Angry Planet - The Cost of Africa's Latest Coup

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

On July 26, a military junta deposed and imprisoned Niger’s duly elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. You are probably saying three things—perhaps all at the same time:Where the hell is Niger? Who is Bazoum? Why the fuck would I care?That’s what this episode is all about. We answer those three questions and fill you in on the context around the event as well as the region where it happened, the Sahel, which is where Saharan Africa meets sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a place that’s at the mercy of natural disasters like severe drought and extreme flooding, and human disasters like mismanagement of the land and laws, jihadists, and just plain bandits.Aneliese Bernard joins us and knows what she’s talking about to a simply frightening degree. When not slumming on podcasts like ours, Bernard is director at Strategic Stabilization Advisors and Director of Research and Programs at Elva Community Engagement, and formerly worked in the Sahel with the U.S. State Department.She’s not a spy. She said so herself.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hey there, Angry Planet listeners. This is Matthew Galt. If this is your first time, I do various things advice. I'm joined by Jason Fields, the opinion editor at Newsweek. And also this week, we were talking about Niger, which I was Niger. Niger. Yes, I know.

You said it was very British of me, I think. Yes. The Niger Delta reference runs strong for English speakers. I'm going to be mispronouncing a lot of words today. We are joined by Annalise Bernard. Can you give us your background? Sure. Thanks for having me, first of all.

So I am the director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors. We are a risk-based advisory group based in Washington, DC, but we focused mostly on West Africa, although we are expanding at the moment also to look into the Southern Caucasus previously before I set up SSA, as we call ourselves. I was with the State Department. I was covered West Africa for quite a few years with the Department of State, but more recently from 2017 to 2019, I was the U.S. government stabilization advisor to the U.S. embassy in Miami-Mashire.

where we were working mostly on counterterrorism work, and I can get into that later on. So you were a spy. Oh, that's what my family thinks. When you're from Los Angeles and the only representation of U.S. government abroad is really bad CIA movies and TV shows. No offense, Jack Ryan. I definitely watch that show, but it is trash.

Then everyone thinks you're a spy, especially when you don't have a really great response to a question. Now, the State Department does exist, and they do do some things other than visas. So that was what I was working on. But I was co-deployed with U.S. Special Forces for quite a bit of the time I was there. And as such, probably saw more than our actual agency folk we're seeing on the ground. But that's another conversation for a smaller audience, I would have to say. What happened on July 26?

Yeah, so on July 26, the world was shocked. No, not really. On July 26, the first democratically elected president of the Republic of Niger was deposed and held hostage by his own presidential guard in what was at the time a very small and intimate coup. that was taking place within the presidential palace. By the next day, the entire security force apparatus of Niger seemed to appear to be in lockstep with the presidential guard. For those who are listening that don't know anything about these types of countries, presidential guard is no different than Secret Service. So that would have been like the head of the Secret Service taking the President of the United States hostage and declaring himself the head of the government as this person was being held hostage. currently today President Bazum is still has not resigned and he is still being held hostage in the presidential palace by the hunter that is now in place by the poochists under the CNSP which I'd have to get you that acronym and read it out loud somewhere but for now that's just what the ruling party had established themselves something like the Consai National Borla Svgal du lape which is actually that's exactly what it is it's the National Council for Safeguarding the country

And who is in charge of the military side of this? Who's in charge of the coup? Is there one person that's the face? It's an interesting question. So General Shiani, Abdulahman, Shiani is the presidential guard, was the head of the presidential guard and is now right now the head of the military hunter that is in control of nayshare today. Chiani himself is someone who made him, he's been the head of the presidential guard for the past two presidencies in Niger. He was very close to the former president, Mahm Diyosufu. And as such, kind of, just because things aren't very democratic, let alone, like, there's no meritocracy in these kind of countries.

He has remained in that position in kind of a chummy and plum position for the past 11 years, just because he was so personally and therefore professionally close to the previous president, who himself was quite correct, but we can get into that in a little bit. The rumor was that he was about to get fired because President Bazum didn't necessarily trust him. And I can also get into how a lot of,

we see this across West Africa, but whenever you have a democratic handover with, you know, what we would call baby democracy, a lot of times the previous ruler tries to kind of embed their guise, so to speak, with the new president. who was democratically elected so that they can maintain some sense of control. And Bazum and Asufu, when Bazum was the Minister of Interior, under Asufu, there was always tension there,

mostly because Bazum was always considered to be quite ambitious. He made it known quite early on that he was hoping to run for president at some point. So this was clearly Bazum's way of starting to remove the old tentacles of the Asufu regime. And as such, by removing and firing these people or having them retire, I suppose, Chiani himself did not like that. And the only thing that we know for sure is that he did not want to lose his position. And the one other thing to mention here that's context is that this is Nisha, at least felt country in the world.

When you're not in a position of power, you don't have another position to roll into you. You can't just roll over to a think tank like everyone in Washington does. that just doesn't exist. So you're pretty much out of a job, which really is, it's not that it's life or death necessarily for someone like Chiani, but it does mean that, you know, access to power,

but also, you know, the consistency of the salary is potentially not there. So there was more raise on detro for him to essentially take this a little more seriously. What does at least develop mean? You know, I mean, really, what does that mean on the ground for people?

