Flying Fijians head coach Simon Raiwalui says facing England in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals will be different from when they met last month in Twickenham.
The match in London saw Fiji topple the tier one nation 30-22 for the first time, two weeks away from the World Cup and was described as one of the lowest moments in English rugby history.
The two sides will face-off at Stade de Marseille in a week’s time at 3am.
“They [England] play rugby to win. They’re very talented. They’ll put a lot of pressure on us at set-piece time as well,” Raiwalui said.
“Tactically, they’ll look to take advantage of some of the things we’ve been doing, so they’re a very good team. It’s going to be a big challenge.”
He said he expected England to change their game a little bit.
“It’s a totally different match [to when Fiji beat England in August], playing a different team. There will be aspects of how they play that are similar but they will bring new stuff as well.
“It’s about us being efficient and doing the things we do well and giving ourselves the best chance to compete.
“We’ve played the team, the boys are comfortable. It’s not the first time, so I think it will be a good match.”
Pacific RWC results
Fiji just scraped into the quarter-finals losing to Portugal 24-23 in their final and deciding pool match in Toulouse on Monday morning.
Other quarter-finals will see Wales battle Argentina in Marseille on Sunday morning, before Ireland and New Zealand clash in Saint Denis the same day.
The fourth semi-final will be between France and South Africa in Saint Denis on Monday morning.
Flying Fijians head coach Simon Raiwalui says facing England in the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals will be different from when they met last month in Twickenham.
The match in London saw Fiji topple the tier one nation 30-22 for the first time, two weeks away from the World Cup and was described as one of the lowest moments in English rugby history.
The two sides will face-off at Stade de Marseille in a week’s time at 3am.
“They [England] play rugby to win. They’re very talented. They’ll put a lot of pressure on us at set-piece time as well,” Raiwalui said.
“Tactically, they’ll look to take advantage of some of the things we’ve been doing, so they’re a very good team. It’s going to be a big challenge.”
He said he expected England to change their game a little bit.
“It’s a totally different match [to when Fiji beat England in August], playing a different team. There will be aspects of how they play that are similar but they will bring new stuff as well.
“It’s about us being efficient and doing the things we do well and giving ourselves the best chance to compete.
“We’ve played the team, the boys are comfortable. It’s not the first time, so I think it will be a good match.”
Pacific RWC results
Fiji just scraped into the quarter-finals losing to Portugal 24-23 in their final and deciding pool match in Toulouse on Monday morning.
Other quarter-finals will see Wales battle Argentina in Marseille on Sunday morning, before Ireland and New Zealand clash in Saint Denis the same day.
The fourth semi-final will be between France and South Africa in Saint Denis on Monday morning.
At its fifteenth summit in August 2023, the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group adopted the Johannesburg II Declaration, which, amongst other issues, raised the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly its security council. To make the UN Security Council (UNSC) ‘more democratic, representative, effective, and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries’, BRICS urged the expansion of the council’s membership to include countries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The declaration specifically noted that three countries – Brazil, India, and South Africa – should be included if the UNSC’s permanent members are expanded. For at least the past twenty years, these three countries (all founding BRICS members) have sought entry into the UNSC as permanent members with veto power. Over the decades, their aspirations have been thwarted, spurring them on first to create the IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) group in 2003 and then the BRICS group in 2009.
The composition of the security council and the question of which states have veto power as permanent members have been central issues for the UN since its founding. In 1944, at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC, the main Allied powers (Britain, China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United States) gathered to discuss how to shape the UN and its main institutions. These states – also known as the ‘Big Four’ – decided that they would have permanent seats in the UNSC and, after much deliberation, agreed that they would have the power to exercise a veto over UNSC decisions. Though the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not keen to bring France into their ranks because the French government had colluded with the Nazis from 1940 to 1944, the United States insisted on France joining the group, which would in turn become known as the ‘Big Five’. The UN Charter, signed in San Francisco in 1945, established in Article 23 that the council would consist of these five countries as permanent members (also known as the ‘P5’), along with six other non-permanent members who would be elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms.
Pamela Singh (India), Treasure Map 006, 2014–15.
In July 2005, a group of countries known as the G4 (Brazil, Germany, Japan, and India) brought a resolution forward at the UN General Assembly that raised the issue of reforming the UNSC. Brazil’s ambassador to the UN, Ronaldo Mota Sardenberg, told the assembly that ‘accumulated experience acquired since the founding of the United Nations demonstrated that the realities of power of 1945 had long been superseded. The security structure then established was now glaringly outdated’. The G4 proposed that the UNSC be enlarged from fifteen to twenty-five members, with the addition of six permanent and four non-permanent members. Most of the members who spoke at the debate pointed to the fact that no countries from Africa or Latin America had permanent seats in the UNSC, which remains true today. To remedy this would itself be a substantial act of equity for the world. To make this change, the UN Charter required approval from two-thirds of the General Assembly members and ratification by their legislatures – a process that has only happened once before, in 1965, when the council was enlarged from eleven to fifteen members. The 2005 resolution was not brought to a vote and has since languished, despite the passing of a resolution in 2009 on the ‘question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council and related matters’. Nonetheless, these efforts opened a long-term dialogue that continues to this day.
The G4 countries have not been able gather sufficient support for their proposal because the current permanent members of the UNSC (Britain, China, Russia, the US, and France) cannot agree on who amongst their allies should be granted these seats. Even in 2005, a divide opened amongst the P5 countries, with the United States and its G7 allies (Britain and France) operating as one bloc against both China and Russia. The US has been willing to expand the permanent seats on the council, but only if it means bringing in more of its close allies (Germany and Japan), which would allow the UNSC to effectively remain dominated by five of the seven members of the G7. This, of course, would not be acceptable to either China or Russia.
Today, as the question of comprehensive UN reform is gathering momentum, the US government is once again trying to co-opt the issue, calling for the expansion of the UNSC in order to counter Chinese and Russian influence. US President Joe Biden’s high officials have openly said that they favour bringing in their allies to tilt the balance of debate and discussion in the UNSC. This attitude towards UN reform does not address the fundamental questions raised by the Global South about international democracy and equitable geographical representation, particularly the call to add a permanent member from Africa and from Latin America.
Omar Ba (Senegal), Promenade masquée 2 (‘Masked Walk 2’), 2016.
In 2005, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote a report entitled In Larger Freedom in which he called for the expansion of the UNSC from fifteen to twenty-four members. This expansion, he said, must be done on a regional basis, rather than allocating permanent seats along historical axes of power (as with the Big Five). One of the models that Annan proposed would provide two permanent seats for Africa, two for Asia and the Pacific, one for Europe, and one for the Americas. This allocation would more closely represent the regional distribution of the global population, with the UNSC’s centre of gravity moving towards the more populous continents of Africa (population 1.4 billion) and Asia (population 4.7 billion) and away from Europe (742 million) and the Americas (1 billion).
Meanwhile, Britain and France, two permanent members of the UNSC, currently have minuscule populations of 67 million and 64 million respectively. It is puzzling that these two European countries – neither of them the most powerful country in Europe (which in economic terms is Germany) – have retained veto power despite their dramatically declining role in the world. The recent setbacks for France’s colonial ambitions in Africa, as well as France’s inability to lead a European agenda for peace in Ukraine, show how increasingly irrelevant this European country has become for world affairs.
Equally, Britain’s declining position in the world after Brexit and its failure to provide a vision for a Global Britain suggest that, despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s anger at the use of the term, it is correct to consider it a ‘midsize country’ with an inflated sense of itself.
Britain and France’s permanent seats in the UNSC illustrate the anachronism of the council’s architecture since neither country inspires confidence when it comes to providing leadership for security and development in the world.
Nicolas Moufarrege (Egypt/Lebanon), The Fifth Day, 1980.
‘The present is an innocent lie’, Samih al-Qasim (1939–2014) wrote in the poem ‘After the Apocalypse’. ‘To see the future, you must consult the past’, he noted, thinking of his native Palestine and its occupation by Israel. The colonial past sits heavily on the present. The colonisers’ power remains intact, with the Banque de France and the Bank of England remaining repositories of the wealth stolen from the colonies. What gives these old colonial powers, Britain and France, permission to remain overlords of the present, even when their basis for this position has long eroded? (It is worth noting that, in addition to being nuclear powers, these countries are also among the world’s major arms exporters.) The power that these and other colonial powers have seized in the past remains a barrier to the needs of the present.
The United States, which has lost its place as the most powerful country in the world, seeks to hold onto inherited advantages (such as having close allies in the UNSC) and to spend overwhelming amounts of money on war (as evidenced by the fact that it accounts for half of the global arms expenditure, for instance). Rather than allow for a more democratic and robust United Nations, the US continues to try to neuter this global institution either by dominating its forums or by violating its charter whenever it pleases. At the recently concluded 78th UN General Assembly session, US President Joe Biden spoke of the importance of ‘sovereignty, territorial integrity, [and] human rights’ – all three routinely violated by the United States through war, sanctions, and its prison at Guantanamo Bay. Absent moral authority, the United States uses its muscle to block the advance of democracy in institutions such as the United Nations.
Thus far, many proposals hailing from all sides of the political spectrum have called for the expansion of the UNSC, which requires votes in the General Assembly and the legislatures of the member states. It is far easier to create equity in the council if two of the members withdraw themselves from the horseshoe table and turn their seats over to countries in Africa and Latin America, which remain unrepresented amongst the permanent members.
Australia and France have signed a pact to work more closely on critical minerals supply chains, as the European Union looks to reduce its dependency on China for lithium and other heavy rare earths. Resources minister Madeleine King signed the Bilateral Dialogue on Critical Minerals agreement with France’s Minister for the Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher…
Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the meeting, al-Trabelsi warned about the poor condition of the dams. As he wrote on Facebook that same day, over the past decade his beloved city has been ‘exposed to whipping and bombing, and then it was enclosed by a wall that had no door, leaving it shrouded in fear and depression’. Then, Storm Daniel picked up off the Mediterranean coast, dragged itself into Libya, and broke the dams. CCTV camera footage in the city’s Maghar neighbourhood showed the rapid advance of the floodwaters, powerful enough to destroy buildings and crush lives. A reported 70% of infrastructure and 95% of educational institutions have been damaged in the flood-affected areas. As of Wednesday 20 September, an estimated 4,000 to 11,000 people have died in the flood – among them the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi, whose warnings over the years went unheeded – and another 10,000 are missing.
Hisham Chkiouat, the aviation minister of Libya’s Government of National Stability (based in Sirte), visited Derna in the wake of the flood and told the BBC, ‘I was shocked by what I saw. It’s like a tsunami. A massive neighbourhood has been destroyed. There is a large number of victims, which is increasing each hour’. The Mediterranean Sea ate up this ancient city with roots in the Hellenistic period (326 BCE to 30 BCE). Hussein Swaydan, head of Derna’s Roads and Bridges Authority, said that the total area with ‘severe damage’ amounts to three million square metres. ‘The situation in this city’, he said, ‘is more than catastrophic’. Dr Margaret Harris of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that the flood was of ‘epic proportions’. ‘There’s not been a storm like this in the region in living memory’, she said, ‘so it’s a great shock’.
Howls of anguish across Libya morphed into anger at the devastation, which are now developing into demands for an investigation. But who will conduct this investigation: the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, headed by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and officially recognised by the United Nations (UN), or the Government of National Stability, headed by Prime Minister Osama Hamada in Sirte? These two rival governments – which have been at war with each other for many years – have paralysed the politics of the country, whose state institutions were fatally damaged by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombardment in 2011.
Soad Abdel Rassoul (Egypt), My Last Meal, 2019.
The divided state and its damaged institutions have been unable to properly provide for Libya’s population of nearly seven million in the oil-rich but now totally devastated country. Before the recent tragedy, the UN was already providing humanitarian aid for at least 300,000 Libyans, but, as a consequence of the floods, they estimate that at least 884,000 more people will require assistance. This number is certain to rise to at least 1.8 million. The WHO’s Dr Harris reports that some hospitals have been ‘wiped out’ and that vital medical supplies, including trauma kits and body bags, are needed. ‘The humanitarian needs are huge and much more beyond the abilities of the Libyan Red Crescent, and even beyond the abilities of the Government’, said Tamar Ramadan, head of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies delegation in Libya.
