Geography Quiz: Sahel Edition

World Atlas 

"This region of Africa—the Sahel—has faced a cascade of crises: the desiccation of the land due to the climate catastrophe, the rise of Islamic militancy due to the 2011 NATO war in Libya, the increase in smuggling networks to traffic weapons, humans, and drugs across the desert, the appropriation of natural resources—including uranium and gold—by Western companies that have simply not paid adequately for these riches, and the entrenchment of Western military forces through the construction of bases and the operation of these armies with impunity."  

Vijay Prashad & Kambale Musavuli, People's Dispatch

Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea -- what do they have in common? Could you find the nations leading the anti-colonial drive in the Sahel region of Africa on a map?

Map A - Led by revolutionary Thomas Sankara from 1983 until his CIA-sponsored assassination in 1987. Currently, Interim President Capt. Ibrahim Traoré has pledged support for Niger in that nation's efforts to expel French and U.S. military occupiers. Technically not in the Sahel on the map above, but shares a border with nations that are.

Map B - "military leaders of Burkina Faso and [this nation] threatened war if the U.S. and France attacked Niger, even if they did so through the Black face of ECOWAS" Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report

Map C - Technically not in the Sahel in the map above, but shares borders with nations that are and has an anti-colonial government. 

Map D - "Following anti-colonial coups, the US and France threaten intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in [this country], which produces uranium needed for nuclear energy and hosts strategic US drone bases."  Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy Report

Map E - People of this nation are known as *****ians in contrast to their neighbors who are known as Nigeriens. Part of the ECOWAS alliance, it has already blockaded Niger in response to NATO nations calling for that nation to be punished for ejecting colonial powers France and the U.S.

Map F - “Operation Restore Democracy”, an ECOWAS operation led by [this nation] in 2017, sent troops into The Gambia to impose a new leader friendly to the West. In the map below, The Gambia is surrounded by this nation on three sides, and the Atlantic Ocean.

Map G - Malik Agar, Deputy Chairman of the Sovereign Council, participated in the recent Russian-African summit in Petersburg. The Wagner Group private militia are said to be supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in the ongoing civil war in [this country], while the U.S., EU, and UK have imposed sanctions. In particular its Darfur region has experienced much violence.

Map H - Destination for refugees from ongoing war in neighboring Sudan, this nation had its own civil war but not to worry! USAID head Samantha Power visited a refugee camp here and pledged lots of monetary support.

Map I - A strong majority voted in 1993 for independence from Ethiopia. Was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2021 for supporting rebels in Ethiopia's Tigray Regional State. 

Map J - Part of the anti-ECOWAS alliance to support Niger's independence from French and U.S. colonial exploitation.

All blank maps sourced from Free Country Maps

ANSWER KEY:

Map A - Burkina Faso

Map B -Mali

Map C - Mauritania

Map D - Niger

Map E - Nigeria

Map F - Senegal

Map G - Sudan

Map H - Chad

Map I - Eritrea

Map J - Guinea

A highly relevant map showing history in area that overlaps the Sahel region

The US has over 1,000 troops in Niger, put there in 2007 during the Obama years. Are they really there to fight “terrorism", of a kind that the west supported in Syria, or are they there to advance imperial interests?

The US presence in Africa has been disastrous, adding to the very instability that it claims to address, even as African population, natural resources and economic importance are rapidly increasing (with Africa possibly becoming the world’s single greatest economy in the 2060s, according to UN projections).

Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Empire, Communication and NATO Wars

This is actually a photo of Germany's gold reserves, not France's, but the image of a white guy in a suit counting the stolen wealth of Africa was too good to pass up.

The violence at the center of the relationship between the European colonizer and the colonized “other” has not changed since Europeans spilled out of Europe into the Americas in 1492, only its forms have taken new shapes.  

Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report

ERRATA: A reader pointed out that Obama became president in 2009, so the quote I included about troops into Niger under his watch could not have happened in 2007. I’m guessing that was a typo on the part of the author. Certainly AFRICOM / U.S. military presence on the African continent expanded dramatically during the Obama administration. 

