Image is of General Abdourahamane Tiani, leader of Niger (left) and Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso (right).
The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) formed on September 16th in the wake of the coup in Niger in late July, in which Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso created a military and increasingly economic alliance in which attacking one would result in the other two joining. This was initially most relevant militarily, as ECOWAS was threatening an invasion of Niger if they did not restore civilian rule. Nonetheless, due to a mixture of a lack of real strength in ECOWAS due to Nigeria's internal problems, and the influence of Algeria, a very strong regional military power who negotiated against a war which could further destabilise an already destabilised region, and the vague promises of future civilian rule, the external military threat seems to have mostly dissipated.
However, internal threats remain. Burkina Faso is fighting against ISIS and al-Qaeda, which commit regular massacres of civilians; the government controls only 60% of the country. In Mali, the government is fighting against similar groups as well as the Tuareg, which inhabit the more sparsely populated north of the country - the government is in the process of kicking out the UN mission to Mali, and in the process retaking rebel stronghold cities like Kidal, which is raising some eyebrows as to what exactly the UN was doing all this time; and Niger is fighting against similar Islamic groups too, and is kicking out the French for being exploitative motherfuckers. Combine this with the sanctions against Niger which are crippling the country, disease outbreaks in Burkina Faso, and just the general shitty state of the world economy, and the situation is not looking very good currently.
That all being said, economy and trade ministers from all three countries have met this past weekend in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There, they recommended that the countries: improve the free movement of people inside the ASS (don't laugh!); construct and strengthen infrastructure like dams and roads; construct a food safety system; establish a stabilization fund and investment bank; and even create a common airline. This is all attracting foreign attention too - Russia has signed a deal to build Africa's largest gold refinery in Mali, and China is the second largest investor into Niger after France, ploughing money into the gold and uranium industries there. And, of course, the Wagner group is in the region - though I'm unsure if they're having a major or minor impact on events there.
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Your Wednesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
The Country of the Week is Burkina Faso! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches. Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/somali-pirates-likely-behind-attempted-tanker-seizure-pentagon-2023-11-27/
It was initially reported that the Houthis went for a 3rd (2nd?) tanker, but were stopped by a US destroyer that killed 5 Yemeni soldiers. Now the truth is coming out that it was actually Somali pirates and it was an unrelated random act of piracy.
I would like to object to the term "random act of piracy". Somali piracy has a long history tied in to geopolitics. It's a fascinating history; After the collapse of the Somali government back in the 80s there was no coast guard or navy to police Somali waters. Foreign fishing vessels entered somali waters and essentially strip mined the fisheries, leaving the somali fishing industry devastated. At the same time foreign firms began dumping toxic waste in to Somali waters. The first pirates were semi-organized militias trying to protect Somali waters from these foreign depredations. The militias quickly realized that seizing ships and crews for ransom was a profitable way to bring in hard currency in a region where the economy was devastated.
Pirate raids by Somalis have always been incredibly dangerous, with a terrifying death rate for the raiders, but for a long time there were no other real prospects and income from ransoms provided one of the few sources of hard currency for coastal Somalia.
International forces, of course, made no attempt to aid Somalis in keeping those pirating fish and dumping waste out of Somali waters, but were quick to respond militarily to Somali piracy. Such is geopolitics.
Thanks for the background, I had no idea that foreign fish industries were raiding their waters.
It's a really fascinating story. There's some good writing on it but I'm afraid I don't have anything on hand.
I will find it, this is one of those embarrassing blind spots I can’t leave alone. I was content to think “do colonialism and destabilize a coastal population, you’re gonna get piracy”. While a reasonable assumption, it’s pretty lazy!
Sure, my point being is that it just so-happened to be an Israeli ship they decided to pirate and they weren't doing it as a political anti-zionist act
Gotcha. Totes fair. Thank you for clarifying.
Wow that's interesting. Sounds like a great premise for a film.
Some young guy goes on a pirate raid and a few of his friends die and he gets wounded. While getting treatment that eats up a bunch of his share of the booty he talks with an old timer who tells him about why it started. Young guy goes out again for another raid. Comes back to give the old dude some money to help him and maybe we get a few flashbacks to the old pirates first raids. Young guy learns some tricks from old guy and sets out to get a crew and plan to take a really big ship. they pull off the perfect seizure and he does a speech in front of the hostages explaining why he is hijacking them and then in fly the marines and there's a huge fire fight and all the pirates die but the hostages go home and spread the truth.
Protagonist could also be masc presenting female with a reveal 2/3-3/4 into the story? with a commentary on how neo-colonialism entrenches patriarchy and women are essentially colonized twice. (but I cant flesh that out anymore as a cis white dude who is also a shitty writer)
Yeah, I'd watch that. I'm sure there are countless Somali people who would want to tell the story of what happened and why.
aren't you just describing captain phillips basically? Although they villainize the pirates, they also do give the lead pirate a very sympathetic showing and a bit of his backstory I think. So just a re-telling of captain phillips from a non-crakkker pov
Never heard of it before but yeah it sounds pretty much the same except that the white people are the good guys.