The emphasis on the state’s limitations is not to be minimised. Similarly, the World Meteorological Organisation’s Secretary-General Petteri Taalas pointed out that although there was an unprecedented level of rainfall (414.1 mm in 24 hours, as recorded by one station), the collapse of state institutions contributed to the catastrophe. Taalas observed that Libya’s National Meteorological Centre has ‘major gaps in its observing systems. Its IT systems are not functioning well and there are chronic staff shortages. The National Meteorological Centre is trying to function, but its ability to do so is limited. The entire chain of disaster management and governance is disrupted’. Furthermore, he said, ‘[t]he fragmentation of the country’s disaster management and disaster response mechanisms, as well as deteriorating infrastructure, exacerbated the enormity of the challenges. The political situation is a driver of risk’.
Abdel Moneim al-Arfi, a member of the Libyan Parliament (in the eastern section), joined his fellow lawmakers to call for an investigation into the causes of the disaster. In his statement, al-Arfi pointed to underlying problems with the post-2011 Libyan political class. In 2010, the year before the NATO war, the Libyan government had allocated money towards restoring the Wadi Derna dams (both built between 1973 and 1977). This project was supposed to be completed by a Turkish company, but the company left the country during the war. The project was never completed, and the money allocated for it vanished. According to al-Arfi, in 2020 engineers recommended that the dams be restored since they were no longer able to manage normal rainfall, but these recommendations were shelved. Money continued to disappear, and the work was simply not carried out.
Impunity has defined Libya since the overthrow of the regime led by Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942–2011). In February–March 2011, newspapers from Gulf Arab states began to claim that the Libyan government’s forces were committing genocide against the people of Libya. The United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions: resolution 1970 (February 2011) to condemn the violence and establish an arms embargo on the country and resolution 1973 (March 2011) to allow member states to act ‘under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter’, which would enable armed forces to establish a ceasefire and find a solution to the crisis. Led by France and the United States, NATO prevented an African Union delegation from following up on these resolutions and holding peace talks with all the parties in Libya. Western countries also ignored the meeting with five African heads of state in Addis Ababa in March 2011 where al-Gaddafi agreed to the ceasefire, a proposal he repeated during an African Union delegation to Tripoli in April. This was an unnecessary war that Western and Gulf Arab states used to wreak vengeance upon al-Gaddafi. The ghastly conflict turned Libya, which was ranked 53rd out of 169 countries on the 2010 Human Development Index (the highest ranking on the African continent), into a country marked by poor indicators of human development that is now significantly lower on any such list.
Instead of allowing an African Union-led peace plan to take place, NATO began a bombardment of 9,600 strikes on Libyan targets, with special emphasis on state institutions. Later, when the UN asked NATO to account for the damage it had done, NATO’s legal advisor Peter Olson wrote that there was no need for an investigation, since ‘NATO did not deliberately target civilians and did not commit war crimes in Libya’. There was no interest in the wilful destruction of crucial Libyan state infrastructure, which has never been rebuilt and whose absence is key to understanding the carnage in Derna.
NATO’s destruction of Libya set in motion a chain of events: the collapse of the Libyan state; the civil war, which continues to this day; the dispersal of Islamic radicals across northern Africa and into the Sahel region, whose decade-long destabilisation has resulted in a series of coups from Burkina Faso to Niger. This has subsequently created new migration routes toward Europe and led to the deaths of migrants in both the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea as well as an unprecedented scale of human trafficking operations in the region. Add to this list of dangers not only the deaths in Derna, and certainly the deaths from Storm Daniel, but also casualties of a war from which the Libyan people have never recovered.
Just before the flood in Libya, an earthquake struck neighbouring Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, wiping out villages such as Tenzirt and killing about 3,000 people. ‘I won’t help the earthquake’, wrote the Moroccan poet Ahmad Barakat (1960–1994); ‘I will always carry in my mouth the dust that destroyed the world’. It is as if tragedy decided to take titanic steps along the southern rim of the Mediterranean Sea last week.
A tragic mood settled deep within the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi. On 10 September, before being swept away by the flood waves, he wrote, ‘[w]e have only one another in this difficult situation. Let’s stand together until we drown’. But that mood was intercut with other feelings: frustration with the ‘twin Libyan fabric’, in his words, with one government in Tripoli and the other in Sirte; the divided populace; and the political detritus of an ongoing war over the broken body of the Libyan state. ‘Who said that Libya is not one?’, Al-Trabelsi lamented. Writing as the waters rose, Al-Trabelsi left behind a poem that is being read by refugees from his city and Libyans across the country, reminding them that the tragedy is not everything, that the goodness of people who come to each other’s aid is the ‘promise of help’, the hope of the future.
The rain
Exposes the drenched streets,
the cheating contractor,
and the failed state.
It washes everything,
bird wings
and cats’ fur.
Reminds the poor
of their fragile roofs
and ragged clothes.
It awakens the valleys,
shakes off their yawning dust
and dry crusts.
The rain
a sign of goodness,
a promise of help,
an alarm bell.
When former French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that a total Ukrainian military victory was unlikely, the New York Times‘ Roger Cohen (8/27/23) charged that “the obstinacy of the French right’s emotional bond with Russia owes much to a recurrent Gallic great-power itch.”
It doesn’t take much in our media system to be labeled a “Putin apologist” or “pro-Russia.” In this New Cold War, even suggesting that the official enemy is not Hitlerian or completely irrational could earn ridicule and attack.
After the largely stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive against the Russian occupation, conditions on the front have hardened into what many observers describe as a “stalemate.” Like virtually all wars, the Russo-Ukrainian War will end with a negotiated settlement, and the quicker it happens, the quicker the bodies will stop piling up.
Despite this, anyone who advocates actually pursuing negotiations is immediately attacked. The New York Times (8/27/23) did this in an article about former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in an article that argued he “gives a voice to obstinate Russian sympathies.” The Times wrote:
In interviews coinciding with the publication of a memoir, Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, said that reversing Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “illusory,” ruled out Ukraine joining the European Union or NATO because it must remain “neutral,” and insisted that Russia and France “need each other.”
“People tell me Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man that I met. I don’t find that convincing. I’ve had tens of conversations with him. He is not irrational,” he told Le Figaro. “European interests aren’t aligned with American interests this time,” he added.
To Times writer Roger Cohen, Sarkozy’s remarks “underscored the strength of the lingering pockets of pro-Putin sympathy that persist in Europe,” which persist despite Europe’s “unified stand against Russia.” Cohen didn’t challenge or rebut anything the former president said—he merely quoted the words, labeled them “pro-Putin,” and moved on.
The New Cold War mentality has encouraged a new wave of McCarthyite attacks against anyone who dissents against the establishment status quo. Merely pointing out that Putin is “not irrational” flies in the face of the accepted conventional wisdom that Putin is a Hitler-like madman hell bent on conquering Eastern Europe. That conventional wisdom is what allows calls for negotiation to be dismissed without any serious discussion, and challenging that wisdom elicits harsh reactions from establishment voices.
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Lekima Tagitagivalu knows too well how the French are rugby crazy and wasn’t surprised about the support shown to the Flying Fijians in last weekend’s Rugby World Cup match against Australia.
Playing for Pau in the Top 14 competition, the 27-year-old flanker is a favourite in the French competition.
He is one of several Fijian players in the Flying Fijians squad who plays in France. Like in the match against Wales, the French turned out in numbers to support their second favourite team — Fiji.
Their cheers and those of Fijians who travelled from around the world to the Stade Geoffroy Guichard in Saint Etienne on Monday, rang through the stadium.
“That [French support] means a lot to us,” said the man from Marou, Naviti in Yasawa.
“A lot of the boys play here in France. It means so much knowing that they are behind us too. It’s more like a home game for us.”
He said the win against Australia would rejuvenate spirits in the team camp for the rest of their RWC campaign — matches against Georgia and Portugal.
“I’m really proud of the boys for the performance and being able to create a part of Fiji rugby’s history.
“It was a tough game and we stuck in there for the whole 80 minutes,” said Tagitagivalu, adding that the win meant a lot to their World Cup campaign.
“Georgia is next and we won’t take any team lightly because they have all been preparing well for this world cup. We’ll take one game at a time, learn from our mistakes and move on to the next mission.
“I would like to dedicate this win to my family, to all the families in Fiji and all our supporters around the world who have been messaging us. We’ve been receiving all videos.”
Fiji plays against Georgia on October 1.
Rodney Duthieis a Fiji Times journalist. republished with permission.
The reality of the West’s trademark current foreign policy – marketed for the past two decades under the principle of a “Responsibility to Protect” – is all too visible amid Libya’s flood wreckage.
Many thousands are dead or missing in the port of Derna after two dams protecting the city burst this week as they were battered by Storm Daniel. Vast swaths of housing in the region, including in Benghazi, west of Derna, lie in ruins.
The storm itself is seen as further proof of a mounting climate crisis, rapidly changing weather patterns across the globe and making disasters like Derna’s flooding more likely.
But the extent of the calamity cannot simply be ascribed to climate change. Though the media coverage studiously obscures this point, Britain’s actions 12 years ago – when it trumpeted its humanitarian concern for Libya – are intimately tied to Derna’s current suffering.
The failing dams and faltering relief efforts, observers correctly point out, are the result of a power vacuum in Libya. There is no central authority capable of governing the country.
But there are reasons Libya is so ill-equipped to deal with a catastrophe. And the West is deeply implicated.
Avoiding mention of those reasons, as Western coverage is doing, leaves audiences with a false and dangerous impression: that something lacking in Libyans, or maybe Arabs and Africans, makes them inherently incapable of properly running their own affairs.
‘Dysfunctional politics’
Libya is indeed a mess, overrun by feuding militias, with two rival governments vying for power amid a general air of lawlessness. Even before this latest disaster, the country’s rival rulers struggled to cope with the day-to-day management of their citizens’ lives.
Or as Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, observed of the crisis, it has been “compounded by Libya’s dysfunctional politics, a country so rich in natural resources and yet so desperately lacking the security and stability that its people crave.”
Meanwhile, Quentin Sommerville, the corporation’s Middle East correspondent, opined that “there are many countries that could have handled flooding on this scale, but not one as troubled as Libya. It has had a long and painful decade: civil wars, local conflicts, and Derna itself was taken over by the Islamic State group – the city was bombed to remove them from there.”
According to Sommerville, experts had previously warned that the dams were in poor shape, adding: “Amid Libya’s chaos, those warnings went unheeded.”
“Dysfunction”, “chaos”, “troubled”, “unstable”, “fractured”. The BBC and the rest of Britain’s establishment media have been firing out these terms like bullets from a machine gun.
Libya is what analysts like to term a failed state. But what the BBC and the rest of the Western media have carefully avoided mentioning is why.
Regime change
More than decade ago, Libya had a strong, competent, if highly repressive, central government under dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The country’s oil revenues were used to provide free public education and health care. As a result, Libya had one of the highest literacy rates and average per capita incomes in Africa.
That all changed in 2011, when Nato sought to exploit the “Responsibility to Protect” principle, or R2P for short, to justify carrying out what amounted to an illegal regime-change operation off the back of an insurgency.
The supposed “humanitarian intervention” in Libya was a more sophisticated version of the West’s similarly illegal, “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq, eight years earlier.
Then, the US and Britain launched a war of aggression without United Nations authorisation, based on an entirely bogus story that Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, possessed hidden stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
In Libya’s case, by contrast, Britain and France, backed by the United States, were more successful in winning a UN security resolution, with a narrow remit to protect civilian populations from the threat of attack and impose a no-fly zone.
Armed with the resolution, the West manufactured a pretext to meddle directly in Libya. They claimed that Gaddafi was preparing a massacre of civilians in the rebel-stronghold of Benghazi. The lurid story even suggested that Gaddafi was arming troops with Viagra to encourage them to commit mass rape.
As with Iraq’s WMD, the claims were entirely unsubstantiated, as a report by the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee concluded five years later, in 2016. Its investigation found: “The proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”
The report added: “Gaddafi’s 40-year record of appalling human rights abuses did not include large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.”
Bombing campaigns
That, however, was not a view prime minister David Cameron or the media shared with the public when British MPs voted to back a war on Libya in March 2011. Only 13 legislators dissented.
Among them, notably, was Jeremy Corbyn, then a backbencher who four years later would be elected Labour opposition leader, triggering an extended smear campaign against him by the British establishment.