These year, so on all, in all statistics, New Jersey is at the bottom of the of the grid. Human Development Index in terms of both health and also population growth,

etc. New Jersey is at the very bottom with the highest growing, fastest growing population in the world. Their population growth is pegged at 3% every year. Their population is said to double in 15 years at this point. But they're still quite a small country. It's going to double from 20 to 40 million

essentially. you are having the poorest group of people on the face of the planet. People, the least access to resources, lease access to governance, lease access to security. There is no infrastructure in the majority of the country outside of the capital city. Even in the capital city, there's only a handful of roads, for example. The power goes out every single day, and that includes even at a U.S. embassy, which should be considered more of an insulated structure. The power would go out usually three or four times day, for example. So we are talking about when you imagine the Sahara Desert and the poorest populations on the face of the planet, and you think of the images from National Geographic or the really famous photo that was taken actually of Sudan and the aides of child starving to death.

That is Newshare today. Can you give us a little bit more background on Bazum? Was he popular? Was he unpopular? What was kind of his political project? and by what margin was he elected? Yeah. So Bazum was always an interesting figure to rise through the ranks and make his way to presidency.

He is not a political elite by birth. He's Arab. His mother is from the north. And some dispute claims that he's not actually Nigerian because his mother, it's unclear if his mother was actually from sub-Hal Libya or not. But the border has got a little blurry up in the north. So sometimes you have communities that are a little bit more mobile. All that's to say is as an Arab, he's a minority in Niger and has never really been accepted into mainstream Nigerian society by the majority sub-Saharan population that comprise the population there, which are mostly ethnic Zarma, but you have a few other ethnicities in there.

As such, he rose through the ranks because he was first a school teacher and then he got involved in, as with the, as with the, teaching unions and made his way then through local politics up through national politics in the mid-aughts. He became the Minister of Interior under former President Issuu. And as that in that position, he really was able to kind of galvanize the Western security response to better understand what the context was for not just Nizier's needs at the time in terms of, you know, not just, we don't just need counterterrorism, but we also need a counterinsurgency approach to managing the conflict that is on all of our borders and out penetrating the country itself. He really understood how to talk to Western donors, is my point. And as such, he really

brought in a lot of the Western aid and manifested that into a very strong counterterrorism operation in the country. As someone who worked really closely with him, you know, got to work really closely with his chief of staff, but also him himself. The U.S. government always found him to be their, like, prized child. You know, he was the cherry of the Western community. And obviously, that does not roll well with certain political and security elites in Yama, but also with the Nigerian people who, for as long as I can remember, have always been kind of hoping to throw off the yoke of that Western, quote,

neo-colonialism that very much existed under French, post-colonial presence in the country, I should say. The other thing to keep in mind is that given his role and how he kind of came to the top and then really quickly was able to consolidate the friendships with Western partners was it really did rub political and security elites in Niamé the wrong way. There's always the sense of if they're not friends of me, then it's because I'm out of the sunlight type of vibe. And that was very clear with Buzum.

I would hear it all the time from not just people within the Ministry of Interior, but people within the security forces of we don't trust the Zoom. He is too much in the pocket of the Westerners. And that political elite vibe really kind of I think was one of the things that led to his oust in the end.

It really sounds like he didn't have much of a chance. I mean, his odds weren't good. I mean, I don't mean he hasn't whether or not he had a chance to implement his policies, but. So as Minister of Vancouver, he had a lot of opportunity to implement a lot of policies that he ostensibly continued throughout the first

couple years of his tenure as president. Even when he was planning to run for office, there was a lot of talk inside Miami of we don't want the Zoom to run for office. There was the minister of agriculture at the time whose name, I forget, but he was being put up there as a potential candidate. And then of course, there's me an opposition figure who's been in exile for at least the past 15 years, who's ethnic Fulani, which is another thing to talk about later on. But these people were always egging for that position. So the point is, is that across the country, from what the U.S. considers to be very fair and transparent elections, Bozum did win handedly in both the first round and the runoff

of the Democratic elections. But in Miamé, you are always going to have a contrarian population that does not support the administration and power, and that was the same thing under the previous president, which is why Niger is also a country that is familiar with coups. So during the Sufu's tenure, there were coup attempts, and also in the past two years aside from this successful one, there were two other coup attempts made on Buzum's tenure. So I want to say this is not shocking at all that this coup happened,

but also still quite shocking for Western partners who really kind of had a blind eye towards how unbezzum. stable. You share as political situation is. Can we expand out a little bit and talk about the country's around and what is ECOWAS and why is it important in this story? And I think like some things were breaking the last time you and I talked. I think literally while we were having that conversation, ECOWAS issued a statement, right?

Yeah. So firstly, ECOWAS, for those listening that don't know, stands for the economic community of West African states, very similar to NATO and the European Union, in that it started as an economic community to create boundaries of free trade, free and unfettered trade between certain countries, started with only a handful of countries.

