Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 8/17/23 Brad Pearce on the Coup in Niger and the Troubling State of West Africa

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

Scott was joined by Brad Pearce on Antiwar Radio this week to discuss what’s happening in West Africa. Pearce has been following the region closely. He puts the recent coup in Niger in context and explains some of the current geopolitical dynamics in the broader region.  Discussed on the show: The Wayward Rabbler “France never stopped looting Africa, now the tables are turning” (The Cradle) “The Last Domino Falls in the Sahel” (The Wayward Rabbler) “Rumors of War in West Africa” (The Wayward Rabbler) Brad Pearce is a writer focused on international relations and politics. He writes at The Wayward Rabbler. Follow him on Twitter @WaywardRabbler This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, August 17th, 20203, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all, welcome the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com and author of the book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, not quite 6,000 of them now, going back to

2003 at Scott Horton.org at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show and all the other video sites and stuff like that. And you can follow me on Twitter, if you dare, at Scott Horton's show. All right, introducing Brad Pierce. He writes a great blog over at Substat called The Wayward Rabler and has a couple of really great pieces about what's been going on in West Africa and the Sahel lately. Welcome to show, Brad. How are you doing, sir? Oh, I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me on. Very happy to have you here. So tell us what is going on in West Africa and the Sahel and why is it all John McCain and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and David Petraeus's fault. Well, you are

completely correct about that, though let's not forget the amount of blame that Nicholas Sarkozy holds for this as well. Oh, yeah. And David Cameron, for that matter. And I left out Obama. I don't know why, but he's the leader of the PAC there. Yeah, that was actually really was directed out of Hillary Clinton's State Department. He was kind of just along for the ride. But of course, the buck stops with the president, as they say.

Anyway, this specific situation, you know, it's long been a troubled region and had a really bad post-colonial era and everything else like that. But this specific situation goes back to when they overthrew Gaddafi, as you were obviously. obviously referencing. He had been employing a lot of Tuaregs, which is a nomadic Arab tribe from Najir and Northern Mali, in his security forces. And when Gaddafi was overthrown, they looted his armory and returned home, at which point they started new rebellions there. So that was in around 2012. With everything else going on in the world, such as the war in Syria, basically a bunch of Islamists swept into the conflict zone, the Islamic State in West Africa,

and, yeah, Al-Qaeda in the Greater Sahara, I believe are what they call those regional branches. And so then in, I believe, 2014, the French entered the country under what was called, entered Mali, under what was called Operation Barcane, in order to fight terrorism there. And also various other groups were there, including the neighboring country of Chad. Well, it doesn't technically neighbor Mali.

Anyway, Chad had its own intervention, and Eco-Was, which will come up later, also deployed troops there. So there was this large war against terrorists in Mali, and it initially went well, as these things do, and then it went very poorly. And so over 10 years, well, eight years of extreme violence in the region, this eventually undermined the civil governments that were backed by the West, and the security problems led to,

a series of coup starting in Guinea, which is technically not a Sahel country, but it's in West Africa. And since then, the broader region has been rocked by them, I believe six countries have been under coup governments. Something that's interesting to note is there's a pattern of double coups in this region. So four of these countries had a coup and then they placed a transitional government and then either the same people who did the first coup or different people overthrew the coup government and then didn't even make a pretense of being in a transitional government. So as this was going on, the U.S. and France became increasingly reliant on Niger, which was the remaining civil government in the region. The U.S. built the world's largest drone base there, the Agadez drone base, that at a very expensive price tag, it hosts over a thousand soldiers.

It's a pretty nice place. You can see reviews of the food at the mess hall on Google. though they're people trolling regardless it's big you can look it up on google maps easily and so they were increasingly reliant on niger and then finally nizier had its own coup and they don't really know how to handle this because they've already tolerated the coup regimes in all the other countries so you know they're always hypocritical but they they don't really know how to move forward because they've been moving their troops out of molly and burkina faso into Niger and just became increasingly reliant on this very poor and weak country. All right now, it's anti-war radio.

