Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expressed support for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) after it threatened to use force against coup leaders in Niger if President Mohamed Bazoum is not reinstated.
ECOWAS, a bloc of 15 West African nations, held an extraordinary summit to discuss the coup on Sunday. In a joint communique, ECOWAS leaders announced sanctions and said if Bazoum is not reinstated within a week, the bloc will “take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order” in Niger. “Such measures may include the use of force,” the leaders said.
Following the ECOWAS summit, Blinken released a statement backing the bloc. “The United States welcomes and commends the strong leadership of the [ECOWAS] Heads of State and Government to defend constitutional order in Niger,” Blinken said.
“We join ECOWAS and regional leaders in calling for the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum and his family and the restoration of all state functions to the legitimate, democratically-elected government,” the statement added.
On Monday, one of the coup leaders in Niger claimed that the ousted government authorized a French military attack on the presidential palace to free Bazoum. According to Al Jazeera, in response to the allegations, the French Foreign Ministry did not confirm or deny if it was planning military intervention but said the only legitimate authority it recognized in Niger was Bazoum.
Any military intervention carried out in Niger, whether by France or ECOWAS, could involve the US, as there are about 1,100 US troops in the country and a major American drone base known as Air Base 201. The US has provided counterterrorism assistance to Niger for about two decades, and at least one of the coup leaders previously received training from the US.
US counterterrorism efforts in West Africa have been a complete failure as violent attacks have spiked in the region since the US got involved. Writing for The Intercept, journalist Nick Turse explained that in 2002 and 2003, the first years of US counterterrorism assistance to Niger, the State Department counted just nine terrorist attacks in all of Africa.
“Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger alone reached 2,737, according to a report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution. This represents a jump of more than 30,000 percent since the US began its counterterrorism efforts,” Turse wrote.
Of course the US is in favor of putting down the coup. It doesn’t want to lose Niger to Russian influence, as it already has in the cases of other Sahel nations.
The West has already lost in Africa, as much as they have lost in eastern Europe (Ukraine).
Notice how Washington and Paris were taken by complete surprise by what happened in Niger. They didn’t have a clue, why? Because their intelligence agencies had no clue, why? Because they are a total joke, thoroughly infiltrated, staffed by incompetent Dilberts, with no significant HUMINT assets on the ground.
If the US is smart, they walk away. Theyre not smart, though – Ulraine has proven what imbeciles they are – so they will have to be humiliated once more, as they were in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
It is not really about Russian influence. What the US does not want is to lose is the African center of its current operations, not to anyone, especially not to locals.
The old government is bought and paid for, and heavily used and abused. They want to keep things that way. Drones, Special Operations, CIA covert ops, they have it all there, together with the intelligence center guiding efforts across the region.
Another article reported that the US just spent $110 million on that drone base, and now can’t use it. That’s the issue, the driver is what got that money spent there.
The US already has troops in Niger and now Germany will send troops as part of the EU effort to start another war for oil and uranium. Just another miserable location to spill more American blood and our stolen wages and interest payments. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/29/german-government-to-deploy-troops-to-niger-as-part-of-eu-mission
highly doubtful. The truth is that this American military isn’t up to fighting anyone right now. It is a disaster and shambles.
That doesn’t mean it will try. Wash. is psychotic and the decisions made there reflect that fact. Escape from reason is complete, you can see it in Wash. policy; the uni-party is in control of life and death around the world now.
I support use of force against terrorist regime in Washington and London.
Do not forget France.
This is a former colony of theirs that joined the “coup belt” of Africa.
Still a de facto colony. Their major supplier of uranium.
Yes but there’s no need to colonize for that because they will sell it to anyone.
Supposedly 50% of their gold mining went to France which was why they colonized it.
It’s said to be among the poorest in Africa but France needed that gold ….lol.
Extracting of minerals to make money for the colonizer is always present and why versions of colonization is going on today in Africa.
