Breaking: U.S. to Evacuate from Niger After Coup, Prevent Assassinated or Bounty by Wagner Russia, and Next Maybe Evacuate From Mali and Burkina Faso. Sign Sunset of The West in Africa

transforming geopolitical realities for Western Powers. Russia is also Europe: and many ‘other’ nations now want out of this Anglophonic/European ‘system of war’ currently governing IR

Niamey Niger and Ouagadougou 8.11pm / Bamako Mali 9.11pm / DC 4.11pm

Last April, around 18 April until May, the entire West — actually also other nationalities such as Indian, Chinese, entire Middle East nationalities -- must evacuate from Sudan because of the civil war. Between April until today August 2nd, at least 14,000 civilian dead, and the total between government army and rebel (died) reaches 50,000.

Around 10am DC time today, a decision by US State Department, The U.S. government is preparing an order to evacuate most U.S. Embassy personnel from Niger, according to three people familiar with internal deliberations. Yes, not only French now but also U.S. 

Niger neighbor, the President of Burkina Faso Captain Ibrahim Traore has banned Uranium exports to France and the United States. As the US influence diminishes, Russia's influence is increasing in West Africa. Moscow has forgiven US$23 billion in African debt 8 days ago. African countries are openly declaring dissatisfaction with Europe and the West, in general.

Biden administration’s attempt to have things both ways in how it deals with the junta in Burkina Faso:

The Biden administration faces a dilemma in West Africa: Should the United States help a country run by a military junta with a troubling record on human rights or risk the country’s losing territory to Islamic extremists and partnering with Wagner’s Russian mercenaries?

The administration’s answer has been that it will choose to help the junta. The article frames this choice as part of a tough but necessary balancing act, but in doing so it lets the administration off the hook for making sketchy compromises that don’t even deliver on the security front. The U.S. should not be cooperating with the junta at all, and the belief it “has to” do this is based on several flawed assumptions about the interests that the U.S. has in the region. Whether it is tied to old “war on terror” thinking or the new “great power competition” approach, the U.S. is not advancing its interests by helping African states to militarize further.

U.S. policies helped to create the instability and violence in the Sahel by backing local militaries and encouraging them to wage counterinsurgencies against their own people. Now that Washington is faced with the failure of this approach, it finds itself reaching for the same useless tools. The government always has excuses for why backing some abusive authoritarian government is “necessary,” but the truth is that the U.S. chooses to throw in its lot with brutal regimes because it prizes influence with them over everything else.

Multiple Mali media indicated General Salifou Mody, the deputy leader of the junta that seized power in a coup in Niger last week, is in Mali to request a rapid deployment of Wagner forces to help their coup regime in Niger.

The U.S. Government has had Nigers presidential guard on its train and equip ban list since the last coup they did in 2010. Therefore the US had no eyes inside the guard. And no formal contacts there either. Not to defend the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security (French: Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure, DGSE – France 's foreign intelligence agency) here, but their failure to predict the coup (as opposed to the coup risk, which everyone should have known was elevated) is hardly surprising--it originated because T(ch)iani didn't want to be fired, and then snowballed in ways nearly impossible to predict. 

And every time the U.S. says massive evacuate, will be following (at least) the entire West countries. rumors continue to circulate about Russia and Wagners' role in the Niger coup, after a brouhaha in Moscow 2 months ago between Prigozhin and Putin.

US Ambassador to UN made it Putin clear: “Any attack of the Wagner group will be considered an attack by the Russian Federation" “And we have raised our concerns about the Wagner Group long before they got in the press for actually attacking their own government. We have seen their malign efforts on the continent of Africa. So we certainly worry that this group, at the behest of the Russian Government – because they do not work independently of the Russian Government – is a threat to all of us. And we have to ensure that the message is clear that any attacks by the Wagner Group will be seen as an attack by the Russian Government.” stated Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

While China or Russia are & should remain a top priority, there are real consequences for allowing the Sahel to burn. While the U.S. is rhetorically opposed to subversions of a country's legitimate government, particularly when the use of force is involved, the U.S. can also be wishy-washy in practice."

