Canada supports ECOWAS threats against Niger, while supporting France's fostering of terrorists in the region
Pro-Niger coup demonstrators show support to Russia and denounce France's military occupation. Image credit: Sam Mednick/AP.
Written by: Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba
Canada has joined the NATO-led and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) supported condemnation of Niger for a military coup against a US and French puppet government which refused to act on Islamist terrorism. Canada’s condemnation of the Niger military government comes after the Canadian military pretended to have no records on the military mission supporting the French army’s operations in Niger earlier this year, in response to ATIP requests made by The Canada Files.
Victoria Nuland, the infamous architect of the Nazi-led Maidan coup in Ukraine, was sent over to Niger to bribe and threaten the new leadership out of cooperation with Russia and the Wagner Group, and dismantling the US military occupation. Meanwhile, Nuland was trying to coordinate a colour revolution with the detained puppet regime president, Mohamed Bazoum, but the coup leadership was clever enough to refuse the visit.
Predatory resource extraction in Niger and other parts of Africa, and the threat to that exploitation formed by the developing anti-imperialist federation of African states, are driving this Western response to the military coup in Niger.
Canadian Armed Forces’ response to The Canada Files’ ATIP requests
The response to our ATIP request would be quite comical, if the situation surrounding it wasn’t so problematic. Initially the Canadian Armed Forces claimed that too many keywords were used in our initial search for Operation PRESENCE, Operation FREQUENCE, Operation NABERIUS, and the relevant JTF-2 operations, waving around an excessively long potential extension, so we narrowed the list of words down and focused exclusively on Operation FREQUENCE and Operation NABERIUS.
Operation FREQUENCE was the operation of interest, since it “supports France''. The Malian government has been protesting to the UN about the exact French airlifts that NATO-ally Canada has been providing logistical support for. Mali alleges that the French were providing logistical support to terrorist entities like Al-Qaeda and other Wahhabi/Salafist derivatives. They threatened to fire on French troops if they continued to support the Wahabi movements in the region.
To those feeling a sense of déjà vu, it isn’t coming from nowhere. Using radical Islamists to establish puppet regimes, threaten governments into compliance with predatory resource extraction, establish a pretext for a colonial military occupation, etc., is how the US and NATO operated in the Middle East and Northern Africa since the first World War. This began famously with the installation of the House of Saud as the absolute monarchs of what is now Saudi Arabia.
Ibn Saud, the first King of Saudi Arabia, the chief representative of Wahhabi dogma at the time, was militarily supported and encouraged into taking power in Arabia by the British, culminating in the 1927 Treaty of Jeddah. For his actions as a Western puppet, he was awarded British and United States military medals after he was crowned in 1932. He was awarded the Order of the Bath, in 1935 and the Legion of Merit, in 1947, respectively. That’s how blatant and out in the open it was.
The NATO bombing of Libya, acting as “Al-Qaeda’s Air Force”, as put by a Canadian Air Force pilot, the “Salafist Principality (ISIS)” in Syria and Iraq of 2012, and even this year’s secret offer to the Taliban to return the 7 billion dollars of frozen assets in exchange for aggravating tensions between Afghanistan and Iran, were essentially the same flavour of imperialist intrigue. So naturally, TCF suspected that the same thing might be going on with Operation FREQUENCE and Operation NABERIUS, prompting our requests around these missions.
After being denied a second time, under the pretext that we weren’t being specific, TCF limited our search to Operation FREQUENCE, which is a still ongoing military operation at the time of this writing. We were also stonewalled here.
Niger’s military coup, of a similar nature to the ones in Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso, and how it angered the local puppet governments and NATO, prompted a return to the topic.
Conditions leading to the coup in Niger
Using al-Qaeda/Wahhabist proxy militias after the destruction of Libya in 2011, NATO managed to subvert the popular instinct to overthrow the French puppet regime in Niger (17:53-19:35).
Those privy to what was actually going on with the “training programs” and “defence partnerships”, which are about recycling and perpetuating the problem to weaken the state and continue to get leverage over the country’s resources, such as ex-Niger President Mohamed Bazoum, were bought and paid off a long time ago, so the insurgency could undoubtedly continue and eventually escalate with little to no issue.
In 2018, while Bazoum was Minister of the Interior, the US Army got Niger to agree to a foreign military occupation. This saw a military base with a two kilometre runway for drone warfare, and a CIA base, installed in Niger, in order to intimidate and crack down on any eventual opposition.