Yes, one would suppose. Will the Blinken folks support ECOWAS sanctions?
Sanctions?
Of course they’ll support them (we love our sanctions;-) but when do sanctions actually work as intended?
Niger coup leader, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, (trained by US and western intelligence) just suspended uranium and gold shipments to France. How many African coup leaders have been trained by the US military in the School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia?
Fourteen at present? I read the piece in Johnson’s Russia List a couple of days ago. Do you think Washington is playing its old two-step?
We need regime change in DC, and I don’t mean the other side of the uniparty doing the same things.
I mean the neocon permanent government must go to jail.
Perhaps the open bribery of Hunter Biden can by assigned to Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, who almost certainly knew who was being paid off for US political support of their Ukraine project. That could jail them, even if Biden can save his son via some sort of ongoing corruption of DoJ.
Taking them down could start the ball rolling. Turn on the lights, and the rats and cockroaches will scamper.
Blinkenstein backs violence. That about sums it up.
It’s hilarious that the west is especially butthurt about the coup now that the oil and mining ministers have been rounded up….
So, Niger is liable to be invaded by its neighbors on account of a domestic coup d’etat? What happened to the principles of national sovereignty and sacred borders that NATO is supposed to be protecting in Ukraine, which experienced a coup d’etat in 2014 leading to a civil war?
When is it okay for the neighbors to step in and when is it not okay? Is there some kind of double standard here?
maybe Blinken was practicing his sense of irony
I would bet my last dollar that this is directly related to the new Nigerian government’s banning the export of uranium to France.
Give the pencil-necked POS a rifle and drop him off in Nigeria .
Good luck with that, Blinken, you utter imbecile. Not only have you clowns again forged China and Russia even closer together, but you’ve also allied the Sahel African states against you. Not just that – Washington’s proxy ECOWAS has already started fracturing, and Algeria has put any African nation on notice that they won’t tolerate any western backed military adventures against Niger.
Isnt it time that America, the so-called great military power, puts feet on the gound somewhere? They are AWOL in Ukraine and looks like they will be AWOL in Africa. Such cowardice from the preening prima donna of geopolitics. Or is it because the US knows that their military is far weaker than advertised, and would face humiliation and defeat against any nation with half decent military forces, let alone peer or stronger rivals such as Russia and China? I think most informed observers know the answer.
And you wondered what AFRICOM has been doing there all this time. 😉
Niger has been an important base for US forces in its wars all over Africa. It is a drone base, a DoD HQ for Special Operations all over the place, and a center for CIA covert actions.
The US would lose this, if its puppet neglectful thief and dictator were replaced by anyone actually trying to govern the country for the interests of its people.
I don’t know that the coup leaders really mean to do that, but they can’t be worse for the country’s own interests than what the US has propped up there to get use of the country.
The model they must fear is the “help” the US gave Ukraine, and South Sudan, and the other tools it has used.
Niger also hosts French, German and Italian troops along with their NATO boss, the US. And what John Sansone commented below, this is AFRICOM on steroids and a neo-con wet dream come true to turn Africans against Africans. No wonder some of those missing weapons headed to Ukraine ended up in Niger.
Nigeria next door is ten times the population of Niger, and its Army is even more oversized. The US is deeply connected with the Nigerian Army, and has been since the US helped crush the Biafra revolt over control of oil money.
The corrupt won in Biafra, the US connected Army dominates, and locals wallow in extreme poverty getting no benefit from the oil they live on. That is the core of US power in the region.
Blinken thinks he can leverage that to use the Nigerian Army against Niger.
How’s RFJ,Jr polling?
As long as we are not asked to be involved then whatever these leaders decide I hope it works to lessen the killings.
I know some assume these folks are incapable of deciding what is best (for all sorts of reasons) but is it really the US’s place to make any decisions instead of these leaders?
Even Africa is a pawn of the East and West. So sad.