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AFRICOM

The US/EU/NATO’s Regime Change Playbook For Burkina Faso

On April 3, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) Commander Michael Langley testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee during an excruciating two hours obsessively devoted to the ill-fated project of preserving US hegemony. Langley’s testimony was all about stopping Russia and China’s advances on the continent. Some Senators expressed concern that Trump had dispensed with the soft power—their term—projected by USAID and worried that China is stepping in to fill the breach. Alarm bells went off in Africa, the African diaspora, and peace and justice communities all over the world when he turned attention to Burkina Faso and its leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, accusing him of using the gold reserves he nationalized “to protect his junta.”

Power Shift In The Horn Of Africa: Somalia Recognizes SSC-Khaatumo

The geopolitical dynamics of the Horn of Africa region are always volatile, but more so now than ever. The world’s attention is most drawn to the region by Ansar Allah’s disruption of crucial maritime routes in the Red Sea in support of Palestine and Donald Trump’s despicable proposal to remove and dump the entire population of Gaza in war-torn Sudan, Somalia, and/or Somaliland, the unrecognized Somali secessionist state. Both the US and Israel have considered recognizing secessionist Somaliland as a state in order to turn it into a US/Israeli military enclave on the Gulf of Aden, near the mouth of the Red Sea and just across from Houthi-controlled Yemen.

The Arrogance Behind AFRICOM’s Strategy

The deterioration of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) ’s security partnerships across the Alliance of Sahel States reveals a consistent pattern of U.S. diplomatic arrogance, with two recent explosive incidents exposing a growing rift between Washington and African leadership in the Confederation of Sahel States. As the Trump administration moves to downgrade AFRICOM and slash diplomatic engagement, Niger’s defiance looks less like an outlier and more like a blueprint for African sovereignty. In March of 2024, the U.S. delegation to Niger, including Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee and AFRICOM commander General Michael Langley, made a critical miscalculation during their March 12-13 meetings.

Close Military Bases, Not Embassies

TIn U.S. culture and media, where it’s one’s duty to pretend that the military budget and everything that goes with it does not exist, one could hardly be blamed for thinking that the closure of embassies actually meant a full departure. And one could hardly be blamed for thinking this a positive development. Those embassies have steadily been transformed over the decades into weapons dealerships, military sidekicks, and dens of spies. (The CIA may yet point out to Trump how many embassy employees are CIA and make him an offer he can’t refuse.) It’s hard sometimes to imagine other functions.

US War On Africa Rages On With Somalia In The Crosshairs

The new Trump administration has wasted no time continuing the U.S. war on Africa. Just one month into his second term, the U.S. has launched at least six airstrikes in Somalia’s Puntland region. While AFRICOM and the Somali government claim these strikes are “authorized” and therefore legal under international law, this so-called authorization is nothing more than a hallmark of neo-colonial governance. Comprador regimes installed and maintained by Western imperialism do not exercise genuine sovereignty but instead serve as facilitators of foreign domination.

The Ruthless And Desperate Pursuit Of US Influence And Access Over Africa

On June 25, 2024, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) convened the African Chiefs of Defense (ACHOD) Conference in Botswana. The conference, purportedly to “strategize on counter terrorism, collaborate on crisis response and the importance of civilian and military relations,” has been held annually since 2017. This latest ACHOD was the first to convene in Africa. The earlier conferences were convened primarily in Europe. At this conference, it was revealed that AFRICOM would attempt to use Libya as a new front against Russia. Journalist Habib Lassoued reported that: According to Libyan sources, US officials demanded during the past period that General Khalifa Haftar, commander-in-chief of the National Army, limit the alliance ties that bind him to Moscow and expel Russian militants.

Decolonization Movement Is Expanding In Africa’s Sahel Region

The United States announced that it will remove its troops from Niger in September after the government ordered them to leave. Mali and Burkina Faso have done the same. Chad is the most recent country in the Sahel Region of Africa to order the US out. This follows a wave of resistance against French colonization in the region. Clearing the FOG speaks with Abayomi Azikiwe of Pan African News Wire about the growing resistance in the Sahel and the United States. He discusses the unfulfilled promises of the Biden administration and the uncommitted movement in this presidential election.