I'm talking with Brad Pierce about all this great writing recently about what's going on with these coups in Africa. And if you guys want a review of especially the earlier part of the story that he's telling there, I cover a lot of that in enough already. And that's not an advertisement. There are free versions of the book online. You can get it, I think, on the Pirate Bay and even Google Books. just want to search the Mali chapter in there.

So that's not an advertisement, but I'm just saying if you want to know about the consequences of the Libya war and, you know, more detail about the story he was just telling about how it spread into West Africa and the Sahel in the form of the terror war and now all these military huntses and all of that, that's in there. But so I think a big part of that right is in the name of fighting the jihadist that the Libya war spread. to West Africa first, I guess, and into further into the Sahel, further east of there later, they trained up all these soldiers and all these military forces to now fight the jihadists that they had set loose, and then it's these American-trained colonels or captains or whoever generals who end up doing the coups. Now, I guess my cookie cutter says that, well, if it's an American-trained military guy that does a coup, then it's probably because that's what Washington wanted.

But you're saying, no, it doesn't look like that. Yeah, a lot of people were led to that conclusion, which is what I would have assumed if I hadn't been following the region so closely. Yeah, like the same old school of the America's narrative, right? Yeah, I'm sure you saw in March that Matt Gates did an excellent interview of interrogation, I should say, of General Langley, the Afrocom commander going over this. And he also kind of implied the same thing and didn't make it clear that these people are going against U.S. interests.

So, I mean, basically they're losing control of their ponds is what's going on because they're flagrantly irresponsible, basically. Right. And so, all right. Now, this is difficult. I know everybody's bad at geography and me too, and especially now when you're talking about, where's Benin and the Ivory Coast

and in which order all these little countries here, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone, where this might be very difficult for people to get their head around there. But, you know, as you said, it all really starts with Mali, which is this huge Texas-sized country there in the western Sahara and Sahel where the war first spread from Libya. And then from there, they're like, oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. They just share borders with all these different countries. So it just spread from there into from the rest, right?

Yeah, if it helps general listeners locate this, Timbuktu is in northern Mali. And that was taken over by jihadist. So that's kind of the only famous city that. normal listener might actually have an idea where it is right and which is funny because timbuktu mostly is just a cliche for as far as you can get from anywhere and i think probably most americans assume it's not even a real place you know what i mean it sounds like someplace in a disney movie or something but yeah that's my assumption as well um all right so now let's talk about the um the consequences of the coup there you write in the article that here

this is a democratically elected government of Niger, quote unquote, to whatever degree. And here it's been overthrown by its own military force, or at least what? It's like the palace guard, but the military is staying out of it and endorses it. And then you say it's pretty clear that the public is in support of this, huh? Yeah. I mean, that's what it would appear, though. You know, you have to realize when they go around on the street trying to do a poll of public support, you know, the people might be concerned that they're just looking for dissidents to be. or that sort of thing. So, you know, there's plenty of reasons to be quiet about a Humta regime

that is locking up opponents. But at the very least, we've seen a lot of demonstrations of widespread support. I would certainly say it's fair to say that they're more popular than President Bolit Tanubu of Nigeria, who was elected with 36 percent in a highly contested election with high levels of fraud. And well, what about their predecessors here, though, that was elected in Niger? one with 55% of the vote though his opponent claimed that you know in one district he

103% of eligible voters voted and 99% of them voted for him so it's hard to say yeah well we know how those things go um like uh america's favorite president of egypt

he gets 97% of the vote and that's perfectly legit everybody knows that yeah well it's the facade they care about the most yeah exactly right All right, it's anti-war radio. I'm talking with Brad Pearce from the Wayward Rabler about his great articles about what's going on in Niger right now. So before we talk about the threats, first of all, tell us what is ECOWAS? EcoS is the economic community of West African states.