It grew to include 15 countries in West Africa. Notably, it does not include Shad, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, or Tunisia. So that's where it kind of ends in terms of its boundaries. the ECOWAS countries now have like NATO and like the EU also have the ability to use you know use more diplomatic and security tools when necessary. So ECOWAS has 15 countries in it of which now I guess Nizier is the fourth country

to be kicked out due to the unpopular, well not unpopular, but due to an unconstitutional change of politics that have happened in the past two years. Molly Burkina Faso, Guinea joined Niger as being countries that have been kicked out and are sitting on the sidelines right now, but are talking about building their own blog, which I don't think will ever happen. For the other three countries, Molly, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, ECOWAS obviously issued sanctions,

condemned the constitutional overthrow of those presidents, But they kind of took a little less heavy hands than they took with Niger. Nezger, they threw the book at Nezger. And when I mean through the book, I mean, they not only set up sanctions immediately, but they also implemented a no-fly zone and threatens the use of force by any means if Bazoum wasn't released within a week's timeline. So we're talking from July 26 at that point to the first week of August. We are obviously now in the second week of August.

so it's been three weeks since the coup. And over the weekends, the ECOWAS heads of state met and agreed to mobilize the ECOWAS security force. I think it's the ECOWAS stabilization force. To mobilize on the border of NEJARE should be released soon. The deadline for when this mobilization force

is actually going to take, is actually going to potentially do anything inside nature is not totally clear. The chiefs of defense of all the ECOWAS countries met yesterday, but we don't really have an answer as to what's going on. What we do know is that the prime minister is in Chad today right now, meeting with Chadian authorities to potentially discuss, you know, how to bring down hostility to this point. In response to the threat by ECOWAS on Sunday,

the coup put out of communique saying that, If anyone enters Nigerian airspace or ground space, they will put, they might not only kill Bassoon himself, but they also decided that they're putting Bassoon on trial for trees and they hide treason against the state. And what that means in Newshare is generally that leads to execution. That's what the sentencing is. So we have really reached that point of what I would have called the Game Theory tree where we're kind of at the mutually assured destruction side of things. I think what this means is that Neshaer is going to have to really aggressively start opening up. The CNSB will have to actually start a dialogue. We know the back channel conversations are obviously taking place,

but we are at the point where if ECHOWAS doesn't actually take action with what they have threatened to do, they might actually roost more legitimacy in the eyes of other countries, which could be really concerning. Why do you think they took a heavier hand here? So there's a few reasons to this. Neeshire, first of all, like I said, you have Guinea-Molly Burkian. Nifaso that are all impermissible countries right now that are led by military hantas. And then obviously on the other side of Niger, we have Chad, who also had a coup, but it is a country that is more permissible and one that is friendly still to the west and echo offs.

But then to the other side of that is Sudan, which has recently collapsed, as we all know. And then even Ethiopia. So we're talking about entire Sahel belts that is led by military leaders or, you know, leaders that are carrying out un-democratic approaches dealing with our population of this structure. Niger was, in my opinion, kind of not with enough nuance considered in why this was put up on a pedestal this way. But Niger, since I've been working on the country, so since at least 2016, has been the bulwark of stability, the reliable partner for the U.S. and France, the country that will steer forward this, new age version of counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and be the prized partner and favorite child of the West in West Africa.

The amount of pressure that I think the Western community has put on Niger to be this perfect kind of like partnership is part of the reason why we are where we are today, but it's also the reason why ECOWAS sees this as a red line. The other reason is Molly and Burkina Faso have become ostensibly proxy-filled states, and the jihadists groups that operate there have really managed to advance further south into coastal West Africa. And when I talk about coastal West Africa, I mean specifically Benin, Togo, Ghana, Kotevore, but also Nigeria and now increasingly threatening Senegal as well to the west. Those countries that never really had a problem and kind of like remained south, you know,

like that north-south divide between them and their Sahel partners really was like a wall, if you will. they're now feeling this jihadist front in their countries. Ben and Togo have had significant uptics in jihadist violence. And Kogi Barre did as well, but mobilized a very significant counterterrorism force there a year ago. So the whole thing was that if Burkina Faso remains this failed state, which it ostensibly is the government controls less than 60% of the territory of Burkina Faso, jihadists control the other 40%.

if Burkina Faso fully collapses, Niger was the one country that was like an anchor for not just Western security operators, like the massive U.S. and French counterterrorism forces that exist there, but also for ECOWAS and the other countries to kind of anchor and pivot out of when managing the rest of what was the Sahel. So in its absence, we're talking about a huge swath of land. The jihadists have already kind of been able to move somewhat through before,

but now they'll just be able to move through with absolute impunity. and I think the concern is absolute chaos will rain down on the coast. So do you think there's going to be a war then? Do you think that the economic alliance is going to move in and do something here? It's really hard to say what's going to happen. I feel like I'm in undergrad when I was studying game theory right now and we were playing these game trees. It's like a tabletop exercise right now would be perfect for someone to do. It's hard to say.

there's a lot to lose if ECOWAS does send in forces, including, and I'm already seeing this on, you know, the propaganda on telegram and Twitter is wild right now, but there's a lot of, you know, if Togo or Nigeria sends in security forces, the militaries in those countries might mutiny or something like that. There's a lot to lose. I think that this threat is important because, because it gives ECOWAS the ability to more heavily handed engage in back channel conversations. And we're not just hopeful those conversations are happening. We know for sure they are with senior members of the junta. And the goal would be to either have them come to terms of the fact that they not only need to release Buzum, but at least hold transitional elections and then also open themselves up to discussions and engagement with ECOWAS, unlike their partners and brothers and Molly and Burkina Faso who have just put a wall up.

