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Burkina Faso's junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore attends the first ordinary summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger July 6, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Coup bloc, Gaza school bombed, Ukraine in the dark, Tesla in China, Six days in Greece
3: Junta leaders from Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso announced Saturday they would form their own international bloc and “irrevocably” turn away from ECOWAS, just ahead of the latter’s summit on Sunday. Burkina Faso’s President Ibrahim Traoré claimed the new alliance would stand up to Western influence in Africa, saying “These imperialists have only one cliché in mind: ‘Africa is the empire of slaves’.”
16: An Israeli attack on a UNRWA school in Gaza killed at least 16 people and wounded 50 on Saturday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. UNRWA officials said at least 500 people have now been killed while sheltering in its facilities in Gaza, but Israel claims Hamas often uses the facilities as operating bases, essentially positioning civilians as human shields.
100,000: Russian airstrikes on power infrastructure in northern Ukraine left over 100,000 households in the dark on Saturday night. Targeting energy plants and transmission equipment has become a key strategy for Russia in its attempts to damage civilian morale in Ukraine, and the country’s energy utility says it has lost nine gigawatts of power capacity over the last three months — enough to power the entire Netherlands.
947,000: Tesla has officially been added to a list of approved government vehicle purchases in the Chinese province of Jiangsu, the only foreign-owned EV manufacturer on the list. However, the company manufactured over 947,000 cars at its Shanghai factory last year, most of which were sold in China.
6: Greece is experimenting with a six-day workweek, which allows firms that operate 24 hours a day to schedule employees to work up to eight hours at 40% overtime on the sixth day after a regular 40-hour workweek. They also have the option to spread 40 hours across six 6.5-hour work days. Workers are critical of the new rules, which seem to run against positive experiences some countries have had with four-day workweeks.FILE PHOTO: Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attends a summit on climate resilience in Pakistan, months after deadly floods in the country, at the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland, January 9, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Sharif’s return to power, Burkina Faso killings, Boeing’s big fine, Trump’s delegates
201: Shehbaz Sharifsecured 201 votes in Pakistan’s parliament to become prime minister after a bitterly contested election in which former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s supporters shocked the establishment, delivering the greatest vote share to independent candidates allied to Khan.
170: Authorities in Burkina Faso say jihadist factions killed at least 170 people during raids into three settlements in the country’s north, as extremism spirals in the wake of a 2022 military coup. Jihadist violence has killed over 20,000 people and displaced 2 million in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in West Africa.
51,000,000: Boeing is facing a hard landing, with the aerospace giant paying $51 million to settle over 200 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations laws, according to the State Department. The government says Boeing may have put national security at risk when its employees downloaded sensitive technical documents while physically located in China and Russia, among other countries.
244: After winning GOP primaries in Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho on Saturday, former President Donald Trump has 244 delegates - more than five times as many as his only remaining challenger, Nikki Haley. Trump’s lead is set to grow this week on “Super Tuesday,” but Haley did win her first primary on Sunday in Washington DC, which nearly doubled her vote count.FILE PHOTO: Russian officers from the Wagner Group are seen around Central African president Faustin-Archange Touadera, as they are part of the presidential security system during the referendum campaign to change the constitution and remove term limits, in Bangui, Central African Republic July 16, 2023.
Have gun, will travel? Russia wants you in Africa
Moscow has reportedly begun recruiting 20,000 soldiers to be deployed to at least five Russia-aligned African countries to replace Wagner Group mercenaries previously stationed there as Russia deepens its influence on the continent.
Just how many recruits “Africa Corps” can drum up is not clear (nor is why they named themselves after a Nazi unit, Afrika Korps, that got its arse kicked up and down Libya before surrendering en masse). Many Wagner fighters took contracts with the Ministry of Defense after an aborted revolt by former leader Yevgeny Prigozhin resulted in his death and the company’s disbandment, and those with experience in Africa may be rolled into the new unit. Then again, with Moscow trying to find 250,000 more men to throw into Ukraine, some recruits may figure that sweating it out in the Sahel beats getting shelled in a rat-infested trench.