So basically the way that works is that the African Union is separated into different regional blocks because, you know, Africa is absolutely enormous and is a ton of countries. so that is just the one that covers West Africa and it's mostly is designed for economic integration of the region though there also is a military component they did deploy troops to the Malian War they also in the past have kind of either prevented coups or overthrown them like for example the last time they did this was in the Gambia after the president refused to leave when he lost an election that was considered fair by outside observers and you know the difference is that the Gambia is literally a river valley surrounded by Senegal. So it's quite a bit easier. And you know, it has like two million people. So it's quite a bit easier to bring in troops and demand that he withdraw or, you know, leave office than it is to go into an enormous country like Niger. But yeah, so basically it's just a regional power block there. And it's currently led by

Bolotanubu of Nigeria. And now, I mean, importantly, I don't know what the census is on the jihadists there, but so much of this land is just wilderness out there in the Lake Chad region and all of this, where you have these jihadis fighting, at the very least they'll provide an excuse for American and other Western intervention there from now on. Yeah, I mean, I actually learned how to do a radius on Google Maps to see how far a predator drone could go from the Agadez Air Force Base, because, you know, they have a range of like 750 miles. And it is a pretty big region, and most of it is very barren Sahara. But, you know, like, terrorists in Africa are quite a bit different from how we imagine them.

They're essentially, you know, desert bandits. They don't really set bombs in cities. They kind of show up on motorcycles and massacre villages and that sort of thing. So it's kind of different from what we think of. They're almost like pre-modern raiders or that sort of thing. Yeah, well, which is just fine, because then SOCOM, from their point of view, they get to have fun chasing the consequences of their last disaster and keep going so yeah i mean the thing to remember is that everyone in this region when they were working together had basically

zero impact on defeating these people so if there's like a regional war you can only imagine that the jihadists are going to expand like crazy while everyone's fighting each other yeah and now i'm I'm sorry because I switched back to the jihadist, but I meant to follow that train about the, that train of thought about the Nigerians and ECOWAS threatening some sort of regime change against Nigeri here, but they had issued a deadline that's already come and gone, and nobody's really got the heart to follow through, right? Yeah, they keep meeting again and then say, they keep saying it's the last resort, but it's clear that the HUNTA government's not leaving, and they don't really have any meaningful leverage over them. And meanwhile, there are people in the U.S. military that are like, no, you know, we actually know these coup leaders. They're not really anti-Western. They're just anti-French. We can really work with them.

So, I mean, the only sensible thing in terms of pursuing, you know, existing U.S. policy is to just give them a waiver, which they're legally allowed to do. And the thing is they already did that in Chad, which is a military government. It's just a French-aligned military government. So there's really no good excuse not to. but, you know, we're led by hypocritical idiots, so... Yeah. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, Scott Horton here for Tennessee Hot Sauce Company.

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the head of the coup government nor bassoon the deposed president and they just i don't know met with her a couple of hours and then sent her on her way so i don't i don't think they cared much about what vicky newland had to say that's good or bad for them yeah good for them right yeah i mean she might call in the forces of darkness just out of personal peak knowing her. But I guess you're saying that the new regime is trying to make it clear that we only hate the French, but not you. We can get along and we're not just, you know, turning to the Russians now. They're not making it clear apologists for them within the U.S. military structure are trying to say that. I see.

Well, in other words, they're not giving up the contest for influence over the new government to Russia yet. Yeah, exactly. And how much of a threat is that really about the Russian involvement there? Well, you know, I would say that this is kind of one of those things where it only matters because they're playing the game. You know, like, Najir is a relatively small percent of the world's uranium supply, but it does produce the highest grade of it. And then, like, it has some gold. But the jihadists in the region don't really threaten the outside world. So, I mean, there's some humanitarian concerns, you know, they don't actually care about.

that. But really, it's just that they are playing this game and doing a really bad job and it's making them look like a bunch of idiots. So they kind of need some way to, and then they don't want to give up this drone base. So they kind of need some way to salvage the policy where they come out of it not looking awful and not fleeing like they did in Afghanistan or that sort of thing. But overall, if they chose to not play, it doesn't really matter if Russia and Wagner want this to be their problem as far as things go. Right. So give us a good briefing on Wagner's role up until recently here. Okay. So for one thing, we need to be clear that they're a pretty shady group and that the people that talk to them about all sorts, or, you know, say all sorts of things about them lie all the time.