On Niger and Sahel more broadly we should avoid overhyping the role of Russia in instigating coups in African nations, but we also need to be careful not to underestimate Moscow's ability to take advantage of what it views not as crises, but as opportunities to project influence. Either the Russians are feckless or they're omnipotent & pulling all the strings. Russia has major flaws or weaknesses, but is still savvy enough to capitalize on coups in Africa to expand Moscow's footprint. Transforming geopolitical realities for Western Powers. Russia is also Europe: and many ‘other’ nations now want out of this Anglophonic or European ‘system of war’ currently governing international relations, through Washington and Moscow.

A reminder that the US has been pouring military resources into Niger for years, with hundreds of Americans deployed and at least two drone bases conducting counter-terror operations in the Sahel. Four Americans died there in October 2017 while conducting a mission with Nigerien troops,  highlighting America's increasingly deep and broad military commitments in Africa.

With conventional troops and special forces officially operating in dozens of countries, including direct involvement in at least four active conflicts, America has become enmeshed in the fortunes of allies spanning a range of political ideologies and reliability.

These operations include regular drone and airstrikes, as well as commando raids aimed at decapitating nascent Islamic terror groups across the continent. In Libya and North Africa, American troops are targeting ISIS forces and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM; in Somalia they are seeking Al-Shabaab militants; and in the Lake Chad region they are hunting Boko Haram extremists.

Over the past 10 years, AFRICOM has also become an epicenter of "train, advise and assist" programs as part of the U.S. Global War on Terror. The bulk of these missions have fallen to its subsidiary unit, Special Operations Command Africa, or SOCAFRICA.

"Africa is considered a Low-Intensity Conflict area and so far the U.S. footprint in Africa, although grown in recent years has only increased incrementally," Derek Gannon, a former Green Beret who writes extensively on American operations in Africa for the military website SOFREP.com, said in a phone interview. "It's what is called Low Intensity Irregular Warfare, yet technically it’s not considered war by the Pentagon."

In the last 6 days tension in Niger, amazingly enough, senior U.S. lawmakers didn’t have a clue U.S. troops were in Niger to begin with.

Back to evacuation plan. A final decision to evacuate has not yet been made, said a U.S. diplomat, a U.S. official and a former U.S. official. The diplomat said the decision was imminent, however. They, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.

The West African country, which only recently transitioned to democracy and is a key recipient of U.S. security aid, is in the midst of a military coup. The Biden administration is struggling with how to respond, including whether to formally declare the events a coup, because doing so could endanger its efforts to battle terrorism and give an opening for Russia to increase its influence in Africa.

It didn’t take long for the U.S. to condemn the overthrow of Niger’s elected government. But the U.S. was not always so anti-coup. In fact, Washington has often supported, enabled, or averted its eyes to military coups in the past. With Niger, the U.S. finds itself in a predicament. Detaining the Sahel’s last democratically-elected president and gutting its institutions is regrettable and would seem to constitute a coup requiring a U.S. aid cutoff. But you could have said the same thing about Egypt.

Over the past decade, at least 42,000 people in the three countries at the core of the Sahel have been killed in jihadist-related conflict, according to a data-collection organisation. 

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-prada- Adi Mulia Pradana is a Helper. Former adviser (President Indonesia) Jokowi for mapping 2-times election. I used to get paid to catch all these blunders—now I do it for free. Trying to work out what's going on, what happens next. Arch enemies of the tobacco industry, (still) survive after getting doxed. Now figure out, or, prevent catastrophic situations in the Indonesian administration from outside the government. After his mom was nearly killed by a syndicate, now I do it (catch all these blunders, especially blunders by an asshole syndicates) for free. Writer actually facing 12 years attack-simultaneously (physically terror, cyberattack terror) by his (ex) friend in IR UGM / HI UGM (all of them actually indebted to me, at least get a very cheap book). 2 times, my mom nearly got assassinated by my friend with “komplotan” / weird syndicate. Once assassin, forever is assassin, that I was facing in years. I push myself to be (keep) dovish, pacifist, and you can read my pacifist tone in every note I write. A framing that myself propagated for years.

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