When Nato launched its “humanitarian intervention”, the death toll from Libya’s fighting was estimated by the UN at no more than 2,000. Six months later, it was assessed at nearer 50,000, with civilians comprising a significant proportion of the casualties.
Citing its R2P mission, Nato flagrantly exceeded the terms of the UN resolution, which specifically excluded “a foreign occupation force of any form”. Western troops, including British special forces, operated on the ground, coordinating the actions of rebel militias opposed to Gaddafi.
Meanwhile, Nato planes ran bombing campaigns that often killed the very civilians Nato claimed it was there to protect.
It was another illegal Western regime-overthrow operation – this one ending with the filming of Gaddafi being butchered on the street.
Slave markets
The self-congratulatory mood among Britain’s political and media class, burnishing the West’s “humanitarian” credentials, was evident across the media.
An Observer editorial declared: “An honourable intervention. A hopeful future.” In the Daily Telegraph, David Owen, a former British foreign secretary, wrote: “We have proved in Libya that intervention can still work.”
But had it worked?
Two years ago, even the arch-neoconservative Atlantic Council, the ultimate Washington insider think-tank, admitted: “Libyans are poorer, in greater peril, and experience as much or more political repression in parts of the country compared to Gaddafi’s rule.”
It added: “Libya remains divided politically and in a state of festering civil war. Frequent oil production halts while lack of oil fields maintenance has cost the country billions of dollars in lost revenues.”
The idea that Nato was ever really concerned about the welfare of Libyans was given the lie the moment Gaddafi was slaughtered. The West immediately abandoned Libya to its ensuing civil war, what President Obama colourfully called a “shitshow”, and the media that had been so insistent on the humanitarian goals behind the “intervention” lost all interest in post-Gaddafi developments.
Libya was soon overrun with warlords, becoming a country in which, as human rights groups warned, slave markets were once again flourishing.
As the BBC’s Sommerville noted in passing, the vacuum left behind in places like Derna soon sucked in more violent and extremist groups like the head-choppers of Islamic State.
Unreliable allies
But parallel to the void of authority in Libya that has exposed its citizens to such suffering is the remarkable void at the heart of the West’s media coverage of the current flooding.
No one wants to explain why Libya is so ill-prepared to deal with the disaster, why the country is so fractured and chaotic.
Just as no one wants to explain why the West’s invasion of Iraq on “humanitarian” grounds, and the disbanding of its army and police forces, led to more than a million Iraqis dead and millions more homeless and displaced.
Or why the West allied with its erstwhile opponents – the jihadists of Islamic State and al-Qaeda – against the Syrian government, again causing millions to be displaced and dividing the country.
Syria was as unprepared as Libya now is to deal with a large earthquake that hit its northern regions, along with southern Turkey, last February.
This pattern repeats because it serves a useful end for a West led from Washington that seeks complete global hegemony and control of resources, or what its policymakers call full-spectrum dominance.
Humanitarianism is the cover story – to keep Western publics docile – as the US and Nato allies target leaders of oil-rich states in the Middle East and North Africa that are viewed as unreliable or unpredictable, such as Libya’s Gadaffi and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
A wayward leader
WikiLeaks’ release of US diplomatic cables in late 2010 reveals a picture of Washington’s mercurial relationship with Gaddafi – a trait paradoxically the US ambassador to Tripoli is recorded attributing to the Libyan leader.
Publicly, US officials were keen to cosy up to Gaddafi, offering him close security coordination against the very rebel forces they would soon be assisting in their regime-overthrow operation.
But other cables reveal deeper concerns at Gaddafi’s waywardness, including his ambitions to build a United States of Africa to control the continent’s resources and develop an independent foreign policy.
Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa. And who has control over them, and profits from them, is centrally important to Western states.
The WikiLeaks cables recounted US, French, Spanish and Canadian oil firms being forced to renegotiate contracts on significantly less favourable terms, costing them many billions of dollars, while Russia and China were awarded new oil exploration options.
Still more worrying for US officials was the precedent Gaddafi had been setting, creating a “new paradigm for Libya that is playing out worldwide in a growing number of oil producing countries”.
That precedent has been decisively overturned since Gaddafi’s demise. As Declassified reported, after biding their time British oil giants BP and Shell returned to Libya’s oilfields last year.
In 2018, Britain’s then ambassador to Libya, Frank Baker, wrote enthusiastically about how the UK was “helping to create a more permissible environment for trade and investment, and to uncover opportunities for British expertise to help Libya’s reconstruction”.
That contrasts with Gaddafi’s earlier moves to cultivate closer military and economic ties with Russia and China, including granting access to the port of Benghazi for the Russian fleet. In one cable from 2008, he is noted to have “voiced his satisfaction that Russia’s increased strength can serve as a necessary counterbalance to US power”.
Submit or pay
It was these factors that tipped the balance in Washington against Gaddafi’s continuing rule and encouraged the US to seize the opportunity to oust him by backing rebel forces.
The claim that Washington or Britain cared about the welfare of ordinary Libyans is disproved by a decade of indifference to their plight – culminating in the current suffering in Derna.
The West’s approach to Libya, as with Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, has been to prefer that it be sunk into a quagmire of division and instability than allow a strong leader to act defiantly, demand control over resources and establish alliances with enemy states – creating a precedent other states might follow.
Small states are left with a stark choice: submit or pay a heavy price.
Gaddafi was butchered in the street, the bloody images shared around the world. The suffering of ordinary Libyans over the past decade, in contrast, has taken place out of view.
Now with the disaster in Derna, their plight is in the spotlight. But with the help of Western media like the BBC, the reasons for their misery remain as murky as the flood waters.
This story originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch on Aug. 29, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Niger’s military government reportedly cut off electricity and water supply to the French embassy in capital Niamey on Sunday, August 27, after the expiry of the 48-hours it gave the French ambassador, Sylvain Itte, to leave the country.
It has also instructed suppliers to stop providing the water, electricity and food supplies to the French military base, warning that anyone continuing to supply the base with goods and services will be treated as “enemies of the sovereign people.”
The 1,500 troops-strong military base in Niamey has become a site of frequent demonstrations, with people demanding that Niger’s former colonizer withdraw its troops. Thousands gathered outside this base on Sunday, demanding that its ambassador and troops leave the country, waving the national flag of Niger, reportedly alongside those of the BRICS countries and the DPRK.
A similar protest was also held on Friday, August 25, hours after the military government, the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country (CNSP), ordered the French ambassador out of Niger. Protesters raised anti-French slogans, and threatened to invade the base if the troops did not leave Niger in a week.
Earlier this month, the CNSP ended Niger’s military agreements with France and ordered its troops to leave by September 2. With France refusing to withdraw on the grounds that it does not recognize the authority of the military government, protests are expected to intensify as this deadline approaches.
‘Niger doesn’t belong to France’
“Niger doesn’t belong to France. We told the French to leave, but they said ‘no’,” complained Aicha, a supporter of CNSP protesting outside the base. “As citizens we don’t want the French here. They can do whatever they want in France, but not here,” she toldAl Jazeera.
The popular sentiment against the presence of French troops has manifested in several mass demonstrations, especially militant over the last two years. By cracking down on the anti-French movement and inviting into the country more French troops, ordered out of neighboring Mali by its military government, former Nigerien president Mohamed Bazoum had consolidated domestic perception of him being a puppet of France.
His removal from office on July 26 in a military coup led by the then head of the presidential guard, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, has won popular support, with thousands repeatedly taking to streets to rally behind the CNSP, reiterating the demand for the withdrawal of French troops.
‘The fight will not stop until the day there are no longer any French soldiers in Niger’
“The fight will not stop until the day there are no longer any French soldiers in Niger,” CNSP member Colonel Obro Amadou said in his address to a crowd of around 20,000 supporters who had gathered in Niger’s largest stadium in Niamey on Saturday, August 26. “It’s you who are going to drive them out,” he added.
Insisting that “France must respect” the choice of Nigerien people, Ramatou Boubacar, a CNSP supporter in the stadium, complained about the continued control France maintained over successive Nigerien governments even after the end of colonial rule. “For sixty years, we have never been independent [until].. the day of the coup d’etat,” she told the AFP.
French President Emmanuel Macron has however remained obstinate. “[W]e do not recognize the putschists, we support a president [Bazoum] who has not resigned”, he said in his remarks on Monday, August 28, reiterating French support for a military invasion of Niger by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), “when it decides”.
Expressing its “full support” to France and reiterating that the European Union (EU) “does not recognize” the CNSP, its spokesperson for foreign affairs, Nabila Massrali, also raised the specter of war. “The decision of the putschists to expel the French ambassador,” she said, “is a new provocation which cannot in any way help to find a diplomatic solution to the current crisis.”
‘ECOWAS is determined to bend backwards to accommodate diplomatic efforts’
However, the current chair of ECOWAS, Nigeria’s president Bola Tinubu, said on Saturday, August 26: “We are deep in our attempts to peacefully settle the issue in Niger by leveraging on our diplomatic tools. I continue to hold ECOWAS back, despite its readiness for all options, in order to exhaust all other remedial mechanisms.”
Tinubu has toned down his initially aggressive and threatening rhetoric against Niger after facing anti-war protests and opposition domestically. On August 5, a day before the one-week deadline given by ECOWAS on July 30 to the CNSP to reinstate Bazoum was to expire, the senate of Nigeria refused to support military action.
This is especially the case because Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea — which are among the 15 countries in ECOWAS, but suspended and sanctioned after similar popularly-supported coups backed by the domestic anti-French movement — have extended support to Niger.
Mali and Burkina Faso, whose military governments have successfully ordered the French troops out of the country, have committed to mobilize their military in defense of Niger. Together, these four countries amount to nearly 60% of ECOWAS’ land area.
Nevertheless, the ECOWAS heads of state met again in Nigeria on August 10 and ordered their Chiefs of Defense Staffs “to immediately activate” the bloc’s stand-by force. The Chiefs of Defense Staffs of ECOWAS member states subsequently held a two-day meeting on August 17 and 18 in Ghana.
Nevertheless, “We are ready to go any time the order is given,” Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, declared at the conclusion of this meeting, adding that an unspecified “D-day is also decided. We’ve already agreed and fine-tuned what will be required for the intervention.”
He introduced a caveat, however, that, “As we speak, we are still readying [a] mediation mission into the country, so we have not shut any door.”
A week later, on Friday, July 26, the ECOWAS said it was still “determined to bend backwards to accommodate diplomatic efforts.” ECOWAS commission president Omar Touray, former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Gambia told the media: “For the avoidance of doubt, let me state unequivocally that ECOWAS has neither declared war on the people of Niger, nor is there a plan, as is being rumored, to invade the country.”
Invading Niger will not be the walk in the park, warns CNSP President, Gen. Tchiani
Nevertheless, stating that “threats of aggression on the national territory are increasingly being felt,” Brigadier General Moussa Barmou placed the Nigerien military on “Maximum alert” on August 25, “in order to avoid a general surprise”.
Abdoulaye Diop and Olivia Rouamba, Foreign Ministers of Mali and Burkina Faso, visited Niamey on Thursday, August 24, reiterating their “rejection of an armed intervention against the people of Niger which will be considered as a declaration of war” on their own countries.
They also welcomed the two orders signed by the CNSP president Abdourahamane Tchiani that day, “authorizing the Defense and Security Forces of Burkina Faso and Mali to intervene on Nigerien territory in the event of an attack.”
“If an attack were to be undertaken against us,” Tchiani said in his televised address on Saturday, “it will not be the walk in the park some people seem to think.”
Should he be deported from the U.K., Julian Assange, the Australian publisher of WikiLeaks, faces up to 175 years in a U.S. prison on charges related to his release of information that revealed U.S. war crimes and torture. His legal team has stated that they plan to appeal the extradition case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, arguing that the British litigation…
There were several military coups in West Africa lately. Mostly in former French colonies, and in many ways “neo-colonies” of France, that do arguably more harm to the Sahel countries than the more than 300 years of French “on-the-ground” colonies, or enslavement. Though, this latter crime is not to be discarded at all. It has been an across-Africa genocide of unimaginable proportions, that, so far went unpunished.
But the new crime, the financial and military strategic econo-political colonization, needs to be brought to the fore now.
Among the coup countries are Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, but also Nigeria – a former British colony.
Of all these “coups”, Niger gets by far the most attention, and seems to be at the center of the controversy.