So their presence is not that well confirmed in any countries in the region besides the Central African Republic. I'm really, I'm really skeptical of some of the stuff that they say about what Wagner's doing in Mali. But Nick Terse, who is one of the best journalists writing about this, I assume you know him well. Yeah. He reviewed a human rights watch thing on Wagner's presence in Malian. He seemed to find it credible, even though I would usually be quite skeptical of that group. So as far as in actual Niger, though, no credible person is claiming that Russia or Wagner is involved in the coup happening, though it's believed that Wagner has traveled to Naïmi. the capital of Niger to help them defend themselves in the case of an ECOWAS intervention, as they

would call it. So really, they're just creating a situation that gives Russia and Wagner an opening when all they have to do is instead recognized reality and that the junta government's not leaving. Now, so, I mean, it seems like that must be overblown by all the critics, especially now after Pregozen's sort of failed half a push against the military command in Russia, although I guess maybe Putin could just send him to Africa to keep him out of his hair. What's left of it? Well, yeah, there's a lot of speculation about that because if you look at this, you know, like the general problems with using mercenaries, it's actually really unwise for Putin to rely on Progogian as much as he did in a vital security interest like Ukraine, but lending them out where they're the problem. problem of like African governments is an entirely different thing and actually is a cheap way to kind of buy security influence while it's really profitable for progosan because he can

get paid from gold mines and stuff like that. So their presence in Africa is overblown, but they are known to be in some countries and, you know, allegedly they're in like a training role or that sort of thing. But it's frustrating because, you know, the U.S. relies on private military contractors for all sorts of things. And there was even an article in foreign policy a while ago where a guy was talking about how dangerous Wagner's transactional approach was. And when you looked at what he did,

he just worked for a Western military contractor that had been active in Iraq and Afghanistan and everything else. And it's like, this is just a competitor like saying that he, explaining why his competitor shouldn't be hired and you don't even put a notice that he has a financial interest in this.

So it's really just hypocrisy. Yeah, it sounds like serious and XM criticizing each other when we all know they're going to be a merger. We have Blackwater and Wagner working together, Eric Prince and Pugos, and, you know, I'm sure they've already been on vacation together a couple times by now.

Haven't quite signed the deal yet. Oh, probably. No, that'd be a lot of fun, though. All right, so, well, let's talk about the French Empire in Africa, which is sort of the background to all of this. They lost their empire after the World War, but then I think he's saying, here. The French have used violent military force in north, sort of West Africa, the Sahara,

the Sahel region, 50 times since the end of the official colonial era. Is that right? Yeah, on the African continent as a whole. And that is, as of 2015, someone brought that up in France's parliament is the main source people use on that. But yeah, and they've been there more since then. But yeah, they've been all over the region. I actually just had an article published about this in the cradle, about how France never stopped looting Africa, but they have a high degree of control in terms of economic control of all the ports, of controlling even like the water infrastructure in most countries until recently. You know, they run a lot of the mines. They have this CFA frank colonial currency that they're kind of transitioning away from that. But I called it,

it's like the geopolitical equivalent of your father insisting on managing your retirement account while not listing you in as well. So it's really, you know, the British, like there are plenty of problems with their empire and they're very violent, but they did actually build great infrastructure projects. So like they can claim they were trying to develop these countries, whereas France intentionally kept these countries underdeveloped. For example, Najir and Chad have never had railroads. I am at a loss for how France even got colonial administrators to these countries. You know, they must have sent them 2,000 miles on camel. It's insane.

So, you know, France really kept these countries underdeveloped and has an enormous amount of economic control. In Mali, they just canceled a treaty against double taxation from 1965 that basically meant all French businesses operating in Mali only paid taxes in France. And so Mali just canceled that. But yeah, it's a big, they have a whole lot of ways that they've controlled this continent. But it's fading. And, you know, the main reason is that France doesn't have a coherent and,

narrative for what they're doing in Africa, and you have to have a reason behind imperial projects like this, or else it just doesn't make any sense. So, like, their own attitude towards it has kind of doomed them, but they still have this deep-seated paternalistic view where they see it as their responsibilities, so they're, they can't quite quit Africa. Yeah. Well, plus, there's just all those resources to steal. I was reminded of that old clip of Ike Eisenhower talking about Vietnam.

where he's saying, geez, if we lose Vietnam, we'll have to pay the market price for tungsten. Yeah, it's exactly like that. Yeah, you pointed out here that whoever's in charge of Mali, the uranium will be for sale on the global market. It's not quite a liquid-like oil, but same difference. It's all fungible on a global market, and there's only so much demand for international uranium supplies anyway. Yeah, I mean, and this is true of everything. They always pull this card, but like, do you think anyone doesn't? want Americans to buy oil from them, it's the world's largest consumer market.