In the drone base, there are around 1000 US soldiers illegally occupying Niger. The military government has told the US soldiers to leave the country and they refuse to do so (6:17-7:07).
Programs such as Operation NABERIUS and Operation FREQUENCE, which saw terrorists being armed by the French and the same local trained soldiers under Operation NABERIUS come back as militants for the Al-Qaeda/Wahabbi derivatives (17:55-18:57), would cause enough pain and bloodshed to infuriate the local troops. With genuine emotional and familial ties to the country, they began realising what was going on.
Hence the current coup, which will be militarily backed by their neighbours Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria, Guinea, and possibly even Russia against the rest of ECOWAS and possibly NATO.
The coup leaders’ federation and its aims
The current leaders of the coup in Niger, much like the current leaders of Mali and Burkina Faso, have all decided to halt exports of raw materials to France and the rest of the west. Canada’s public “condemnation” of “a serious threat to democracy and stability”, is driven by the end of profit stability major Canadian mining companies, Global Atomic and GoviEx Uranium. The deliberately weakened Niger puppet government run by a puppet regime, unable, and unwilling to collect proper revenue is now deposed. So, the “stability” of exorbitant profits for corporations under the favour of the Canadian state, namely colonial resource extraction businesses, is now under serious threat.
This became especially concerning to the US-NATO axis when the Niger coup leaders reportedly refused to take Nuland's bribe offer of $200 million USD. It revealed that they were motivated by more than the bottom line. It looks like the aspirations of those poor and downtrodden Africans that supported the coup, and the 4600 West Africans that died in this year alone in the fight against Jihadists, were not as cheap as the thousands of Africans that are killed by US police forces on a regular basis. This was definitely a surprise to Victoria Nuland, who was confused about why the bribe wasn’t taken in the first place.
The long-term plans of the frustrated military governments in the region is another factor in the Nigerien military government’s refusal to take the US bribe. Mali and Burkina Faso already consider themselves to be one army. Ibrahim Traore, acting president of Burkina Faso, has already put forward a proposal for like-minded governments in Africa to join in a federation, which is why Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea have committed to defending Niger if it is attacked.
The value of a “democratic” constitution and “civilian” rule
The unfortunate tragedy of the political illiteracy, political opportunism, and political cowardice of the NATO-residing public can be exemplified by a terrible quote from Yves Engler:
Although it’s not quite as shameless as this quote from CNN:
“Niger has become a point of stability in the Sahel region of Africa”
Mohamed Bazoum was “elected” thanks to vote rigging, which is widespread across the “democracies” of Africa. He was supported by the west due to the support for NATO military occupation, and his return to power would ensure the occupation continues, which would mean the terrorism would continue, because the problem is caused by NATO to begin with, as previously stated.
The root of the problem in both articles is a democratic and liberal delusion of the primacy of the liberal democratic state/model, on the part of Yves Engler, and the desperate need to perpetuate the delusion for their corporate sponsors, on the part of CNN, even as the flaws of the system are exposed domestically on a regular basis (ie. the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, the inflation crisis, the end of sustainable housing, and the colonial convoy).
The primacy of the liberal democracy has itself become a religion that has to be spread globally and can’t be desecrated. And any desecration of the sanctity of the “universal ideals” of liberal democracy must be crushed, even with neo-colonial violence.
Unfortunately for the “liberal democracy” practitioners acting as religious zealots, and the white supremacist European enforcers in NATO, the show’s over for this sadistic exercise in Africa. The African people have shown that they’ve lost patience with it and want an end to the performance.
ECOWAS’ panic in immediately threatening to crush the uprising is a clear indication, regardless of the true political nature of the current coup leaders in Niger, which remains unclear. The house slaves ruling Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal in particular, but the rest of them generally, feel that the master’s mansion being under attack is a threat to them, and that if nothing is done, the field slaves in revolt will look to brutally punish them first, while they’re hiding in the attic.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Marthad Shingiro Umucyaba (formerly referred to as Christian Shingiro) is a Rwandan-born naturalized Canadian expat. He is known for his participation in Communist/anti-imperialist national and international politics and is the radio show host of The Socially Radical Guitarist.
He is also a freelance web developer in Hong Kong, China, striving to provide “Socially Radical Web Design at a socially reasonable price”.
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