At the outset it looked like the military staged a coup to get the France-friendly President Mohamed Bazoum, out of the way and to move away from the French monetary hegemony, the Franc CFA (Communauté Financière Africaine, or African Financial Community). See also this pm+
On second thought, however, another image emerged, especially after Madame Victoria Nuland’s, US Deputy Secretary of State, personal visit to Niamey, Niger, where she was purportedly denied access to the deposed President, and was apparently snubbed by the new military leader, General Abdourahmane Tchiani.
The latter is not very plausible, but is once more a “media coup” against the truth. Ever more evidence emerges that Niger’s coup was supported by the US. Washington has three military bases in Niger and at least between 3,000 and 4,000 military personnel stationed in Niger.
One of the US bases is a strategically important drone base, in the Agadez region, known as Niger Air Base 201. Following its permanent base in Djibouti, Niger Air Base 201 stands as the second-largest US base in Africa.
France still has at least 1,500 military stationed in Niger. This, even though French President Macron had promised to withdraw them, as soon as General Tchiani “requested” him to do so. Everything must be questioned now. Did Tchiani really request a withdrawal of French troops?
What appears (almost) sure is that the US were supporting the military coup, if not helping General Tchiani – who served as the chiefof the Nigerienpresidential guard (2011-2023) – to the military take-over. See also this important analysis by Professor Chossudovsky.
What’s at stake?
The deposed President Mohamed Bazoum had Macron’s support, not only because he allowed France’s shameless exploitation of Niger through the CFA Franc (for more details see here), but also because France exploits Niger’s rich uranium and high-purity petrol – and has access to Niger’s other mineral riches.
Besides, and maybe most importantly, Niger is a landlocked Sahel country, strategically located in the center of North Africa, between Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, Chad and Libya (see Google map, left).
Being in control of Niger is, in a way, like being in control of Kosovo, the US engineered cut-out piece of land from Serbia, in the middle of former Yugoslavia, bombed to rubble by President Clinton, to divide and conquer – conquer the area.
That is what Niger may become if the US has its say. Washington does not want France involved anymore. Being in control of Niger is like being in control of at least northern West Africa, a resources-rich, but an extreme poverty-stricken territory – which Washington suspects may also interest Russia and possibly China.
It is not a well-kept secret that the private Russian Wagner army has had a foothold in this part of Africa of several thousand mercenaries for at least a couple of years, maybe longer – in Chad, Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, and maybe even Nigeria.
Now the plot – a purely speculative plot – goes even further. The leader of the Wagner private army, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was supposedly killed in a plane crash last Wednesday, on 23 August 2023, between Moscow and St. Petersburg. However, rumors go that he may not have been on the same plane with all his other military brass, a custom he had followed in the past. Therefore he may have escaped the crash.
Rumors say he had been seen after the plane “accident”, in the Central African Republic, where he has his African headquarters, and where he is a hero.
He had been “killed” before and reappeared. So, who knows, this may be his final death. But there is apparently a super-modern clinic with three German plastic surgeons, near his Central African headquarters.
A Russian mercenary army in North Africa that may still be fighting for Russia would be most uncomfortable for Madame Nuland and her hegemonic ilk in Washington.
What to do about it? – An immediate question posed by Washington.
The US attempt is to make sure that Niger, the country of strategy, a member of the US / NATO France supported ECOWAS, will not slip out into liberty from “independence” some 60 years ago.
Shortly after the Niger military coup, Mr. Putin has cautioned not to interfere in Niger’s internal affairs. He was referring precisely to ECOWAS which has “warned” of an ECOWAS military intervention, if the French aligned deposed President Bazoum, would not be returned immediately to the Presidency. In hindsight, and knowing what we know now, the ECOWAS warning too, was a media manufactured untruth by “design”.
ECOWAS is The Economic Community of West African States. It is one of 8 African regional political and economic unions. ECOWAS has 15 member countries located in Central and West Africa. But ECOWAS is divided within. Without the support of the US / NATO and France, it may fall apart. Therefore, a warning from ECOWAS has only meaning when an “arrangement” has been reached before.
Niger’s main party, represented by General Tchiani, the Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie (CNSP), roughly translated as “National Movement for the Defense of the Homeland”, has had Pentagon support, including military training, since its creation.
This means the US is well-established within Niger, and by association within central and West Africa – and they do not want to lose out on this highly strategic – and resources-rich – African position; not to the French, not to the Russians – and not to China.
But, then there is still the unconfirmed suspicion of a mercenary army roaming through Western Africa – and who knows – just in case – what their plans might be, and for whom they might fight.
The leaders of five Melanesian nations have agreed to write to French President Emmanuel Macron “expressing their strong opposition” to the results of the third New Caledonia referendum.
In December 2021, more than 96 percent of people voted against full sovereignty, but the pro-independence movement FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has refused to recognise the result because of a boycott by the Kanak population over the impact of the covid pandemic on the referendum campaign.
Since then, the FLNKS has been seeking international support for its view that the referendum result was not a legitimate outcome.
The Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders — Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the FLNKS — met in Port Vila last week for the 22nd edition of the Leader’s Summit, where they said “the MSG does not recognise the results of the third referendum on the basis of the PIF’s Observer Report”.
FLNKS spokesperson Victor Tutugoro told RNZ Pacific the pro-independence group had continued to protest against the outcome of the December 2021 referendum.
“We contest the referendum because it was held during the circumstances that was not healthy for us. For example, we went through covid, we lost many members of our families [because of the pandemic],” Tutugoro said.
“We will continue to protest at the ICJ (International Court of Justice) level and at the national level. We expect the MSG to help us fight to get the United Nations to debate the cause of the Kanaks.”
The leaders have agreed that “New Caledonia’s inclusion on the UN List of decolonisation territories is protected and maintained”.
The MSG leaders have also directed the UN permanent representative to “examine and provide advice” so they can seek an opinion from the ICJ “on the results of the third referendum conducted in December 2021”.
FLNKS spokesperson Victor Tutugoro at the 22nd Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit in Port Vila. . . . “We contest the referendum because it was held during the circumstances that was not healthy for us.” Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
They have also requested that the UN provide a report on the “credibility of the election process, and mandated the MSG UN permanent representatives, working with the MSG Secretariat and the FLNKS, “to pursue options on the legality of the 3rd referendum”.
Support for West Papua New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS movement also said it would continue to back the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) to become a full member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
Tutugoro told the 22nd MSG Leader’s Summit in Port Vila that FLNKS had always supported West Papua’s move to join the MSG family.
He said by becoming a full member of the sub-regional group, FLNKS was able to benefit from international support to counterbalance the weight of France in its struggle for self-determination.
He said the FLNKS hoped the ULMWP would have the same opportunity and in time it could be included on the UN’s list of non-self-governing territories.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
United Liberation Movement for West Papua delegates at last week’s 22nd Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
In 1958, the poet and trade union leader Abdoulaye Mamani of Zinder (Niger) won an election in his home region against Hamani Diori, one of the founders of the Nigerien Progressive Party. This election result posed a problem for French colonial authorities, who wanted Diori to lead the new Niger. Mamani stood as a candidate for Niger’s left-wing Sawaba party, which was one of the leading forces in the independence movement against France. Sawaba was the party of the talakawa, the ‘commoners’, or the petit peuple (‘little folk’), the party of peasants and workers who wanted Niger to realise their hopes. The word ‘sawaba’ is related to the Hausa word ‘sawki’, meaning to be relieved or to be delivered from misery.
The election result was ultimately annulled, and Mamani decided not to run again because he knew that the die was cast against him. Diori won the re-election and became Niger’s first president in 1960.
Sawaba was banned by authorities in 1959, and Mamani went into exile in Ghana, Mali, and then Algeria. ‘Let us shatter resignation’, he wrote in his poem Espoir (‘Hope’). Mamani came home following Niger’s return to democracy in 1991. In 1993, Niger held its first multi-party election since 1960. The recently re-founded Sawaba won only two seats. That same year, Mamani died in a car accident. The hope of a generation that wanted to break free from France’s neocolonial grip on the country is expressed in Mamani’s stunning line let us shatter resignation.
Yancouba Badji (Niger),Départ pour la route clandestine d’Agadez (Niger) vers la Libye(‘Departure for the Clandestine Route From Agadez (Niger) to Libya’), n.d.
Niger is at the centre of Africa’s Sahel, the region at the south of the Sahara Desert. Most countries of the Sahel had been under French rule for almost a century before they emerged from direct colonialism in 1960, only to slip into a neocolonial structure that largely remains in place today. Around the time when Mamani returned home from Algeria, Alpha Oumar Konaré, a Marxist and former student leader, won the presidency in Mali. Like Niger, Mali was burdened with criminal debt ($3 billion), much of it driven up during military rule. Sixty percent of Mali’s fiscal receipts went toward debt servicing, meaning that Konaré had no chance to build an alternative agenda. When Konaré asked the United States to help Mali with this permanent debt crisis, George Moose, the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs during President Bill Clinton’s administration, replied by saying ‘virtue is its own reward’. In other words, Mali had to pay the debt. Konaré left office in 2002 bewildered. The entire Sahel was submerged in unpayable debt while multinational corporations reaped profits from its precious raw materials.
Each time the people of the Sahel rise, they have been struck down. This was the fate of Mali’s President Modibo Keïta, overthrown and jailed until his death in 1977, and the great president of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara, assassinated in 1987. It is the sentence that has been levied against the people of the entire region. Now, Niger is once again moving in a direction that France and other Western countries do not like. They want neighbouring African countries to send in their militaries to bring ‘order’ to Niger. To explain what is happening in Niger and across the Sahel region, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the International Peoples’ Assembly present red alert no. 17, No Military Intervention against Niger, which makes up the remainder of this newsletter and can be downloaded here.
Why is there an increase in anti-French and anti-Western feeling in the Sahel?
From the mid-nineteenth century, French colonialism has galloped across North, West, and Central Africa. By 1960, France controlled almost five million square kilometres (eight times the size of France itself) in West Africa alone. Though national liberation movements from Senegal to Chad won independence from France that year, the French government maintained financial and monetary control through the African Financial Community or CFA (formerly the colonial French Community of Africa), maintaining the French CFA franc currency in the former West African colonies and forcing the newly independent countries to keep at least half of their foreign exchange reserves in the Banque de France. Sovereignty was not only restricted by these monetary chains: when new projects emerged in the area, they were met by French intervention (spectacularly with the assassination of Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara in 1987). France maintained the neocolonial structures that have allowed French companies to leech the natural resources of the region (such as the uranium from Niger, which powers a third of French light bulbs) and have forced these countries to crush their hopes through an International Monetary Fund-driven debt-austerity agenda.
The simmering resentment against France escalated after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) destroyed Libya in 2011 and exported instability across Africa’s Sahel region. A combination of secessionist groups, trans-Saharan smugglers, and al-Qaeda offshoots joined together and marched south of the Sahara to capture nearly two-thirds of Mali, large parts of Burkina Faso, and sections of Niger. French military intervention in the Sahel through Operation Barkhane (2013) and through the creation of the neocolonial G-5 Sahel Project led to an increase in violence by French troops, including against civilians. The IMF debt-austerity project, the Western wars in West Asia, and the destruction of Libya led to a rise in migration across the region. Rather than tackle the roots of the migration, Europe tried to build its southern border in the Sahel through military and foreign policy measures, including by exporting illegal surveillance technologies to the neocolonial governments in this belt of Africa. The cry ‘La France, dégage!’ (‘France, get out!’) defines the attitude of mass unrest in the region against the neocolonial structures that try to strangle the Sahel.
Wilfried Balima (Burkina Faso), Les trois camarades (‘The Three Comrades’), 2018
Why are there so many coups in the Sahel?
Over the course of the past thirty years, politics in the Sahel countries have seriously desiccated. Many parties with a history that traces back to the national liberation movements and even the socialist movements (such as Niger’s Parti Nigérien pour la Démocratie et le Socialisme-Tarayya) have collapsed into being representatives of their elites, who, in turn, are conduits of a Western agenda. The entry of the al-Qaeda-smuggler forces gave the local elites and the West the justification to further squeeze the political environment, reducing already limited trade union freedoms and excising the left from the ranks of established political parties. The issue is not so much that the leaders of the mainstream political parties are ardently right-wing or centre-right, but that whatever their orientation, they have no real independence from the will of Paris and Washington. They have become – to use a word often voiced on the ground – ‘stooges’ of the West.