But also, I know that there is, one of the things that people were talking about originally was that ECHOWS was only using this threat to kind of foment what would be a coup within a coup, assuming, and I'm not sure where this stands anymore, but the idea about two weeks ago was that the Nigerian security infrastructure was not fully in lockstep with the Hunter at that time, although it seems increasingly like they are now, but it's not clear. And as such, there was this idea that if they threw in the threat of a ground invasion, that some of the military itself would be like, fuck this and actually break apart. And you'd see more mutinies within the military and security infrastructure and then potentially a coup within a coup.

A lot of that kind of hung on the fact that the guy who is right now the Shifty Tap Major of the military at General Barmou is a close friend of the United States and someone that. we have worked really closely with. And people still, I think, are holding on to the idea that maybe he might at least bring some kind of rationality back to the CNSV, if not actually be someone who drives this potential, I guess, direction. That's a way to put it. What kind of power can echo us actually bring to bear? I mean, is this like a polished military operation, large operation, you know?

So they're saying right now that there's about 25,000 soldiers across the represented countries who have contributed to the ESF, the ECHAO stabilization force. I might have that acronym wrong. Most of them are Nigeria, about 11,000 are Ivorian, and then the rest are from respectively. I think, Benin and Senegal. It's a significant force. I don't know the actual numbers on the Nigerian security force, but I think. think the entire Nigerian, so here's the thing is that Niger can't mobilize its entire security force to manage ECOWAS right now

because they're also getting hammered by jihadists in two different corners of their country. And if they, and the jihadists are also tracking these dynamics and these, you know, security and governance vacuums that exist. Particularly the governance one has been, we already know that the Islamic States Sahel province, which operates in what we call of Leptako Gorma region, which is that corner border space between Mali Burkina Faso and Nizier. And then the Al-Qaeda-Aliang group called Jamatz Nusratu al-Slamin or something like that. Janim is the acronym we'll go with.

They are, they're the ones who are actually penetrating the coastal states, but they have the majority of Mali and then parts of southwestern Nisier. those two groups are already basically playing with the idea that there is not only a security vacuum in their AORs inside Naysia, but also that there is a total governance one. This is one of their recruitment tools. They usually go into communities and play the role of your government doesn't care about you. They've made political decisions that do not include you. And that's why you should work with us because we'll include you in those communal decisions at the community level. And it does work. It's a powerful tool, especially if, you know, you voted for business.

Zoom and you're some farmer living in the middle of nowhere in Northern Tillabury and, you know, a coup took place and is saying that it was on your behalf, but really it's because they went about your vote and decided that you didn't matter. That play is going to work. That said, I'm kind of digressing. I apologize. But if the entire, I think I don't know what the number is on the Nigerian Security Force, it's not too much more than 20,000, I can say that. And if the entire security force were to rally to the front on the southwest border to combat echo us, we're talking about the entire country being vulnerable to other threats. And there are many other threats in West Africa.

So it would not work out for Niger. It would result in a lot of bloodshed, though. All right, angry planet listeners. We want to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners, welcome back. We were back on talking about Niger. See, I did it right that time.

Can we lean into the digression? Because I think that the jihadi movements are really important context for this, basically for the entire region. It sounds like it's a big part of why there needs to be something like ECHOWAS in the country, like why they have a military, and also why France and America have such large presences there, right? Can you tell us? I hate to do it this way. Can you give us like the last 20 years in West Africa?

All right. Okay. Sorry to everyone listening. And on this one, it's a little bit of a background, but I'll make it as pithy as possible. So in 2009, you have famously the head of the infamous group,

Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, does a civil society protest in Northeast, Nigeria, this area called Maiduguri, that borders southeastern Niger. It's the Lake Chad Basin region. And he is killed by Nigerian security forces. The group goes cold. And by 2011, the group reemerges under Abu Bakrish Chakao, and becomes the Boko Haram that we know of it today. 2014, you have the famous kidnapping of

Shibok schoolgirls in Nigeria. And at that point, we started like on a granderuner. really the whole group was really kind of just focused on Northeast Nigeria at that point. But on the ground, we started seeing more recruitment in Niger, Chad, and Camero, and the other countries that hug the Lake Chad Basin. By 2016, Niger had experienced its first terrorist attack. I'm going to use the term terrorist in jihadism intermingled here, so I apologize for those at home listening.