The troops will provide security for coup leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as the House of Representatives government in Libya (not recognized by the United Nations) and the Central African Republic, which has drifted toward Moscow since 2016. In exchange, Russia will help themselves to Wagner’s former commercial fiefdom on the continent, including potentially lucrative mining operations producing gold, diamonds, and valuable industrial minerals.
But it’s a gamble: Wagner’s force in Africa was only ever a fraction of the size of this putative Africa Corps, and as a nominally private company, Moscow could shrug its shoulders when Wagner fighters committed atrocities. Now, the Russian flag would be undeniably flying over the murder, torture, and rape of civilians – but color us skeptical that the potential international opprobrium will hold them back one bit.Supporters of Burkina Faso's junta attend a rally to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup that brought Captain Ibrahim Traore to power in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Sept. 29, 2023.
ECOWAS “officially” loses three junta-run states
Junta leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have cut ties with their former French colonial overlords and kicked out French troops meant to fight terrorist groups threatening communities in the arid grasslands south of the Sahara Desert. In their place? Russian mercenaries, naturally, who have allegedly been complicit in a spate of atrocities over the last two years.
While the coups have done little to stave off the terrorists (the region suffered thousands of attacks last year), they’ve done a much better job scaring off troops from neighboring democracies. A threatened military intervention in Niger to be led by Nigeria last year amounted to nothing, and no one in the region is eager to put lives on the line now.
ECOWAS isn’t casting itself in the best light. When coup leaders in Niger invited an ECOWAS delegation to talks about the bloc’s sanctions in the capital Niamey on Friday, only Togo showed up. The other delegates said their plane got stuck in Abuja with mechanical issues.
There may be an odd silver lining in the disorganization, though. Since ECOWAS rules require states to file for withdrawal a year in advance, and no one seems to have bothered to put in an official notice, rejoining may not be such a technical hurdle should the political winds shift. We’ll be watching (but not holding our breath) to see whether Mali and Burkina Faso go ahead with elections scheduled for later this year.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Burkina Faso's interim President Ibrahim Traore at the Russia-Africa Summit in Russia in July.
Russia helps Burkina Faso go nuclear
Only one in five citizens of Burkina Faso has access to electricity, making it one of the least electrified countries in the world. It also has one of the highest electricity costs on the continent. The landlocked country gets one-third of its total energy supplies from petroleum products, 2% from coal, and the remainder from biofuels, chiefly wood and charcoal. The nuclear plant would help the Burkinabe government meet its goal of attaining 95% electricity access for urban areas and 50% for rural areas by 2030.
The plant would also help cement ties between Moscow and Ouagadougou. Traore, who took power in a coup just last year, needs assistance to battle Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. In May, Traore hailed Russia as a key strategic ally while denying that he had retained the services of Russia’s Wagner Group. But analysts say he doesn’t have much choice and will likely go down the same road as neighboring Mali, which hired Wagner in 2021, and the military junta in neighboring Niger, which has made overtures to the mercenary group since taking power in July.
Moscow, meanwhile, needs allies in Africa to shore up support for its side in its war in Ukraine. It is eager to fill the vacuum created by France’s military withdrawal from all three Sahel nations, where anti-colonial sentiment is on the rise.Russia is also helping Egypt build a nuclear power plant and is committed to building another in Nigeria.
Colonel Sidi Mohamed delivers a message as he stands with other Nigerien junta leaders.
New African alliance bolsters military junta in Niger
In what could prove to be a major stumbling block to restoring democratic rule in Niger, on Saturday its ruling junta signed a mutual defense pact with the governments of neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso.
The three countries have all seen their governments toppled by military coups since 2020. Niger’s fell most recently in June with the ouster of President Mohamed Bazoum, who remains under arrest on charges of “high treason.”
The new Alliance of Sahel States, as it is known, obliges members to defend each other should any of them come under attack. Not coincidentally perhaps, the pact was signed a week after Niger accused France of plotting to invade the country to restore Bazoum’s presidency.