Ignore Your Empire's Wars At Your Peril

"Troops killed in ambush on joint US-Niger patrol" Al-Jazeera 

My friend Janet re-tweeted photos of the four U.S. military men killed in Niger last week, which led me to search for more news about this disturbing event.

Now that Google has re-configured its search algorithms to even more strongly preference corporate "news" sources, I have to dig deeper for nuggets of information about the misadventures of the empire I'm funding (e.g. my yearly bonus for achieving National Board Professional Teacher certification is $3,000, but I'll receive only about $2,000 after taxes of which more than half will go to the Pentagon).

I could stop using Google and instead use DuckDuckGo or another search engine that does not track my activity. But, it returns similar corporate media sources and will never tailor itself to my preferences as it doesn't remember what I've clicked on in the past.

Such is the labor required to find news in the declining days of the so-called Information Age.

I thought I had found something useful on GlobalResearch.com, the website of the Centre for Research on Globalization. But it turned out to be a reprint of an article from salon.com focusing on the demagogue with bad hair and his non-reaction to the deaths in Niger.

Every time I look for news online these days it seems to want to fall into one of two categories: bland regurgitation of press releases from the government, or an obsessive focus on the role of the demagogue with bad hair.

Progressive journalists in the U.S. seem to have become mentally ill under the steady influence of their obsession with the man and his misdeeds. I find myself drifting further from finding such news purveyors relevant or even useful with each passing day.

Eventually I navigated to the World Socialist Website article "Killings of four elite soldiers in Niger highlight vast scale of American military operations in Africa" by Eddie Haywood.

Besides offering current context, it provided useful background on how regime change in Libya effected by a U.S. Democratic Party administration sparked military conflict in the bordering nation of Mali which has in turn led to militarized violence in Niger, which shares a border with both.

Along the way of my search I stumbled on news that the former Deputy PM of Qatar is warning that mercenaries employed by Erik Prince (i.e.Blackwater, now known as Academi) are poised to invade Qatar from the United Arab Emirates. Middle East Monitor reported that these military preparations pre-date the recent sanctions and threats against the home base of media company Al Jazeera.

Also, I encountered a report on U.S. troops rotating home from northern Australia where Obama sent them to engage in war rehearsals with their counterparts in Oz. 

Map: anti-bases.org

According to a report in Reuters:

During the six-month deployment, the U.S. troops participated in 12 joint exercises with the Australian Defence Force, giving them an opportunity to interact with a range of countries including China, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The exercises are part of the "pivot to Asia" which U.S. troops in Niger could also be seen as participating in; both are about countering China's considerable influence in Africa and, of course, southeast Asia and the South Pacific.

All of this led me to reflect on the best essay I read this week, an examination by military historian Andrew Bacevich of "How We Learned Not To Care About America's Wars."

Bacevich presents what he sees as the salient factors in descending order of importance:

1) U.S. casualty rates are low
2) the actual costs of U.S. wars are never calculated
3) lip service about supporting the troops has supplanted actual engagement
4) the dangers of terrorism are "hyped and hyped and hyped some more"
5) talking head nonsense crowds out substantive discussion and debate
6) people in the U.S. educated classes keep themselves very, very busy
7) belief that the next Commander-in-Chief will save the day
8) the diverse "progressive" military is seen as immune to criticism

His final paragraph renders this scathing indictment (from a West Point graduate who lost a son to the war on Iraq):

A collective indifference to war has become an emblem of contemporary America.  

But don't expect your neighbors down the street or the editors of the New York Times to lose any sleep over that fact.  Even to notice it would require them -- and us -- to care.

Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, or so the old saying goes. I find our deliberately induced ignorance of current events is integral to our historic amnesia.

Here's an historical nugget of archival footage of a pro-America pro-Nazi rally held in 1939 in Madison Square Garden, NYC that you may wish you could unsee.



A Night at the Garden from Field of Vision on Vimeo.

Cue the chorus of "my grandfather fought fascists in WWII" clogging up the comment sections of articles on the rise of white supremacists again going proud and public in 2017. Never mind that it was mostly the Soviets who defeated Nazi Germany. Who remembers that?