Absent any reliable political or democratic instruments, the discarded rural and petty-bourgeois sections of the Sahel countries turn to their urbanised children in the armed forces for leadership. People like Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traoré (born in 1988), who was raised in the rural province of Mouhoun and studied geology in Ouagadougou, and Mali’s Colonel Assimi Goïta (born in 1983), who comes from the cattle market town and military redoubt of Kati, represent these broad class fractions. Their communities have been utterly marginalised by the hard austerity programmes of the IMF, the theft of their resources by Western multinationals, and the payments for Western military garrisons in the country. Discarded with no real political platform to speak for them, large sections of the country have rallied behind the patriotic intentions of these young military men, who have themselves been pushed by mass movements – such as trade unions and peasant organisations – in their countries. That is why the coup in Niger is being defended in mass rallies from the capital city of Niamey to the small, remote towns that border Libya. These young leaders do not come to power with a well-worked agenda. However, they have a level of admiration for people like Thomas Sankara: Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso, for instance, sports a red beret like Sankara, speaks with Sankara’s left-wing frankness, and even mimics Sankara’s diction.
Pathy Tshindele (Democratic Republic of Congo), Sans Titre (‘Untitled’) from the series Power, 2016
Will there be a pro-Western military intervention to remove the government of Niger?
Condemnations of the coup in Niger came quickly from the West (particularly France). The new government of Niger, led by a civilian (former finance minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine), told French troops to leave the country and decided to cut uranium exports to France. Neither France nor the United States – which has built the largest drone base in the world in Agadez (Niger) – are keen to directly intervene with their own military forces. In 2021, France and the United States protected their private companies, TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, in Mozambique by asking the Rwandan army to intervene militarily. In Niger, the West first wanted the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to invade on their behalf, but mass unrest in the ECOWAS member states, including condemnations from trade unions and people’s organisations, stayed the hands of the regional organisation’s ‘peacekeeping forces’. On 19 August of this year, ECOWAS sent a delegation to meet with Niger’s deposed president and with the new government. It has kept its troops on stand-by, warning that it has chosen an undisclosed ‘D-day’ for a military intervention.
The African Union, which had initially condemned the coup and suspended Niger from all union activity, recently stated that a military intervention should not take place. This statement has not stopped rumours from flying about, such as that Ghana might send its troops into Niger (despite the Presbyterian Church of Ghana’s warning not to intervene and the trade unions’ condemnation of a potential invasion). Neighbouring countries have closed their borders with Niger.
Meanwhile, the governments of Burkina Faso and Mali, which have sent troops to Niger, have said that any military intervention against the government of Niger will be taken as an invasion of their own countries. There is a serious conversation afoot about the creation of a new federation in the Sahel that includes Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger, which have a combined population of over 85 million. Rumblings amongst the populations from Senegal to Chad suggest that these might not be the last coups in this important belt of the African continent. The growth of platforms such as the West African Peoples Organisation is key to the political advancement in the region.
Seynihimap (Niger), Untitled, 2006
On 11 August, Philippe Toyo Noudjènoumè, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Benin, wrote a letter to the president of his country and asked a precise and simple question: whose interests have driven Benin to go to war with Niger to starve its ‘sister’ population? ‘You want to commit the people of Benin to go suffocate the people of Niger for the strategic interests of France’, he continued; ‘I demand that… you refuse to involve our country in any aggressive operation against the sister population of Niger… [and] listen to the voice of our people… for peace, harmony, and the development of the African people’. This is the mood in the region: a boldness to confront the neocolonial structures that have prevented hope. The people want to shatter resignation.
The Flying Fijians were defeated by World Rugby Cup hosts France 34-17 in a pre-tournament build-up test in Nantes, France, yesterday.
The Semi Radradra-captained side scored a try in the first spell through hooker Tevita Ikanivere while flyhalf Caleb Muntz added a conversion and penalty as Fiji trailed the second-string French team 21-10 at the break.
Radradra, who has been signed up for the French club Lyon, scored Fiji’s lone try of the second spell as France got points on the board through a try and a couple of penalties after the break.
“It was a tough battle out there for our team, Radradra said after the match.
“We knew they would come out strong. We made a few mistakes which put the home side on the front foot.”
Planet Rugby commented: “After the previous matches of the weekend the visit of Fiji to France must have put a smile on the faces of all who watched the game as both teams produced a little crackerjack of a match that saw Les Bleus successfully explore their depth and the Flying Fijians demonstrate they are an outstanding team with ball in hand.”
Fiji will now play England at Twickenham next Sunday in their last warm-up match before the Rugby World Cup opener against Wales on September 11.
In other pre-Rugby World Cup matches at the weekend, Ireland defeated England 29-10 while South Africa thrashed Wales 52-16.
Georgia beat the United States 22-7 and Italy thrashed Romania 57-7.
A year prior to Italy’s 2022 elections, Giorgia Meloni was invited to join the Aspen Institute, a Washington based strategic think tank with close relations to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Atlantic Council and the military industrial complex:
“The Aspen institute is also involved in the arms industry, with links to arms manufacturing giants such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. It has typically supported the US’s ‘democracy-defending’ or ‘democracy-propagating, humane and civilized’ wars.”
Prominent US politicians including Madeleine Albright, Condolezza Riceas well as Victoria Nulandhave actively collaborated with the Aspen Institute.
The Aspen Institute is generously funded by the Gates Foundation, the Rockefellers, Carnegie and the Ford Foundation, not to mention Goldman Sachs, which over the years has played a key role in the “selection” of Italian politicians.
It is worth noting that on February 20, 2023, Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Kiev, meeting up with President Zelensky. And on the following day Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni promptly followed suit, traveling to Kiev to meet up with the corrupt Ukrainian president.
“She affirmed Italian support for Ukraine and said that her government intends to supply Spada and Skyguard air defence systems to the Ukrainian army”.
Is Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni an “Instrument”, Political Asset of Washington? The answer is obvious.
Timeline PM Giorgia Meloni Arrives in Washington, July 26, 2023
PM Meloni had arrived in Washington prior to the Coup d’Etat in Niger (26th of July), i.e. a day prior to the Biden-Meloni meeting in the Oval Office.
There was no White House record of a discussion or exchange pertaining to the crisis in Niger.
One suspects that in addition to China, the Niger Coup d’Etat was also discussed behind closed doors, –e.g. with Victoria Nuland and Christina Segal Knowles.
27 July 2023: PM Meloni meets President Biden in the Oval Office.
“Ukraine (and Italy’s new voice). PM Meloni and President Biden reiterated their support for Ukraine against Russia’s war of aggression and vowed to “provide political, military, financial, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine for as long as it takes, with the aim to reach a just and lasting peace.” Later, at the presser, the Italian leader noted that Rome’s posture on the conflict “is extremely respected and held in high regard” by the US.
Oval Office
PRESIDENT BIDEN: “And as NATO Allies, the transatlantic partnership is the cornerstone of our shared security. And the Italian troops are playing a critical role in Europe, in the Mediterranean, and beyond.
Italy and the United States are also standing strong with Ukraine. And I compliment you on your very strong support in defending against Russian atrocities. …
PM MELONI: Thank you. I am very pleased to be here today to testify the deep friendship that bonds the United States and Italy.
… Moreover, after the Russian aggression against Ukraine, for all together we decided to defend the international law. And I’m proud that Italy, from the beginning, played its part in it. We did it simply because supporting Ukraine means defending the peaceful coexistence of people and states everywhere in the world.”
PM Meloni also (unconditionally) endorsed Washington’s stance pertaining to Africa, which broadly consists in “dollarizing” the entire continent (including francophone Africa) while concurrently imposing IMF-World Bank “strong economic medicine”.
PM MELONI: … And on the other hand, we also need to be fair with nations that feel they have been exploited of their resources and that they show distrust towards the West. President Biden knows I take care a lot about Africa, about the role that we can play in these countries that can help us, building with them a new relation based on a new approach, which is a peer-to-peer approach. Also to fight illegal migration and all the problems that we face. It’s all things that we will discuss in the G7 presidency of Italy next year.
Among those present in the Oval Office on July 27, 2023 were: Victoria Nuland, Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs, and National Security Council Director for International Economics, Christina Segal-Knowles.
Victoria Nuland arrived in Niger on August 7, 2023 on an unannounced visit in the immediate wake of the coup d’Etat.
Nuland did not meet General Abdourahamane Tiani who had been declared head of the ruling military Junta on July 28, 2023.
It is worth noting that Tiani studied in Washington D.C at the National Defense University’s (NDU) College of International Security Affairs (CISA). CISA is the U.S. Department of Defense’s “flagship for education and building of partner capacity in combating terrorism, irregular warfare, and integrated deterrence at the strategic level.”
Nuland’s meetings were with a team led by General Barmou.
“The Secretary asked me to make this trip – as you may know, I was in the neighborhood last week and then in Jeddah – because we wanted to speak frankly to the people responsible to this challenge to the democratic order to see if we could try to resolve these issues diplomatically, if we could get some negotiations going, …
And then we met with the self-proclaimed chief of defense of this operation, General Barmou, and three of the colonels supporting him. I will say that these conversations were extremely frank and at times quite difficult because, again, we were pushing for a negotiated solution.” (emphasis added)
Tacitly acknowledged by Nuland, both General Abdourahamane Tiani and General Barmou in terms of their military profile and background are “friends of America”.Barmou also undertook his military training in the U.S. at Fort Moore, Columbus, Georgia and at the National Defense University (ND) which operates under the Guidance of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Barmou also collaborated with U.S. Special Forces. In the words of the Wall Street Journal:
“At Center of Niger’s Coup Is One of America’s Favorite Generals: Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, long courted by Washington as a partner against Islamist extremism, has emerged as the main diplomatic channel between the U.S. and the junta (emphasis added)
“With regard to the – to us, interestingly, General Barmou, former Colonel Barmou, is somebody who has worked very closely with U.S. Special Forces over many, many years.”
Ms Nuland stated this following a crucial first meeting of U.S. officials with members of the military junta in Niger in a significant diplomatic push to restore democratic rule to the country.
Ms Nuland said the U.S. was pushing for a negotiated solution in Niger and went “through in considerable detail the risks to aspects of our cooperation that he has historically cared about a lot.”
“So we are hopeful that that will sink in,” added the U.S. undersecretary.
While noting several regional meetings are going on to negotiate with coupists to release President Mohamed Bazoum and step aside, Ms Nuland said the U.S. would continue to watch closely with allies and partners needed to make the negotiations successful.
“If there is a desire on the part of the people who are responsible for this to return to constitutional order, we are prepared to help with that. We are prepared to help address concerns on all sides,” Ms Nuland stated. (emphasis added)
Let us be under no illusions, The architects of the coup “against the democratically elected government of Mr Bazoum” were acting on behalf and in coordination with Washington.
According to a carefully researched article by Nick Nurse, “At Least Five Members of Niger Junta Were Trained by the US”.
The unspoken objective is “Paris out of Africa.”
Our Message to the People of Africa:
While “France never stopped looting Africa, now the tables are turning”, in favor of the most oppressive and tyrannical form of US. neocolonialism, which must be forcefully opposed.
Niger “Regime Change” on Behalf of Uncle Sam. “Paris Out of Africa”
Washington’s unspoken foreign policy objective is to remove France from Africa.
Niger is strategic. It produces 5% of the global supply of uranium, which is in part exported to France for use in its nuclear energy facilities.
USAFRICOM has a military base in Niger. The US military has been routinely collaborating with their Nigerien counterparts
The unspoken objective of Victoria Nuland’s mission was to ultimately to “negotiate”, of course unofficially Niamey’s “alignment” with Washington against Paris:
“The United States flies drones out of a base in the country’s arid heartland. French peacekeepers, effectively chased out of Mali, withdrew to outposts in Niger last year. Now, their status [France] and role in a country run by the junta’s transitional regime remains up in the air.” (WP, August 9, 2023, emphasis added)
“Divide and Rule”: Propaganda Against France’s President François Macron
Amply documented, Wall Street and the Financial Establishment, in liaison with the White House controls several (corrupt) European heads of State and heads of government, including Germany’s Chancellor Scholz, France’s President Macron, Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von Der Leyen, among others.
The US is at war with both Europe and Africa. It’s an act of economic warfare. Washington is also quite deliberately creating political divisions within the European Union.