But you experienced the first attack by Boko Haram in Nizir in the town of Difa. And after that attack in 20, I think it was actually in December of 2015 when the attack happened. And then in 2016, you have the government of Niger immediately responded with this full state of emergency, walked down the entire town, and essentially said that if you're doing anything, if you're farming peppers by the lake, if you're hurting your cattle, and if you're seen on a motorbike, which are all things, the livelihood activities were things that were allegedly financing activities of Okamraam. And obviously being on a motorbike just makes you seem quote unquote shady in West Africa, even though everyone does it. And the assumption is that maybe you're a jihadist. And if you obviously violate the curf you, then you might be a jihadist. So basically they put down this very draconian rule that essentially says if you're doing anything but staying home or going to school, you are a jihadi. And the government responds by going in and rounding up about 1,100 people that, you know, were alleged to be jihadists at that time aligned with.

with Boko Haram. That includes people who we heard stories of I was rounded up because I was in a fight with someone and he basically reported me to the authorities saying that I'm a jihadist. So it really was kind of that scene from Monty Python, you know, where they're like she's a witch, she's a witch. Like that was

the joke that we had when I would be down in Diva discussing how we were supposed to manage this massive influx of detainees. So those guys all get rounded up and thrown in jail. It's important to bring these like weird niche details in because they have all been, a lot of them have been released since, and a lot of them have actually been radicalized. They get thrown in a jail called Kuti Kale and another one called Kolo. This is all 2016, 2017 at this juncture. And so by 2016 and 2017, you have the emergence

of jihadist groups on the other side of the country closer to the capital and the region called Silibe, which is kind of deep into the Sahel region. And so the background quickly was that, after there was, there were armed groups that kind of hung out in northern Mali and Algeria in the early 2000s that were opposition political groups that got radicalized. There's a lot more research on this for anyone interested. I'm just going to get the top levels. They moved down into Mali after Algeria kicked them out in about 2002 or 2003, started hanging out, not really doing too much. then

Libya blows up and all the arms from Libya after Gaddafi was killed in 2012 make their way into Mali respectively because at the same time as all these jihadist groups start emerging, you also have a lot

of sectarian splits with the ethnic groups in the region. There's an ethnic group in the north called the Tuaregs. The Tuaregs are those kind of, they've been memorialized in a lot of art and movies as the horse warriors. They wear the blue turbans and they have big knives

and they're actually quite beautiful and they make absolutely beautiful silver. Very Lawrence of Arabia because they are actually related to the Bedouins and to the Moors in North Africa. Also they make a coach wagon named the Tuareg. The Tuareg is actually

named after them because they travel across the desert and they like withstand that long swath of distance and that was kind of the point. But yes, good point. So the twergs were given kind of back in the day, giving kind of a peace deal with Gaddafi of don't mess with Libya. Y'all will be put into prime, like, prized positions of government, including within the Ministry of Defense and control of the arms arsenal. So when Gaddafi died, a lot of them came down with arms and brought it into the Sahel in Niger and Mali, respectively. At around the same time, in parallel to that, for years, Niger and Mali, respectively, had been dealing with twergs separatist groups that were very militarized.

and we're trying to essentially set up their own country in the north. In Mali, famously, it's called Azawad, and that's where you've had these peace negotiations going on for the past decade in Mali. By 2011, Mishire had brokered a peace agreement with the Tuergs in Nizier. Mind you, all these Tward groups are somewhat related. So, like, you know, whenever you broker these peace agreements like Gaddafi had done in Libya,

it was kind of just alike. Some of you will be in senior government positions and we're to keep you all quiet, but have you in a power of position. And others where essentially the lad ones were sent to other countries where shit was still growing up, like Molly. So when Mali, when Nieshaer was brokering its peace agreement in 2011, which included demobilizing and reintegrating several generales into senior government positions that they remained in until July 26th, by the way. And it's important to bring this up because it's going to come back up right now. the other ones were sent over to Mali and continue to fight under the

the CMA which is the movement for Azawad, which was the suffragist group that I met. The government of Mali was fighting the CMA for several years in the north in around Timbuktu and Meneka and Kedal and then the jihadist groups kind of like came in and threw a wrench into this conflict that was starting to come down in terms of the violence and they were starting to come to table and actually have negotiations in the mid-aughts. But by 2015, you have what at the time was a few different groups that have all since banned under this Al-Qaeda kind of consortium of Janem. They started coming down and getting involved in the conflict and starting their own kind of proxy war on the side of it that ended up being

the main focus of what was going on in this Sahel. And that group at the same time had some twigs in it. So it's very complicated. Those twerg militias that were also part of the peace process, but then got sidelined by the peace process because they weren't the right of sub-ethnic group of said twer groups. We're also having intercommunal conflict at the same time

with an ethnic Fulani group that was in Nizjar, that's in Tullabary region of Nizier, right where the capital is. At the same time as all this is going on, this ethnic group, the Dau-Sahak twigs, and the Tola Be Fulani have had this

like century old intercommunal conflict, farmer herder violence. You know, someone's goat destroy someone's farms. So that farmer goes and kills that guy's daughter in the middle of the night. And then it escalates into, you know, a community war that can bring in other partners. So this intercommunal violence ends up kind of bringing in the interest of some of the other Fulani militias in the area, including someone named Adnan Abu al-Wal-Lid's Sarat. who at the time had been part of one of the jihadist groups in Mali that had gotten kicked out for being too extreme. And so he goes to Niger in around 2011, re- like, grants himself. How do you, what, what do you do that's too extreme for other jihadi groups?

