacks against the Peuhl communities living between the base and the border with Mali.
The German operation in Tahoua is a component of the European Union’s education project in Mali, which has no direct mandate to protect civilians. Niger’s special forces are trained to conduct high-precision operations that focus primarily on “neutralizing” the leaders of jihadist groups. The gendarmerie, the national paramilitary force, is guilty of protecting the population, but others complained that aid was slow to arrive and that the attackers had long since left. Most interviewees attributed the gendarmerie’s slow reaction to a lack of cars and helicopters, but struggled to understand why special forces and the German army did not respond. Local people discussed vehicles and equipment made for special forces patrols in the area, for example.
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Other people’s conspiracy theories make sense of confusing events
Cognitive psychologists have shown that the human brain is able to see causality between simultaneous events. Conspiracy theories about French and German troops supporting jihadist teams make the rise in lack of confidence that coincides with their arrival more understandable.
There are other counteroffensive occasions that fuel confidence in conspiracy theories. Several interviewees reported seeing a plane flying at low altitude between 40 and 60 minutes before the ISGS attacked their village. Interviewees mistakenly assumed that these were French surveillance aircraft transmitting data to the ISGS. people believe that the ISGS has surveillance equipment, however, the ISGS recently began employing drones before launching an attack.
Do West Africans really think that cooperation with Russia would be greater than French or German cooperation?Yes and no. They have heard of allegations of violence made through the Wagner Group, a personal organization of Russian mercenaries operating in Mali as part of cooperation between Mali and Russia, but many of the accusations are Western propaganda.
The situation in Niger is terrible for interviewees, and they can only hope that a replacement spouse will bring an improvement. As one interviewee noted, “We have to decide between evil and the worst. “
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Aoife McCullough (@aoifemccullough) is a PhD candidate in International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. It focuses on the foreign militarization of Niger and legitimization processes.