Imperialist Weaponry And Shifting Alliances In The Sahel

$95 billion in supplemental defense spending aimed at furthering the interests of the United States in various geopolitical regions of the world was recently passed by the legislative branches of the government. These actions speak volumes on the actual priorities of Congress and the administration of President Joe Biden. During the course of the first Biden administration, the Congress failed to pass pieces of legislation which were promised during the 2020 presidential campaign such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, among many others. Inflation remains a serious problem for working and oppressed peoples even though the White House is praising its economic agenda which has left tens of millions locked in poverty and social deprivation.

Chad Moves To Kick Out United States Military

The US is staring at yet another strategic loss in Africa. Chad’s Air Force Chief of Staff has written to Washington’s defense attaché ordering the Pentagon to cease its operations at the Adji Kossei Air Base near the capital, N’Djamena. In another letter addressed to Chad’s armed forces minister, Idriss Amine Ahmed said the presence of US soldiers had not been satisfactorily justified, noting also that the US side had not provided sufficient documents on support for logistics and personnel. Chad has threatened to cancel the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that regulates the operations of roughly 100 US military personnel in the Sahelian country.

Russians Advisors Arrive In Niger; Masses Demand Immediate Withdrawal Of Pentagon Troops

On Saturday April 13, thousands of people gathered in Niamey, the capital of the West African state of Niger, demanding the dismantling of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) operations inside their country. This demonstration represents an ongoing struggle in several former French colonies to end the economic, political, cultural and military ties to the imperialist powers. In addition to the negative influence from Paris, the U.S. has joined their counterparts in France deploying thousands of military personnel under the guise of fighting “Islamic terrorism”. AFRICOM was launched in February 2008 from its base in Stuttgart, Germany.

United States Agrees To Withdraw Troops From Niger

The Biden administration has agreed to a request from Niger’s military-led government to withdraw US troops from the West African nation. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine that the US planned to leave during a meeting on Friday. “We’ve agreed to begin conversations within days about how to develop a [withdrawal] plan,” Campbell said, according to The Washington Post. “They’ve agreed that we do it in an orderly and responsible way. And we will need to probably dispatch folks to Niamey to sit down and hash it out.

Niger: Demonstrators Take The Streets To Protest Foreign Forces

Hundreds of demonstrators took part in a protest against the presence of foreign forces in Niger, including the armed forces of the United States, which has a military base in the north of the country. The demonstrators gathered in the center of the capital city of Niamey, at the call of civil society organizations close to Niger's ruling military junta whose members took part in the demonstration. “We have called for the departure of the Americans and all foreign forces from Niger, and the CNSP (acronym for the organization of the military junta of Niger) has taken our concerns into account, and it is in this context that we have come to support and reaffirm our support for the CNSP

Niger To United States: Pack Up Your Forever War

Dressed in green military fatigues and a blue garrison cap, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to local television last month to criticize the United States and sever the long-standing military partnership between the two countries. “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” he said, insisting that their 12-year-old security pact violated Niger’s constitution.

Why Niger Declared US Military Presence In Its Territory Illegal

Niger declared the US military deployment in its territory “illegal” on Saturday, March 16, after a US delegation allegedly threatened “retaliation” against the largest country in West Africa for its ties with Russia and Iran. Confronted with the prospect of losing three strategically crucial military bases, including one of the world’s largest drone bases in the central Nigerien city of Agadez on which it has spent a quarter billion dollars, the US is yet to give a statement in response. A press conference that was scheduled on Sunday at the US embassy in Niger’s capital Niamey — outside which protesters had gathered on Saturday to denounce American interference — was canceled.

U.S. AFRICOM Airstrikes Feared To Have Killed Two Cuban Doctors

The National Network on Cuba, The Black Alliance for Peace, and Lowcountry Action Committee strongly condemn the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) airstrikes in Somalia reported to have killed 2 Cuban doctors. We demand the U.S. release all information about the bombing to Cuba and the victims’ families. Cuba has deployed more than 600,000 health workers to 165 nations over the last six decades on medical missions. Two Cubans serving in Kenya, Dr. Assel Herrera Correa, a specialist in general medicine, and Dr. Landy Rodriguez Hernandez, a surgeon, were kidnapped there in 2019 and held in Jilib, southern Somalia.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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