So you have, this is, okay, so we're talking like maybe around 2000, between 2011 and 2016, globally, you have kind of this originally like, the, splintering of certain sex in Iraq, in Syria, and Afghanistan of groups that were part of Al-Qaeda that then starts splintering and becoming a little bit more radicalized under the Islamic state, right? So the Islamic State banner has always

been a little bit more, it's hard to say that they're more violent or irrational because the Al-Qaeda ones also can be that way. It's just typically kind of the way we look at it from a binary perspective is Islamic State is more interested in enforcing a caliphate and by any other, like by all means necessary, whereas the al-Qaeda branches have typically, particularly in West Africa, have typically done an approach of, you know, we will do an insurgency, we'll co-opt your ways and include it into our ways so that you guys don't feel to,

you know, you don't feel like we're oppressing you when we're coming into your community. We'll also marry into your community and bring your, you know, and give everyone a job. So it's a little bit more, it's kind of like if you look at the French versus the British way of colonizing Africa during the 19th century, if you want to put it down that way. One group is more about just like, you know, clearing out an entire community and killing everyone. And another group is more about, no, let's merge so that you all become part of us. You heard it here first, folks, the British, or the Islamic State were the British. No.

No comments. I already got into this on my CNN interview of fighting with the newscaster about the French versus the British way of colonizing. Africa and it wasn't it didn't roll out very well. Anyways, yes, I recognize, feel free to ask me more questions to unpack this very dense kind of history of West Africa's conflict, but essentially this guy named Sarahi who gets kicked out of what at the time was called the Movement for Oneness of West African, of Islam and West Africa, Mujah. He goes over, he goes a little bit east towards Niger,

meets some other guys who are also, you know, trying to get radicalized. A lot of these people are bandits, by the way, who just don't have any other job, but they've got arms and they're down to like fuck with the community, essentially. So, you know, everyone's own an ensemble on this one. So he goes to Niger, he meets a few guys and they start the Islamic State of the greater Sahel, which is very separate from the IS, the Islamic State faction in the Lake Chad Basin. and that group essentially comes to the savior, becomes the white saviors, if you will,

of this Vulani community that is currently clashing with this Torah group in Mali. So what ends up happening is, you know, the Malian authorities with France go up against the Islamic state in Niger. And Nizier is sitting there being like, okay, this is in our country. We need to figure out a way to actually not only mitigate the threat to the capital, which is only about 100 kilometers, way, but also figure out a way to kind of like push these guys back into Mali.

So that's where you start getting this massive counterterrorism instrument, building up around that tri-border region with Mali Burkina Faso in Niger. And that is when you start seeing the influx of counterterrorism money just getting pumped into Niger from the U.S. and why Niger sensibly becomes the centerpiece of the entire region for security assistance from the West. So the U.S. money is going in there sort of for the traditional reason of you stop them there so you don't have to stop them here. I mean, you're talking about a lot of intertribal and inter, you know, ethnic violence, right?

I mean, with a, does it have just a sheen of Islamic state on top of it? I mean, do we care? I mean, do we actually care? I mean, I know we're pretending we care, but do we care here in the United States? I'll never forget sitting in briefings in both Washington, Africa. And then also Niamé, with government officials discussing, you know, with people screaming across the table, they're just farmers with pitchforking. We do not fucking care about intercuminal violence. But then other people explaining, myself being one of them explaining, I agree, we shouldn't get involved in something like intercommunal violence.

This is not our award. They're not asking for our help. That said, we do also know that these jihadist groups sit on the sidelines of intercuminal violence. and exploit one side over the other, and then radicalize more the population, and that's how they build their quote. It's not a caliphate in West Africa, but certainly is starting to look like one.

So it's a hard question to answer because, and this speaks to kind of why the U.S., but not just the U.S., the West has really done a poor job at figuring out how to do counterterrorism. This isn't a terrorism crisis, it's an insurgency in West Africa. We don't do counterinsurgency well,

as case in point, Vietnam. And part of it is for the question You don't have to go that far back. Right. We have Afghanistan now. There are more recent examples. That's true. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's true. Honduras, too, by the way. Sure. And Colombia. That's true. I think the problem is that, for your question, this was the question that was being asked in Washington in the halls of State Department of at what point do we start to get involved.

And no matter what the answer to that is, it was too late, but also too soon. Because getting involved inevitably triggered, a more radical response from the jihadists. And it's not getting involved. Also allowed the jihadists to just quickly swoop in and take lead. So we've just never been able to figure out how to sequence these types of approaches. Counterinsurgency is just not something the U.S. knows how to do. We just don't get it.

That's the short answer. Okay. Does anybody know how to do it? Okay. No, that's, I don't know if that's a serious question. Matthew. I don't know. I think it's kind of, I'm kind of curious about that.

like what are the counter what are the counterinsurgency models that work or do they exist who's doing them it's funny you should ask me this is something i've been writing and thinking about for since i left new year actually um so one of the things so the program that i actually did in new year which is why i brought up the lake jod basin in boca haram is i mean i might be biased here because it was my program but it is in my opinion one of the better approaches to counterinsurgency that's like very low lift, so to speak. It's not very involved. So back to Boko Haram, back to Lake Chad Basin.