France refuses to recognize Niger’s new military government, which has asked Paris to withdraw its troops and ambassador. There is fierce opposition to the presence of the former colonial power in the region: French troops have been removed from Mali and Burkina Faso, and Mali has asked the United Nations peacekeeping mission MINUSMA to leave its territory as well.
The new pact also represents a challenge to the power of ECOWAS, a West African economic and political union, of which all three countries are also members. ECOWAS itself had initially threatened military intervention to restore Bazoum, but has since dropped the idea.
In addition to mutual defense, the Alliance obliges its members to jointly tackle armed rebellions. All three nations face the threat of Islamic insurgency within their borders, and both Mali and Burkina Faso have relied on Russian mercenaries to help fight jihadists. The Alliance may now make it easier for Russia to expand its influence to Niger, which had been in discussions with the Wagner Group prior to the death of founder Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash on Aug. 23.
Students attend their final exam at the secondary school in Burkina Faso
Hard Numbers: Education crisis in Burkina Faso, Chinese formalizes ties with the Taliban, NASA unveils UFO study, Russian oligarchs off the hook
1,000,000: In Burkina Faso, where violence has raged unabated for five years, more than a quarter of schools are closed due to a sharp increase in fighting. The number of closed schools has risen by thirty percent since a coup last year, affecting more than 1,000,000 students and creating a looming education crisis in the country.
2: China appointed a new ambassador to Afghanistan on Wednesday, reopening diplomatic relations two years after the Taliban took control of Kabul. Analysts say the move is meant to give China a bigger role in helping to stabilize Afghanistan – Beijing has energy and mineral investments in the country, and also fears that if the Taliban government falters, the country could become a haven for anti-Chinese extremists and terrorists.
800: The galaxy waited with baited breath Thursday morning as NASA unsealed its official study of UFOs– or UAPs as they are called these days (Unidentified aerial phenomena). The takeaway: NASA doesn’t know what most of the 800 reported UAP sightings are, but it knows for sure that most of them aren’t extraterrestrials. The report attributes most UAP run-ins to natural phenomena, and announced that UAP research and data collection is now a top priority– on par with space exploration and Earth science.
3: The EU removed 3 Russian oligarchs from its sanctions list, citing concerns that the sanctions would not withstand legal challenges in international courts. At the same time, ordinary Russians who cross into the EU by car are now subject to having their vehicles and valuables confiscated on the spot by Baltic border guards.
Candles are placed at a makeshift memorial near the former PMC Wagner Center, associated with the founder of the Wagner Group and Yevgeny Prigozhin, in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Wagner and Russia’s next moves
Russia has confirmed the identities of the 10 people who died in a plane crash last Wednesday northwest of Moscow. They included Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group, as well key associates Dmitry Utkin and Valery Chekalov.
The question now turns to what happens to Wagner forces and the group’s clients, particularly African nations that are of strategic importance to Russia. Can President Vladimir Putin pick up where Prigozhin left off?
Experts note the personalized nature of Prigozhin’s leadership with both his fighters and his clients, as well as his ability to pull together “disparate entities and people.” Those entities included the leadership of Mali, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, and most recently, Niger. All are battling insurgent groups, including Islamic extremists, and in Mali, the militants have reportedly doubled their territorial control this past year. In Niger, the junta seeking to consolidate power after a recent coup had reached out to Wagner, but no relationship had yet been established.
Some predict that other Russian military operatives, such as Redut and Convoy, could fill the gap. Others note how the Russians have vowed to honor Wagner’s contracts in Mali and CAR. Meanwhile, the Republican Front, which is aligned with the leaders in CAR, confirmed its continued support for Russia and Wagner late last week. So it looks like Russia intends to continue leveraging Wagner in its bid to gain more influence on the continent.
It’s less clear what will happen in Burkina Faso and Niger, so we’ll be watching to see how junta leaders in those countries – and how Wagner’s men – respond to Prigozhin’s death.