With regard to both Ukraine and Africa, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is aligned with Washington. Despite her fake humanitarian rhetoric, she has casually endorsed America’s hegemonic agenda in Africa, including the dollarization of the entire continent:
PM Meloni: “President Biden knows I take care a lot about Africa, about the role that we can play in these countries that can help us.”
Washington is currently involved in a “soft coup” against French colonialism, coupled with a smear campaign (with the support of PM Meloni) against France’s president Macron.
In the video below, which was recently released, Italy’s PM Meloni rightfully focusses on the exploitation of child labourers in Burkina Faso’ gold industry, while casually placing the blame on France’s President Macron for the payments system in CFA francs coordinated by the French Treasury.
What she fails to mention is that the gold industry in Burkina Faso is “dollarized” and controlled primarily by Canadian mining companies. See also here. There is not a single French colonial company involved in gold mining.
Video: “You Messed Up Macron”
Annex A Brief Note on the History of U.S.- France Relations
There is a long history of US-France relations going back the Louisiana purchase (1803), The Monroe Doctrine (1823), the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) organized by Germany’s Chancellor Otto van Bismarck. The U.S was politely excluded from participating in the colonial scramble for Africa. (Most of those former colonial powers have been progressively shoved out of Africa, starting in the 1970s).
The Wars against Indochina and Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos (1946-1975), Charles de Gaulle “Pulls the Plug on NATO” (1966-67), NATO Headquarters move from Paris to Brussels (1967).
Since the early 1990s, Washington has extended its sphere of influence: the entire African continent is currently in the stranglehold of a dollar denominated debt which has led to mass poverty, not to mention the imposition of “strong economic medicine” by the IMF-World Bank. The U.S has numerous military bases throughout the continent.
There are many other dimensions. Washington’s current objective is to eventually eliminate “francophone countries” and exclude France from the African Continent.
Rwanda in 1990 is the model. The president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana dies in an air crash. A former Belgian colony largely within the political sphere of influence of France was from one year to the next transformed into a de facto English speaking colony dominated by the U.S, French was eventually scrapped as an official language. Major General Kagame –(who subsequently became Vice-President and then President) was instrumental in leading the military invasion from Uganda. He does not speak a word of French.
The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.
Major General Paul Kagame had been head of military intelligence in the Ugandan Armed Forces; he had been trained at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College (CGSC) in Leavenworth, Kansas which focuses on warfighting and military strategy. Kagame returned from Leavenworth to lead the RPA, shortly after the 1990 invasion.
Prior to the outbreak of the Rwandan civil war, the RPA was part of the Ugandan Armed Forces. Shortly prior to the October 1990 invasion of Rwanda, military labels were switched. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty, Chapter 7)
*****
On a personal note
In a United Nations mission to Rwanda in 1996-97, the author together with Pierre Galand submitted the following report to the Government of Rwanda:
Michel Chossudovsky and Pierre Galand, L’usage de la dette exterieure du Rwanda, la responsabilité des créanciers, mission report, United Nations Development Program and Government of Rwanda, Kigali, 1997.
We were subsequently advised by Vice President Paul Kagame that the report had to be submitted in English. My response to Vice President Paul Kagame: “You should have told us that, and we would have drafted the report in English, We suggest that you get it translated”.
Six refugees from Afghanistan died in the Channel when the boat they were travelling to the UK on capsized. Predictably, the Mail on Sunday ran a suitably horrid front page, while GB News screamed about ‘taxpayer cash’ – and less predictably (but becoming more the norm), the Labour Party under Keir Starmer gave both of them a run for their money.
Six refugees dead, yet who’s to blame?
As Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, on Saturday 12 August, six people died and 61 others were rescued including children. They were mostly from Afghanistan, with some coming from war-torn Sudan.
A spokesperson for the Utopia56 humanitarian group blamed border “repression” for the tragedy. They told AFP that the difficulty of securing legal passage only:
increases the dangerousness of crossings and pushes people to take more and more risks to reach England.
Previously, five people died at sea and four went missing while trying to cross to Britain from France last year. In November 2021, 27 people also died when a boat capsized in the Channel.
Of course, this is also a Europe-wide problem. As the Canary‘s Afroze Fatima Zaidi recently wrote:
“The United Nations has registered more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances in the central Mediterranean since 2014, making it the most dangerous migrant crossing in the world”.
The Tories (and their mates in the corporate media) in the UK are quick to blame anyone except themselves, of course. The Mail on Sunday‘s front page on 13 August was a case in point. It ran with the headline:
Was French patrol boat to blame for migrant drownings?
I mean, really? An old law of journalism: when there’s a question-mark in the headline, the answer is invariably ‘no’ pic.twitter.com/LG0wxPRtR6
So, the Tories and the Mail on Sunday‘s responses were predictable. But what of the Labour Party?
Labour: courting the right
Sky News interviewed the shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson. Her response to the deaths of six people from Afghanistan? First, blame the Tories:
Labours Bridget Phillipson is asked about six refugees drowning in the channel, & in her reply she talks about the criminal gangs & the asylum backlog. She doesn't mention creating safe routes so people fleeing war & persecution don't have to drown trying to get here pic.twitter.com/FpzNWlrNd5
And next, say Labour would do everything except open legal routes for refugees to get here by:
As more refugees drown in the channel, Bridget Phillipson is asked what Labour would do differently. She mentions a new cross border police unit, ending the Rwanda scheme, processing cases more quickly, and getting more return agreements.
Oh, and she dropped everyone’s favourite right-wing talking point on right-wing GB News – that the asylum system is costing the good-old British taxpayer a “fortune”:
'It's all about having a fairer system that deals with cases quickly.’
Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, says the Government's 'total failure' in tackling the asylum process is 'costing us all the fortune'.
The same line former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib used:
'It's certainly leaving our taxpayers' pockets and not delivering the effect that we wish of it.'
Ben Habib says France's attempts to stop migrants crossing the Channel into the UK is a 'pantomime' and questions where the UK's funding is going. pic.twitter.com/4StGNMUVrJ
The fact Labour are now sending front-bench members onto GB News says a lot about the kind of voter it wants to attract.
Colonialist UK: where Ukrainians matter more than Afghans
Back in the real world, the six people who drowned will likely have families mourning in Afghanistan. It didn’t have to be this way. The government has a resettlement scheme for Afghans in place – yet it has barely let anyone in:
Thousands of Afghans are eligible to enter the UK via the government's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, but only six have been allowed to enter on this route since 22 December 2022.
Compare the six people from Afghanistan the government has resettled with the 10,000 Ukrainians that we accepted a week in May 2022. As LBC host Sangita Myska summed up regarding the Tories detaining refugees on the Bibby Stockholm barge:
if they were 39 white men from Ukraine walking up that gangplank into that barge, I’m telling you now there would be a hue and cry, the like of which you have never seen.
I love Sangita for saying what many are not willing to say
The double standards in the UK against migrants of colour has never been clearer. It cannot be denied @SangitaMyska
Regardless of race and background, these migrants are human beings and deserve the same treatment and… pic.twitter.com/IxR2yrlVeW
— KWAJO- Social Issues Campaigner (@Kwajotweneboa) August 12, 2023
It’s almost as though people in the UK don’t value and respect the lives of Black and brown people. They merely tolerate us. They don’t value us as human beings; they see us as cockroaches to keep out of the way. Ukrainian people are considered as a whole – their culture, their traditions, their communities. Black and brown people don’t get that luxury. This is because white people only consider fellow white people to have inalienable rights.
You’d expect the Mail on Sunday and GB News to push these racist, colonialist mindsets. But Labour? Well, that’s where we’re at, now.
This story originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch on Aug. 1, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
At 3 am on July 26, 2023, the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Troops, led by Brigadier General Abdourahmane Tchiani closed the country’s borders and declared a curfew. The coup d’état was immediately condemned by the Economic Community of West African States, by the African Union, and by the European Union. Both France and the United States—which have military bases in Niger—said that they were watching the situation closely. A tussle between the Army—which claimed to be pro-Bazoum—and the presidential guard threatened the capital, but it soon fizzled out. On July 27, General Abdou Sidikou Issa of the army released a statement saying that he would accept the situation to “avoid a deadly confrontation between the different forces which… could cause a bloodbath.” Brigadier General Tchiani went on television on July 28 to announce that he was the new president of the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie or CNSP).
The coup in Niger follows similar coups in Mali (August 2020 and May 2021) and Burkina Faso (January 2022 and September 2022), and Guinea (September 2021). Each of these coups was led by military officers angered by the presence of French and US troops and by the permanent economic crises inflicted on their countries. This region of Africa—the Sahel—has faced a cascade of crises: the desiccation of the land due to the climate catastrophe, the rise of Islamic militancy due to the 2011 NATO war in Libya, the increase in smuggling networks to traffic weapons, humans, and drugs across the desert, the appropriation of natural resources—including uranium and gold—by Western companies that have simply not paid adequately for these riches, and the entrenchment of Western military forces through the construction of bases and the operation of these armies with impunity.
Two days after the coup, the CNSP announced the names of the 10 officers who lead the CNSP. They come from the entire range of the armed forces, from the army (General Mohamed Toumba) to the Air Force (Colonel Major Amadou Abouramane) to the national police (Deputy General Manager Assahaba Ebankawel). It is by now clear that one of the most influential members of the CNSP is General Salifou Mody, former chief of staff of the military and leader in the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, which led the February 2010 coup against President Mamadou Tandja and which governed Niger until Bazoum’s predecessor Mahamadou Issoufou won the 2011 presidential election. It was during Issoufou’s time in office that the United States government built the world’s largest drone base in Agadez and that the French special forces garrisoned the city of Irlit on behalf of the uranium mining company Orano (formerly a part of Areva).
It is important to note that General Salifou Mody is perceived as an influential member of CNSP given his influence in the army and his international contacts. On February 28, 2023, Mody met with the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley during the African Chiefs of Defense Conference in Rome to discuss “regional stability, including counterterrorism cooperation and the continued fight against violent extremism in the region.” On March 9, Mody visited Mali to meet with Colonel Assimi Goïta and the Chief of Staff of the Malian army General Oumar Diarra to strengthen military cooperation between Niger and Mali. A few days later on March 16, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger to meet with Bazoum. In what many in Niger perceived as a sidelining of Mody, he was appointed on June 1 as the Nigerien ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. Mody, it is said in Niamey, is the voice in the ear of Brigadier General Tchiani, the titular head of state.
Corruption and the West
A highly informed source in Niger tells us that the reason why the military moved against Bazoum is that “he’s corrupt, a pawn of France. Nigerians were fed up with him and his gang. They are in the process of arresting the members of the deposed system, who embezzled public funds, many of whom have taken refuge in foreign embassies.” The issue of corruption hangs over Niger, a country with one of the world’s most lucrative uranium deposits. The “corruption” that is talked about in Niger is not about petty bribes by government officials, but about an entire structure—developed during French colonial rule—that prevents Niger from establishing sovereignty over its raw materials and over its development.
At the heart of the “corruption” is the so-called “joint venture” between Niger and France called Société des mines de l’Aïr (Somaïr), which owns and operates the uranium industry in the country. Strikingly, 85 percent of Somaïr is owned by France’s Atomic Energy Commission and two French companies, while only 15 percent is owned by Niger’s government. Niger produces over 5 percent of the world’s uranium, but its uranium is of a very high quality. Half of Niger’s export receipts are from sales of uranium, oil, and gold. One in three lightbulbs in France are powered by uranium from Niger, at the same time as 42 percent of the African country’s population lived below the poverty line. The people of Niger have watched their wealth slip through their fingers for decades. As a mark of the government’s weakness, over the course of the past decade, Niger has lost over $906 million in only 10 arbitration cases brought by multinational corporations before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes and the International Chamber of Commerce.
France stopped using the franc in 2002 when it switched to the Euro system. But, fourteen former French colonies continued to use the Communauté Financiére Africaine (CFA), which gives immense advantages to France (50 percent of the reserves of these countries have to be held in the French Treasury and France’s devaluations of the CFA—as in 1994—have catastrophic effects on the country’s that use it). In 2015, Chad’s president Idriss Déby Itno said that the CFA “pulls African economies down” and that the “time had come to cut the cord that prevents Africa from developing.” Talk now across the Sahel is for not only the removal of French troops—as has taken place in Burkina Faso and in Mali—but of a break with the French economic hold on the region.