So you have this roundup of a bunch of locals who were presumed to be jihadists and thrown in prison. And the community in Difa really freaked out. The local population was like, what the hell is going on? If we so much is walked outside our house, we might get arrested. A lot of people, this is a community that's. really hugely based on an agropastoral economy. So people leave for like weeks at a time during the rainy season or actually the dry season is when they usually leave because they'll have to travel to where the lake and the river is to be able to do fishing and grazing and all that. So a lot of people were literally gone during that winter when it is the dry season in Niger and came back to town and there's this state of emergency and they were told by people on the way back into town that, listen, if you go into deeper,

right now that you're going to get arrested because they're going to assume that you were at the lake and you were at Boko Haram. So what ended up happening in 2016 immediately after these roundups happened was a lot of the local mayors, specifically it was the mayor of Tumor, which is a small town right on Lake Chad in Niger. It's like the furthest out town that you can get to. He started quietly letting people come and hide in his house until he could figure out what to do with these guys because everyone was worried they were going to get either roundup and

killed or thrown in jail. So he reaches out to the governor of Difa. They figure out a way to basically build out the nascent, like a nascent defections pipeline. So telling, letting people know through word of mouth or text message that like, hey, you can come home. You just have to come home through this kind of like underground railroad type of thing. Otherwise, if the police or the military see you, they might kill you. So they start getting numbers of people just coming back. And then what ended up happening was actual Boko Haram combatants started defecting, realizing that if they voluntarily surrendered, there might be a way by which they won't, you know, they could go home. And you have to understand that before these conflicts started, like I said, interchaminal conflict is something that has been going on in West Africa in Africa since the beginning of time. So like the deep in population historically, like 400 years ago, was famous for being a group of people where the mothers would send their sons to be warriors and battles that were taking place.

Central and Southern Africa and then they'd come home with the riches and fuse it back into deep in society. Like we're talking about a warrior culture in the first place. So like it's inherently part of their vibe to also get involved in interchial tension, especially if it's political. So a lot of these people didn't realize that they were getting involved in a jihadist group. They just thought they were participating in political activities or making money fighting on behalf of someone else. So essentially what ends up happening is a lot of people who are like, I didn't mean to be branded as a terrorist, start coming through this pipeline. And that's the New Jersey government reached out to the U.S. for assistance.

They reached out for the U.N. and the U.N. reached out to us. And that was what I was working on. So what we did was we built a legal framework in New Jerseyers Penal Code, which may or may not get undone by this, by the way, that essentially said that if you either provide intelligence to the government that allows them to bust a jihadist cell or a criminal cell, because we wanted to expand it to include criminal activity, once the global war on terror ended.

If you provide preemptive intelligence, if you provide intelligence that allows the security forces to preemptively stop and attack, or if you haven't committed any kind of violence, I was specifically crime against humanity or a war crime, then if you voluntarily surrender, you are granted amnesty according to Nazar's Penal Code, and then you just have to go through, like,

essentially a rehabilitation process, which was about three months where they kind of get desensitized. There's some psychosocial support, particularly for women and children, and then they get reintegrated back into society. So this framework worked. We got thousands of defectors in Asia. It was awesome. We actually were able to almost get an entire defection of around 2,000 Boko Haram

commands under one of the main commanders, Mama Nour, back in 2012. 2018, but for reasons I can't go into on this podcast, it didn't work out. But it was really cool, and it was watching a counterinsurgency process in full a dollar one, because it really was led by the local population. And that's kind of the point that I'm getting at is that one of the things I'm focused on is trying to promote the idea that if we really want to do better counterterrorism, we need to do population-centric counterinsurgency work. It needs to be driven by the civilians.

They need to be the ones that are like on the front lines promoting people to not only non-kinetically leave the battlefields, but then also providing the intelligence and reconnaissance to security forces so that they can better navigate these non-permissive environments that oftentimes security forces in Africa just don't know because a lot of these security forces don't have the capacity to, or not only do force protection, but also like move forward. Yeah, that's the short end of what I see as a productive counterinsurgency approach. I just have one more question, Matthew, you may have more, but is there a worry that the coup is more in favor of Boko Haram or that they are, you know, in some way going to be pro-Islamic insurgency or something like that? No, no. If anything, what we've seen is, yeah, taking it back to this coup.

So a lot of these kind of novel approaches to dealing with counterterrorism, which included Buzum really taking this process that I just explained with Boko Haram and using it for a means by which they can open negotiation and dialogue with jihadist groups. This was not liked by some of the senior security elites. They felt strongly kind of in an old school way of the only way to deal with the terrorists is to kill them or throw them in jail. So what I've understood, although we haven't really seen it yet, is that there have been peace deals brokered with some of the senior commanders of both the Islamic States-Tal province and Janem in Mali and Burkina Faso under Bassoon, which is why things have actually been quite secure in Asia over the past year and a half. There was a lot of violence in Silibari and then under Basum's tenure, the violence actually came down really, really fast. So this whole notion that, you know, the coup is putting it, the Hunter has been saying on TV that, you know, we did this because things have been unstable. It's nonsense. It's not true. Things have actually been more stable than ever before based on these negotiations that were taking place. It's my understanding that all the people who were involved in those negotiations because, you know, this is Africa and things are mostly personal instead of like institutionalized. Although I have to say the same thing goes for the U.S. approach to things as well. all those people who had been leading those negotiations with jihadists that had led to somewhat of cessation of hostilities,

