Well that certainly seems like shitty counter insurgency. It doesn’t effect the material reasons that led to insurgents and creates more martyrs which increases recruitment and helps align the civilian population with the insurgency. The vietnamese knew this 50 years ago which is one of the reasons the US got its ass handed to it, has the US not learned it still?
Outside of the tactic not being effective though, why is the US interested in doing counterinsurgency in the region?
I would imagine western intelligence is very useful in fighting Isis. It certainly has been a huge boon for Ukraine in their war. As for why the west is interested in stopping the spread of Islamic extremism in Africa, foreign safe harbors for extremists often end up being training grounds for terrorists that attack the west.
Uh… Hate to break it to you, champ, but no one has trained, funded, and armed more Islamic extremists than the US. Maybe the US should GTFO of the places that it completely fucked up and let the sovereign nations that are impacted deal with it themselves. If those nations need help, maybe the US and Europe can start to return the trillions of dollars it stole from the continent.
I won’t disagree that the US has short-sightedly funded a lot of mujahideen fighters including recently some questionable groups in Syria, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re directly opposed to the Islamists in Saharan Africa. As for your suggestion that the US return the money they stole (despite the fact that they weren’t really involved in African colonialism), they account for over a fifth of all aid to Africa.
I won’t disagree that the US has short-sightedly funded a lot of mujahideen fighters including recently some questionable groups in Syria, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re directly opposed to the Islamists in Saharan Africa.
“This time it’s different, I swear, just give me one more undeclared forever war”
The US wasn’t involved in African colonialism? Aside from the fact that they profited immensely from the slave trade they were part of the Berlin Conference. Then followed all of the neocolonialism where they participated in ensuring European/American control over natural resources through coups, support for puppet regimes, etc.
You can’t just diminish the US’s role in literally creating modern terrorism and just wave it off by saying they are definitely out there fighting the good fight. And you can’t say that because the US wasn’t part of the initial colonization of African that it doesn’t benefit from and participate in the theft of billions from the continent annually. You have to actually do the research into the history and present-day and at least try to understand the whole thing instead of just believing what Western PR firms say.
Yes, the US gives aid as part of the cover they need to extract more. The wealth the West is loaning to Africa is literally Africa wealth. Why should the West be charging massive amounts of interest and fees and attaching political strings to loans of money to Africa when that money is Africa’s in the first place? The idea that colonialism is over and the US isn’t part of it is just refusal to engage in the contemporary understanding of neocolonialism and how it looks, behaves, and how destructive it is.
Yes, the US is fighting ISIS but the US also gave rise to ISIS. The US should not be there fighting ISIS because whatever comes next will be worse. ISIS is already the 3rd generation of terrorism spawned through blow back against US policy, strategy, and tactics. You really want to see the 4th generation? Because that’s what’s going to emerge from the US fighting ISIS. The US doesn’t give a shit about the impact of terrorism in Africa and Asia. They fucking created it on purpose, and it has proven to be an incredibly lucrative phenomenon for them. They love being able to whip everyone into a blood frenzy with the topic.
The CIA is still working with extremists and terrorists - training, arming, and organizing them - for geostrategic aims, mostly fighting communism and securing oil and mineral profits.
So. Yeah. Fuck the US. They need to get the fuck out of Africa and they along with the rest of the North Atlantic need to begin the process of reparations. And that’s going to be in the trillions of dollars just for the last 50 years so they need to get started now as it will take decades for them to find ways to give back to Africa what they stole.
So when all the extremists that now can’t be monitored and controlled start commiting attacks in other parts of Africa, or sneak over the med to Europe to attack there, that’s a good thing because…?
Because the US is the worst extremist in the world, killing and torturing more people, more systematically, more continuously, and with munitions that poison the land enough to kill the children and the grandchildren who will be born there for decades later.
So you’re more than happy for people to die in Africa and Europe as long as it’s done by islamic extremists, just as long as it’s not the US? Fucking bizarre mindset mate.
Considering the number of people the US and Europe have killed in Africa is orders of magnitude higher than the number of people killed by Islamic extremists, and considering the US and Europe trained, funded, and armed many of the Islamic extremists that are causing the harm you’re so worried about, I would say it’s not bizarre at all.
What’s bizarre is continuing to pretend that the solution to violent extremism is more violent power and military occupation by the imperialists of the continent when it was those imperialists who created the violent extremism in the first place.
Despite what they might tell you, the US has zero interest in fixing the problems they caused. The blowback is valuable to them. They keep the cycle of violence going and it keeps generating opportunities to project their power and generate ultraprofits.
After the U.S. spent the last 20 years indiscriminately killing hundreds of thousands of people (at minimum!) throughout the world under the guise of fighting Islamic extremists, it’s disgusting to trot out concern for lives as a defense of continuing the same failed policies.
The article doesn’t mention that Niger is also the prime supplier of Uranium for the French nuclear powerplants (and probably for more EU countries). Like it or not, that’s an important aspect of Western presence as well.
You’re right, it is no doubt a factor. I will say I think this Niger coup along with the other coups that have happened in the region over the past decade are France reaping what it sowed in terms of their post colonial foreign policy in the region. France urging respect for the democratic government in Niger falls flat when they’ve supported coups in the region in the not so distant past.
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