The new non-alignment
At the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit in July, Burkina Faso’s leader, President Ibrahim Traoré wore a red beret that echoed the uniform of the assassinated socialist leader of his country, Thomas Sankara. Traoré reacted strongly to the condemnation of the military coups in the Sahel, including to a recent visit to his country by an African Union delegation. “A slave that does not rebel does not deserve pity,” he said. “The African Union must stop condemning Africans who decide to fight against their own puppet regimes of the West.”
In February, Burkina Faso had hosted a meeting that included the governments of Mali and Guinea. On the agenda is the creation of a new federation of these states. It is likely that Niger will be invited into these conversations.
Elected representatives from a broad range of Western democracies beyond the United States are taking bold measures to give real voice to citizens in decision-making. Confronted with protests, polarization and pessimism, countries such as Canada, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands are recognizing the need for a system of governance that is more inclusive and…
As humanity recons with a never ending cavalcade of catastrophes, large segments of the population have succumbed to despair or distraction through culture wars or a series of vain cultural phenomena. [Insert Barbenheimer joke here.]
Many youth, particularly in France, have channeled this hopelessness into rage. For the past several months the country had been seeing a series of strikes and riots in response to the raising of the retirement age, and these riots intensified in late June after the police murder of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk during a traffic stop. As the dust settles, inept politicians blame bad parenting and TikTok.
Meanwhile in Peru, protesters from around the country have gathered in Lima calling for the resignation of President Dina Boluarte and the dissolution of congress.
Last Wednesday, Nigerien military officers announced they had overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum, a close ally of the United States and France. ECOWAS, an economic bloc of West African countries, has threatened to take military action unless the coup is reversed by Sunday. But the leader of Niger’s new military junta has vowed to defy any attempts to restore the former president to power…
French President Emmanuel Macron and Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau have reached an agreement to settle the “land problem” in the southern region of Vanuatu before the end of this year.
Prime Minister Kalsakau made this declaration during his speech at the 7th Melanesian Arts and Cultural Festival (MACFEST) in Saralana Park yesterday afternoon, coinciding with President Macron’s visit to the festival.
“We have talked about a topic that is important to the people of Vanuatu in relation to the problem for us in the Southern Islands. The President has said that we will resolve the land problem between now and December,” he said.
President Macron of France and Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau at MACFEST 2023 at Saralana Park yesterday afternoon. Image: Doddy Morris/Vanuatu Daily Post
Though not explicitly naming them, it is evident that the southern land problem mentioned refers to the islands of Matthew and Hunter, located in the southern portion of Vanuatu, over which significant demands have been made.
In addition to this issue, the boundary between New Caledonia and Vanuatu remains unresolved.
The hope was that during President Macron’s visit, Prime Minister Kalsakau — carried in a traditional basket by Aneityum bearers during the opening of MACFEST 2023 — would address the Matthew and Hunter issue with the French leader.
As part of Vanuatu’s traditional practice, Kalsakau and President Macron participated in a kava-drinking ceremony, expressing their wish for the fruitful resolution of the discussed matters.
Matthew and Hunter are two small and uninhabited volcanic islands in the South Pacific, located 300 kilometres east of New Caledonia and south-east of Vanuatu.
Both islands are claimed by Vanuatu as part of Tafea province, and considered by the people of Aneityum to be part of their custom ownership. However, since 2007 they had also been claimed by France as part of New Caledonia.
Elation over statement
The announcement of the two leaders’ commitment to resolving the southern land issue was met with elation among the people of Vanuatu, particularly in the Tafea province.
“France has come back to Vanuatu; President Macron has told me that it has been a long time, but he has come back today with huge support to help us more,” said Prime Minister Kalsakau, expressing gratitude.
The Vanuatu government head revealed that France had allocated a “substantial sum” of money to be signed-off soon, which would lead to significant development in Vanuatu.
This would include the reconstruction of French schools and hospitals, such as the Melsisi Hospital in Pentecost, which had been damaged by past cyclones.
In response to the requests made by PM Kalsakau and President Macron, the chiefs of the Tafea province conducted another customary ceremony to acknowledge and honour the visiting leaders.
President Macron at MACFEST 2023 More than 4000 people gathered yesterday at Saralana Park to witness the presence of President Macron and warmly welcome him to MACFEST 2023.
He delighted the crowd by delivering a speech in Bislama language, noting the significance of Vanuatu’s relationship with France and highlighting its special and historical nature.
“Let me tell you how pleased I am to be with you, not only as a foreign head of state but as a neighbour, coming directly from Noumea,” President Macron said.
He praised Prime Minister Kalsakau for fostering a strong bond between the two countries amid “various challenges and foreign interactions”, emphasising that their connection went beyond bilateral relations, rooted in their shared history.
President Macron further shared his satisfaction with the discussions he had with Kalsakau, expressing joy that his day could culminate with the celebration of MACFEST, symbolising the exchange between himself and Vanuatu’s PM.
“My delegation is thrilled to participate in the dances and demonstrations that bring together delegations from across the region, celebrating the strength and vitality of Melanesia and the spirit of exchange and sharing,” he said.
The President expressed his pride in being part of the region, particularly in New Caledonia, and witnessing the young teenagers of Melanesia coming together, dancing, and singing, driven by the belief that they will overcome the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Last night, President Macron departed for Papua New Guinea to continue his historic Pacific visit. He expressed his happiness in meeting members from PNG, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and other participating nations during MACFEST.
Doddy Morrisis a Vanuatu Daily Post journalist. Republished with permission.
People have taken action in the UK, Canada, and France over the imprisonment of UK pro-Palestine activists. It came after high-profile campaigners, including Roger Waters, issued a joint statement condemning the British state’s persecution of the six people over their activism against the state of Israel.
Imprisoned for resisting Israel’s apartheid
As the Canary has reported, the British state is currently detaining six activists. It’s over their part in protests about the Israeli state’s ongoing apartheid against the Palestinian people – including its illegal occupation. Specifically, the protests were over UK-based arms companies, and their supply chains, that sell weapons and military kit to Israel.
Four of the activists have been in prison since December 2022. It’s because they took action to dismantle Teledyne Labtech – a Welsh factory belonging to American-owned Teledyne. The company is the largest exporter by volume of weapons from Britain to Israel. As campaign group Palestine Action said:
The four activists are the longest serving prisoners for taking action with Palestine Action to disrupt the war machine. Their incarceration demonstrates Britain prioritising the interests of an arms industry which facilitates the genocide of the Palestinian people, over the freedom of its own citizens.
The two other activists are locked up over an action they took in June 2021 at company APPH. It makes drone landing gear for Elbit Systems, which supplies 85% of Israel’s military drones. One of the jailed activists is Mike Lynch-White. He and others covered APPH’s building in red paint, scaled the roof, and destroyed equipment. Palestine Action said of the two activists:
They both took action to disrupt the military industrial complex which profits from the blood shed of the Palestinian people and the apartheid regime they’re subjugated too. For this, they should not be imprisoned.
So, after support from 80 public figures, including Waters, and also a separate statement from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, Palestine Action organised a day of protests.
Global solidarity with pro-Palestine activists
On Saturday 22 July, hundreds of people came out to call for the freedom of Palestine Action political prisoners. In England, people demonstrated in Manchester, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Brighton:
Banner drop in Manchester calling for the freedom of Palestine Action prisoners, locked up for taking necessary action to disrupt the British Israeli weapons trade #FreeTheActionistspic.twitter.com/ZCjR9Khpth
In Sheffield specifically, people took action against Barclays. As the Canary recently reported, the bank, according to the group Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), has:
over £1 billion in shares and provides over £3 billion in loans and underwriting to 9 companies whose weapons, components, and military technology have been used in Israel’s armed violence against Palestinians.
Groups including Samidoun and Collectif Palestine Vaincra put posters up around France:
A l'occasion d'une journée internationale de mobilisation, affichage dans les rues de Paris pour exiger la libération immédiate des 6 prisonniers politiques de Palestine Action (@Pal_action) détenus en Grande Bretagne.
— BDS Vancouver/Canada Palestine Association (@bds_vancouver) July 23, 2023
A ‘desperation’ to protect a foreign apartheid state
A Palestine Action spokesperson said in a press release:
For the state to turn to imprisoning its own citizens, demonstrates their desperation to protect the military supply chain of a foreign apartheid state. The show of solidarity from across the world in support of our activists in prison, and others facing prison, for disrupting the production of Israeli weapons, shows the strength of our movement. Collectively, we will resist until all Israeli weapons factories in Britain are shut down and the activists, as well as the Palestinian people, are free.
As the Canary has documented, the state increasingly criminalising protest is becoming a lot more common and authoritarian as a result of the Tories’ Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts (PCSC) Act. The state jailing pro-Palestinian activists is the thin end of this wedge – but groups like Palestine Action will continue, regardless.
Safran Helicopter Engines and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) have decided to set up their new joint venture company in Bangalore, India. It will be dedicated to the design, development, production, sales and support of helicopter engines, with first objective to build the most adequate propulsion solution for the Indian Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) future 13-ton […]
President Emmanuel Macron in Noumea on an earlier visit to New Caledonia … “recommitting” France to the Pacific region. Image: Crikey
Macron will use those two stops to outline his Indo-Pacific strategy, aimed at “recommitting” France to the region, the official said.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape said he would meet one-on-one with Macron, and the itinerary for the visit also included a courtesy call on Governor-General Sir Bob Dadae and the signing of various agreements.
Marape emphasised the significance of Macron’s visit in strengthening bilateral relations between France and Papua New Guinea.
“Under my leadership, France and PNG have been actively enhancing our bilateral relationship, along with other nations,” he said on his website.
“I appreciate President Macron’s commitment, as demonstrated by his decision to visit PNG and engage in discussions on matters of mutual interest between our countries.”
Final LNG decision
Macron’s visit comes on the eve of the final investment decision (FID) by French super-major TotalEnergies on the Papua LNG Project.
TotalEnergies is also involved in downstream processing of natural resources such as forests.
“In the midst of the evolving geopolitical landscape in the region, Papua New Guinea serves as ‘neutral ground,’ and I will urge France to consider PNG’s strategic position amid the changing regional dynamics,” Marape added.
“The visit of President Macron to PNG will further solidify the growing cooperation and shared goals between our two nations, particularly in the areas of forest conservation, French investments in PNG such as TotalEnergies, mobilising resources to support small Pacific Island countries and communities, and other relevant matters.”
Macron last year relaunched France’s Indo-Pacific approach in the aftermath of a bitter row over a cancelled submarine contract with Australia, casting France as a balancing power in a region dominated by the tussle between China and the United States.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Dakar, July 17, 2023—Burkinabè authorities should immediately reverse the suspension of French television news channel La Chaîne Info (LCI) and stop censoring local and foreign media coverage of the jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso and the Sahel region, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
On June 23, Burkina Faso’s media regulator, the Superior Council for Communication (known by its French acronym CSC), suspended LCI, which is part of private broadcaster TF1, for three months for allegedly airing false information about deteriorating security conditions in the country on its current affairs show, “24H Pujadas,” according to several mediareports and a copy of the decision.
“We call on the Burkinabè authorities to reverse their decision and immediately lift the suspension of LCI’s broadcasting,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator in New York. “The latest suspension of a French media outlet over its insurgency reporting appears retaliatory rather than grounded in fact and robs the people of Burkina Faso of their right to know what is happening in their country.”
Thousands of Burkinabè citizens have died and millions have been displaced in the eight-year insurgency led by militants affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Islamic State, who currently control large areas of the country. Soured relations between France, the country’s former colonial power, and Burkina Faso’s ruling military junta led to the February withdrawal of French troops helping to fight the insurgents.
LCI is the third French outlet to be suspended since December 2022 in Burkina Faso after France 24’s suspension in Marchand the radio station RFI in December. In addition, two French journalists working for Le Monde and Libération were expelled from Burkina Faso in April.
The CSC suspension decision said commentary by LCI’s popular “24H Pujadas” host, Abnousse Shalmani, on an April 24 segment titled “Sahel, the lost zone” was “not based on any concrete evidence” and “lacked objectivity and credibility.” It also said the report exaggerated the scale of the insurgency and “seditiously” exposed “unverified” failures in Burkina Faso’s military response to the insurgency, Reuters reported.
Blahima Traoré, CSC general secretary, told CPJ by messaging app that the three satellite television providers that carry LCI for subscribers, were formally notified of the decision on June 23.