all those people have been removed from office. And the people in charge of the junta do not have those relationships. So if anything, it's the opposite. It's not that Basim and his guys were in bad jihadists, it's that they understood that this counterinsurgency approach was more important. It was the only way it was going to work. The new hunter thinks that a more securitized military approach is going to be successful. is similar to what we're seeing the junta leaders in Mali

and Burkina Faso doing, but also if you're tracking Mali and Burkina Faso, those countries have gotten dramatically worse over the past two years since their huntsies came into power. Mostly because the securitized approach is and only is usually an air invasion and a

ground force that does a full clearing operation where they massacre everyone assuming that everyone is a jihadist and that creates crippling grievances among the local population. which means that the jihadists can then recruit. The jihadists are so well-networked with their intelligence networks across the region that they know ahead of time generally when a clearing operation is about to take place.

So they can usually leave, which just usually leaves civilians to get killed by the jihadists in that point. So the long end to that answer is yes. I think this, if this military hunter does the same thing that Malim Burkina Fossa do, which kind of looks like that's what they're doing, then we should anticipate a lot more violence and an uptick in jihadism. I have a couple more if you've got a minute. I've got the annoying question. All that's left for me are the really annoying questions.

So in April we had Matt Gates kind of going after the Afri-com chief in a testimony. And he kind of asked the question, like, why do so many of the military guys that America trains in Africa do coups. Are we responsible for that? Kind of not quite voicing a conspiracy theory, but dancing next to it? Yeah. No. I understand why this question gets asked because it looks bad.

It's trying to make a connection when there's no connection there. The reason these guys end up leading the coups, whoever they are, is because they are already in positions of power and they're educated. So what is the alternative to this? Not putting a meritocracy in place and not educating these military leaders because we're worried they're going to do a coup. What you see when a coup takes place in most of these countries and this goes for Burkina and Mali as well

was these military officials see insecurity taking place and they see corruption within the government and they think it's time to take things into their own hands. They're not using the tools the U.S. gave them. It's just it happens to be they're the most educated and they might be in positions of power because we helped put them in those positions of power by training and educating them. What about these are maybe bigger questions

than we've got time for, but I want to ask, what about Wagner and China? So the Wagner group, the only thing we have right now is one report that put out that Modi, who is number two in the coup, General Modi, that he went to Molly in March to essentially build out some kind of pipeline of a conversation with Molly about, all right, you know, we share border, we showed you had his conflict, let's talk, and maybe collaborate down the line. And allegedly, Wagner people or representation was in the room during those meetings. Anything else that's being said about Wagner's participation in the Nigerian coup is mostly speculation at this point. We don't have any evidence of anything else. What we do know is that

Wagner lives to exploit these types of situations. And they pretty much have gotten free press from all the useful idiots on the internet that are putting out there that Wagner is active in Newshare right now. Good for them. But, you know, unlike Molly, Nezsche doesn't really have the same type of resources. Molly has a lot of gold. Molly and Burkina Faso have more untapped gold reserves combined between those two countries than any other place on the face of the planet. So they do have a lot of resources that you have potentially leveraged to pay something like Wagner or someone else. Nishir doesn't really

have the same type of resources. And the things that they did have, like the two oil pipelines to bring China into it, China just left. Both the Khadji Dam, they just abandoned it because their staff were, it was a Chinese private company, but as, you know, private

public owned. Because of the, you know, the fact that people were going to be stuck there to do the sanctions and the flight cancellations. So a lot of those resources and potential resources, it looks like they've all been paused. I'm not really sure they're going to be able to produce much money at this point for to pay someone like Wagner. I do not see Wagner stepping into Neashear right now. That's the short ends. The other pieces, there's been a lot of talking about Wagner going into Burkina Faso for the

past year. They have not. I would assume they'd go into Burkina before they'd go into Neeshare, but maybe I'm wrong on that. But all that's to say is, I think it's a lot of talk and not a lot of walk. As for China, China has a lot of investments in infrastructure development and the extractives, specifically the two oil pipelines. Sanadep is a Nigerian national-owned Nigerian company that's co-financed and owned by China. That's the pipeline from Nigeria to Niger. And then there's the Benin-N-Nasier pipeline. I'm not sure what China has actually been active on that, if anything. But both pipelines were under construction and due to be finished and both are obviously paused due to the Akkawa sanctions. And then the Kadaji Dam, which was going to be like the largest dam in

West Africa, I believe, also was due to be finished and has formally been stopped due to the coup. So it's my understanding that China, Turkey, the Emirates, India, these countries don't necessarily fall in lockstep with the West when we pull everything out during the coup. But right now, everything seems to be paused. But I would assume China will resists. assume its activities there. And Lisa Bernard, thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this. Thank you so much for having me.

It was a pleasure. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always Angry Planet. It is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Odell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like us, if you really like us, please consider giving to Angry Planetpod.com or angry planet.substack.com. Where for a mere $9 a month, you get commercial-free early versions of

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