If they would just behave like reasonable people and not interfere in the internal affairs of states, it would be fine. I mean, and this has been pointed out by much wiser men than anyone who governs us. For example, Montesquieu, the political theorist, said that it's always unwise to try to impose your laws on anyone you're trying to bring into an empire because you can, you know, as long as people obey the government, it's all the same. like they can keep them in line however they want and they'll still sell you all their resources it's fine yeah and no matter who's in charge i mean even osama bin laden had told abdel bari otwan in 1997 that it's oil what am i going to do drink it of course it's going to be for sale i'm just going to not let you dictate the price and amount of production you know how's it yeah exactly all right well it's just a mercantilist mindset they can't get out of yeah exactly right all right all right Right. Well, it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton. I'm talking with Brad Pierce from the Wayward Rabbler website. That's the waywardrabbler.com. He's got all these great articles about what's going on in Africa. And he's got some pieces here about what's going on in West Africa and the Sahel. The last domino falls in the Sahel and rumors of war in West Africa. So I guess that's where we'll finish up here, Brad. What's your prognosis for the South?

the current situation is the whole thing going to, you know, boil over into a giant catastrophe or is everything going to start settling down now because it's just too far away and too hard to do anything about it? Okay, so overall Africa is at a very pivotal moment. It's the youngest, world's youngest continent. It is a rapidly growing population in a rapidly changing world. But I'm overall optimistic. They have a young generation that's enthusiastic and hardworking and is outside of a post-colonial mindset. As far as the U.S. policy in the region, though, I mean, it's basically turned to ashes in their mouths. Everything they've done is a failure. And, you know, they're spending half their time going around lecturing Africans about gay people,

which is very unpopular on the continent. And I really think that their only good option is to just give Nizier a waiver and salvage what they can of the policy because they're not going to want to give up that drone base, but really the only way they can avoid losing this game right now is to not play. And that's what would be better for everyone. But we're led by extremely unwise and hubristic people. So I would imagine that they double down and cause all sorts of problems that continue to spread here and there for basically the rest of our lives. At least that's been the experience with the first 35 years of my life. So, yeah. Well, you know, it's funny, man, from time to time, especially I think in the case of Africa, you've had military,

and different, I guess, civilian officials also admit that this is all about China. You know, you can see maps of like, here's where China has built infrastructure all across Africa. And here's a map of where America has built military infrastructure all across Africa. And it's the same picture, right? And this is what America is doing there, sort of kidnapping people and making them work for free, and just occupying their countries to try to monopolize their resources. if for no other reason than to just keep them out of the hands of the Chinese

and it ain't even working anyway. Yeah, it's no way to make friends. No, it's a good way to make people hate you and to alienate them, though. Yeah, it's completely crazy. But you can see how from the point of view of the Special Operations Command, it's great work if you can get it.

You know, it's way better than fighting people who can fight back. You embed with the local government against whichever small group of armed rebels in their country, that kind of thing. You know, you can do that all day, all decade. Yeah, well, it says I think Caitlin Johnstone said the other day, something along the lines of, you know, when all you have is a massive bloated, overfunded military, then every problem seems like it calls for a massive bloated, overfunded military. Yeah, I think that's about right.

She often says wise things. That's one of them. All right. Well, listen, we're all out of time here, but I got to tell you how much I appreciate your time on the show today. Brad, it's been great. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. I'd love to come back sometime. Aren't you guys? That is Brad Pierce.

He writes the wayward rabbler at the waywardrabler.com. Check out his pieces, rumors of war in West Africa, and the last domino falls in the Sahel. And that's it for anti-war radio for today. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Check out the

archive at Scott Horton.org. You can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. And I'm here every Thursday from 230 to 3 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA. See you next week.