Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 6 2023 03:36pm)

Well aside from Nigeria beholden to western interests and in particular Shell Oil, their self-interest in keeping Niger as the last Sahel state in the western sphere would arguably be to serve as a buffer against the militant islamists who threaten Nigeria so much. There's no imaginable world in which a totally sovereign Nigeria would want to risk embroiling itself in an east-west proxy war against Wagner mercenaries, and Nigeria clearly has more independent self-determination than a true CIA puppet state like post-Maidan Ukraine.

But yeah what's the status quo going to be? Freezing all aid and electricity to a state that was already dirt poor and vulnerable and starving, because they don't adhere to our geopolitical whims? We give money to Mali and Burkina Faso after their coups, so would this just be a fuck-you-in-particular to Niger? Or are we going to have to walk back the sanctions and bluster before status quo sets back in?



naw those are the guys who want to invade niger, if the richest man in niger actually owns a phone he'd still only be able to call you speaking hausa or maybe djarma, most of them don't even speak french let alone english
its one of the few places in the world where lingua franca doesn't apply because its such an utter irredeemable shithole, something like 10-15% of niger has internet access

Its hard to understate just how abandoned and exploited by foreign powers- both east and west- Niger has been historically, because unlike the oil baron states like Nigeria that profited and have at least started modernizing, the average monthly income for a Niger man is about $50 USD. And that's for a country with a large uranium mining and export industry, owned by their historical slave masters in France and largely taken over by Indian, Chinese, Canadian and Australian interests. We estimate about half of all Niger children age 5-14 are working and at least 5% of them working in the mining industry.

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 5 2023 01:21pm)

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/5/nigers-military-rulers-ask-for-help-from-russian-group-wagner

Malian sources now confirming that the Tchiani regime is indeed seeking Wagner mercenaries to defend against a Nigerian / ECOWAS invasion
Even with western backing this will definitely add an element of reluctance to Tinubu on whether to actually invade, because its not whatsoever in Nigeria's self-interest to get bogged down in an east/west proxy war where they are the ones dying, ala Ukraine 2.0. That could also be a cause for Nigeria to back down and an uneasy peace in the region, but hey we're watching it unfold in realtime so who knows

Quote

They oppose foreign interference to restore constitutional order and legality. But on the contrary, they are ready to make a pact with Wagner and Russia to undermine the constitutional order … They are prepared for the country to go up in flames so that they can illegally maintain their position.

Quote (Jupe @ Aug 6 2023 11:44am)

heh

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 6 2023 12:34pm)

https://apnews.com/article/niger-coup-extremism-west-africa-nigeria-90b4ce18a4235606f49597bef268b87a

the deadline has arrived and passed
no response from nigeria so far

The niger coup leaders celebrated by gathering townsfolk into a stadium and holding a public beheading of a chicken painted in the tricolor of the french flag
Reports say that Russian cargo planes have already arrived in Niamey and deployed a 'limited' number of Wagner mercenaries, supposedly just to hold the capitol

There are still 1500 french troops and 1100 american troops in the country. The US air base is deep in the Sahara by Agadez in the Aïr Mountains, but the french troops are right in the capitol of Niamey at the air base 101, which means they're right next to the Wagner mercenaries arriving
Which exactly mirrors what happened in Mali in 2021, forcing the french to withdraw as wagner arrived.

Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ 7 Aug 2023 10:35)

niger closed their airspace ^_^

Quote (ofthevoid @ Aug 6 2023 01:03pm)

Pretty incredible how a relatively small mercenary force can command and swing conflicts tbh. Just looking at some of the African countries (CAR, Mali, Burkino) you're talking about probably a few thousand Wagner soldiers, it's not like they are deploying 100k special ops blackwater ex-navy seals. Something to be said about ability to deploy tactical forces that operate outside some legal countries framework. I think the last number of years they have been punching well above their weight.

Not sure what happens next, but hopefully it leads to some de-escalation and acceptance & co-existence with some level of normalization. Too many people barely surviving as it is there without having a full blown war turning this into a Darfur-scale catastrophe.