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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   1309 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 1, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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ECOWAS

In the past few years the West African countries of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali have all experienced military coups and are now ruled by juntas. There has been significant tension between them and the remaining democracies of West Africa, who really, really don’t want to incentivize military coups in their own countries, leading them to sanction the upstarts. As of this week all three of the juntas have now withdrawn from ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, or a regional trading zone that also allows for free movement of West Africans between countries and occasionally deploys peace keeping force.

The withdrawal is effective immediately; technically you’re supposed to give a one year notice before you exit the organization, but it’s not like anyone can really hold them to that. The also formed the Alliance of Sahel States, which so far just has these three juntas, all three of which, it should be remembered, are very poor and despite being ruled by the military, have very small militaries. All three countries have increasingly close relations with Russia; Mali has been hosting the Wagner group for a while, Russian soldiers arrived in Burkina Faso and will probably be in Niger soon. This is interesting in the sense of the ongoing dynamic of West Africa (and its many resources) shifting away from France and the United States and towards Russia, but the fact that you probably haven’t heard of the Alliance of Sahel States is a good indicator of its relative importance.

Everytime I read about Sub-saharian, especially West African, militaries and governments and alliances, I always think: Do they exist?

Wikipedia tells me that the Nigerine Armed Forces decided to expand from 25.000 to 100.000 men in the next five years. Is this real? Is this gonna happen? The Nigerine Armed Forces exists at all or it is something written on paper as a good chunk of the Afghan Army was?

This Alliance of the Sahel exists? Or it is made only by a bunch of rich tribal leader and "soldiers" surrounded by thugs and Wagner mercenaries, who decided in a single meeting on what to do?

The name sounds ass to me.

I suppose the utter irrelevance of the countries involved contributes to a lack of foreign military intervention, barring whatever Wagner lobs their way (who are likely to consider it a comfort posting compared to Ukraine, and at least you're getting AIDS willingly). Their militaries seem of precisely the tier that ragtag battalions or even a few platoons of South African mercenaries could roll over in a day, but those lads seem to have gone out of fashion since the 70s.

It probably reflects even worse on aspirations for a united Africa if the nominally democratic/stable nations can't muster up the troops to force a rout, I'm curious to know why the muttered threats of military action never came about.

The Nigerian military isn't a cluster of excellence, most of their effort is spent keeping the country together. They're the primary regional power. The West has more important things to do and Wagner can probably counter any small efforts.

These are pretty big countries too, over 20 million people live in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali each! It always surprises me that these poor countries have such high populations. How do 34 million people fit in Yemen?

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