Canal+ Burkina, Neerwaya Multivision, and Stars Médias Burkina—the three providers—would be “liable for penalties” if they failed to suspend LCI for three months from the notification date, a CSC notification sent to Canal+ Burkina’s general manager said. At least one of the three—Canal+ Burkina—has suspended LCI broadcasts, but the channel is still available online, Guézouma Sanogo, president of the Association of Journalists of Burkina, told CPJ via messaging app on July 10. CPJ was not able to immediately confirm whether Neerwaya Multivision and Stars Médias Burkina have suspended LCI broadcasts.
According to Article 46 of the 2013 law that establishes the regulator and sets out its powers and composition, the CSC can suspend the broadcasting of a program “for a maximum of three months” depending on the seriousness of the breach.
CPJ tried unsuccessfully to contact LCI and Shalmani for comment via their social media accounts.
The police racist killing of children is a regular occurance for decades in France, often triggering burgeoning spontaneous working class insurgencies. The moments after French police killed 17yr old ‘Nahel M’ in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre wasn’t any different. 45,000 riot police, including the infamously brutal BRI special forces, contributed to the quelling of another uprising in France conducted mostly by young working classes of African heritage in the ‘banlieues’ or contained council estates often many miles out of the urban centres. Over two nights of the uprising at least 2,000 insurgents have been arrested by French authorities, the average age of arrestees is 17yrs old, pointing to another generation that will see considerable sections of their neighbours experiencing the French criminal justice system and prisons that will only boost their sense of alienation and confrontation with the French colonial state. Black working class communities across colonial centres in the ‘West’ are seeing multiple generations of the same family in prisons at the same time.The average age of the arestees also indicates how young our children are brutalised by the police and schools. The youth who led the uprising are of African heritage, both northern (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and also other regions like from West Africa and other former colonies of the French state. The uprising saw the insurrectionists use fire bombs, grenades and firearms against the state, indicating a further intensification by means of tactics as compared to previous similar uprisings. There is much to explore as to the significance of the uprising by means of class-struggle against capitalist-colonialism and for socialism in the colonial centre in a context of global victories of white supremacist racism and the far-right.
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Sukant Chandan is a London-based decolonial anti-imperialist activist and analyst. He advocated justice for Libyans in visiting Libya three times during the Nato onslaught in 2011 and reports frequently on English-language news channels based in Russia, Iran, China and Lebanon on which he discusses issues pertaining to the challenges of the struggle to end neo-colonialism. He can be contacted at sukant.chandan@gmail.com.
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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sukant Chandan.
As geopolitics brings increasing engagement by external actors with the Pacific, there is a need to coordinate more effectively — including Australia and France.
At the same time, better coordination must be done in a consultative and respectful manner in partnership with Pacific nations, particularly in light of Australia’s commitment to a “new era” with the region.
To help inform our conclusions, we conducted discussions with Pacific Islanders in Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga who have experience working with Australia and France.
Development coordination is crucial for maximising the impact of scarce resources and ensuring that the often-limited bandwidth of Pacific governments is not overwhelmed — and that local sovereignty and perspectives are prioritised.
Playing to the strengths of different actors, drawing on collective expertise, and avoiding duplicating or undermining respective efforts are also crucial. Donor coordination forums and conferences, greater visibility and mapping of respective contributions, alignment on diligence and compliance requirements, and dedicated resources for coordination are all ideas to explore.
Australia and France can work together to improve coordination, alongside other actors including the US, New Zealand, Japan, European institutions, and multilateral development banks. While yet to demonstrate its practical value fully, the Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative promises to perform such a function — though France and the EU are only observers, and it has received a mixed reception in the Pacific.
Maritime domain awareness
Australia should ensure that the grouping remains open to, and engaged with, France as much as possible. The first substantial focus area for Partners in the Blue Pacific is illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and it is important for France to remain engaged, given its substantial exclusive economic zones in the Pacific and capacity to contribute to maritime domain awareness.
At the same time, consultations in the Pacific also noted the risk for Australia in working too closely with France and EU institutions, as this may lead to a reduction in the responsiveness for which Australia is highly valued. Engaging with, and accessing funding from, the EU is widely seen to be onerous, highly bureaucratic and operationally decontextualised.
Australia must also confront in frank terms the risks of working with France in the Pacific. It needs to grapple with the complexity of relationships with New Caledonia and French Polynesia and how they engage in forums such as the Pacific Islands Forum on essentially the same terms as sovereign nations, even though key policy domains including foreign relations remain under Paris’s purview.
Australia needs to be cognisant of how perspectives can diverge between overseas and metropolitan France and sensitively navigate this complexity.
In parts of the region, people express resentment and distrust driven by France’s nuclear testing, colonial history, and ongoing sovereignty over parts of the Pacific. Developments in recent years around New Caledonia’s status, especially the 2021 independence referendum, have added to this.
Pacific voices saw France’s approach in the Pacific as more top-down, with less engagement with local needs and preferences when compared to Australia’s agenda, which is increasingly focused on localisation and sustainability. A widely held perception of lower French cultural and linguistic competency in the Pacific further hinders this.
Moreover, the wider context of the Australian government’s push towards a First Nations foreign policy, and its willingness to speak openly about the legacy of colonialism in the Indo-Pacific, must be considered in the context of engaging France in the Pacific.
Reputational risk
There is a reputational risk for Australia were it to be conspicuously inactive on indigenous issues with respect to the French territories while engaging with such issues elsewhere.
While it is clear that the Australian government intends to remain neutral on the future status of French territories, it must be cognisant of, and proactive in, managing these risks while at the same time maintaining a close relationship with metropolitan France.
One way of doing this is to continue to foster positive people-to-people links with Indigenous people in French Pacific territories. This would build on existing work in New Caledonia, for instance, to establish cultural and artistic links with First Nations Australians and to share indigenous knowledge on land management.
Expanding the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme to New Caledonians and offering scholarships, similar to Australia Awards, to people in New Caledonia and French Polynesia could also help boost links with Australia.
Such initiatives are a low-risk way of engaging Indigenous people in French territories without undermining Australia’s neutrality on questions of sovereignty and independence. They would also demonstrate Australia actively boosting the status of Indigenous people in French territories and delivering on its First Nations foreign policy approach.
Pacific voices told us that humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) is the most advanced area of Australia-France coordination (through the tripartite FRANZ Arrangement), demonstrated by recent responses to natural disasters in Vanuatu, Tonga, and Fiji.
Such responses, however, could be improved with deeper local political economy analysis and consultation with local people and structures. Australia and France should also seek to derive lessons from HADR to inform coordination in other sectors.
Cooperation presence
Consultations identified that France had the most consistent and visible development cooperation presence (outside its own territories) in Vanuatu. However, in both Vanuatu and across the region more broadly, it was seen that there is significant scope for Australia and France to coordinate more effectively.
Greater dialogue, information sharing, planning and consultation with local leaders and systems should be prioritised in-country to increase aggregated investment effectiveness. A clear commitment to coordination by Australia and France would also mitigate “donor overcrowding” and help manage the workload of Pacific bureaucracies.
Indeed, it would be to Australia and France’s credit to lead increased coordination as “responsible donors”. Pacific voices across the region identified several areas where joint work between Australia and France could be beneficial, including support for local media and civil society, advancing gender equality, sports development, education (especially in Vanuatu given its bilingual school system), and infrastructure (especially attracting EU finance).
Australia should generally support a greater French development contribution throughout the Pacific. Naturally, any joint work or coordination should be driven by the policy settings of Pacific nations and developed in consultation with the Pacific leaders.
The French development agency, AFD, is likely to increase its contribution in the Pacific, focused on infrastructure, environment, oceans and climate resilience. There are, however, almost no established patterns of coordination between Australia and France in the Pacific on development.
There are substantial barriers to joint work on development projects by Australia and France, given unfamiliar bureaucracies, different languages, different ways of working, and different approaches to financing. Feasible bilateral cooperation is most likely to be in the form of discrete contributions, such as co-financing by one donor on a project predominately managed by the other.
Increasing contributions
Australia could consider increasing its contribution to the French-run Kiwa Initiative, and France could build on its current volunteer investment into the Australian-funded Vanuatu Skills Partnership. There could also be scope for France to direct its development finance through the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific.
Bilateral coordination mechanisms and regular dialogue between Australian and French officials should be established as soon as possible, including by finalising a letter of intent between DFAT and AFD.
Effective communication between Canberra and Paris, as well as in-country between Australian and French diplomatic posts and with Pacific governments, will be important to operationalise this intent meaningfully.
More broadly, Australia should encourage France to direct its development contributions in the Pacific through NGOs, civil society organisations, multilateral institutions, and proven Australian-funded initiatives that support local leadership and have local legitimacy, in line with its First Nations foreign policy approach and localisation agenda.
Hugh Piper is programme lead of the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D). Anna Gibert is an independent consultant who provides strategic support to a number of locally led DFAT investments in the Pacific. This article is republished from the ANU Development Policy Centre’s DevPolicy Blog under a Creative Commons licence.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Bastille Day marks the storming of the notorious Parisian fortress and political prison in 1789. The day is meant to embody the liberal and egalitarian values of the French Republic. On 14 July that year, locals rose up against monarchy and totalitarianism. The French stormed the fortress, killed its governor, and freed prisoners from their cells. With this in mind you’d think the French ruling class might be a little more reflective. But not so, at least as far as president Emmanuel Macron is concerned.
This year the holiday comes after weeks of riots against the Macron government following the police killing of a Muslim and immigrant teenager. Macron himself chose to mark the day in a less traditional fashion: signing an arms deal with a repulsive xenophobe, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi.
Riots in Paris
On 17 June, French police shot dead a 17-year-old know as Nahel M. Protests started in Toulouse, Dijon, and Lyon before spreading to Paris. Thousands of riot police were deployed onto the streets.
Macron’s response to the killing and the protests was typical of his flip-flopping centrism. As the Canary’s Maryam Jameela wrote:
Macron has said that the protests are “unjustifiable.” Earlier, however, he also said that Nahel’s death was “inexplicable and inexcusable”. So, which is it?
Macron’s response is typical from those who, thanks to footage of killings, are forced to acknowledge the horror, without allowing for criticism of a system that equips murder at traffic stops.
Macron’s death-dealing
This is the climate in which Macron has chosen to sign an arms deal with Modi, himself no stranger to authoritarian, xenophobic violence, Modi, who is also close to Rishi Sunak, allegedly had a BBC office in India raided recently.
It followed the airing of a documentary on a 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom by supporters of his Hindu nationalist party. This was in Gujarat when Modi was provincial governor. As the Canaryreported at the time:
In fact, the BBC documentary on Modi cited a British foreign ministry report claiming that Modi met senior police officers and “ordered them not to intervene” in anti-Muslim violence.
Around 45,000 police have been deployed nationwide in France ahead of a ceremony for Modi. Firework sales are banned by the government following protests around the police killing. The Indian leader will be awarded the Legion of Honour after a military parade.
Complex colonialities
But, beneath the ridiculous pomp, the profit motive drives proceedings. The Indian defence ministry on Thursday announced its intention to procure another 26 French-made Rafale fighter jets as well as three more Scorpene-class submarines. The deal is expected to be worth billions of euros.
Bastille Day has long since been militarised and stripped of its radical origins. The fact that an event meant, at least in spirit, to mark the fraternity of humanity is reduced to an arms deal sweetener says it all.
Modi’s presence doubly complicates the issue, given that his party’s sectarian supremacism grew out of the legacies of British colonialism. And beyond that, the shadow of a police killing of a young boy from a migrant background cannot be forgotten. France has many things going for it, but ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ are increasingly out of fashion.
Kanaky New Caledonia’s parliamentary President (speaker) Roch Wamytan says it is time for France to end colonisation in the Pacific territory.
Speaking to journalists while in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ministerial meeting last week, he said: “It is time for France to grant independence to New Caledonia.”
Wamytan, president of the Territorial Assembly in Noumea, noted that France had made New Caledonia its colony for more than 160 years, reports APA.
He said the page of colonisation should be closed and that Kanaky New Caledonia should be granted independence.
Wamytan thanked Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev for his statement on colonialism at the NAM meeting and emphasised that the president’s words were an important support for the Kanak people to gain independence.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
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A l'occasion d'une journée internationale de mobilisation, affichage dans les rues de Paris pour exiger la libération immédiate des 6 prisonniers politiques de Palestine Action (
