From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Coast to Coast, a Corridor of Coups Brings Turmoil in Africa   
   By Declan Walsh, July 29, 2023, NY Times   
   Africa’s coup belt spans the continent: a line of six countries crossing   
   3,500 miles, from coast to coast, that has become the longest corridor of   
   military rule on Earth.   
      
   This past week’s military takeover in the West African nation of Niger   
   toppled the final domino in a band across the girth of Africa, from Guinea in   
   the west to Sudan in the east, now controlled by juntas that came to power in   
   a coup — all but one in    
   the past two years.   
      
   The last leader to fall was Niger’s Mohamed Bazoum, a democratically elected   
   American ally who disappeared on Wednesday when his own guards detained him at   
   the presidential palace in the capital, Niamey. His security chief now claims   
   to be running the    
   country.   
      
   “We have decided to intervene,” Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, Niger’s new   
   self-appointed ruler, said in a televised address on Friday.   
      
   The coup instantly reverberated far beyond Niger, a sprawling and impoverished   
   country in one of the world’s toughest neighborhoods. African leaders   
   sounded the alarm over the latest blow to democracy on a continent where   
   decades of hard-won advances    
   are slipping away.   
      
   “Africa has suffered a serious setback,” Kenya’s president, William   
   Ruto, said on Friday.   
      
   For the U.S. and its allies, the coup raised urgent questions about the fight   
   against Islamist militants in the Sahel, the vast semiarid region where groups   
   linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are gaining ground at an alarming   
   pace, moving from the    
   desert toward the sea. Much of the Sahel overlaps with Africa’s newly   
   formed, coast-to-coast coup belt.   
      
   “I’m very worried that Sahelian Africa is going to melt down,” said Paul   
   Collier, a professor of economics and public policy at Oxford’s Blavatnik   
   School of Government.   
      
   The Sahel has surpassed the Middle East and South Asia to become the global   
   epicenter of jihadist violence, accounting for 43% of 6,701 deaths in 2022, up   
   from 1% in 2007, according to the Global Terrorism Index, an annual study by   
   the Institute for    
   Economics and Peace.   
      
   Until this past week, Niger was the cornerstone of the Pentagon’s regional   
   strategy. At least 1,100 American troops are stationed in the country, where   
   the U.S. military built drone bases in Niamey and the northern city of Agadez,   
   one at a cost of $110    
   million. Now, all of that is in jeopardy.   
      
   Secretary of State Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Australia, warned   
   on Saturday that the U.S. could end its financial support and security   
   cooperation for Niger if Mr. Bazoum were not reinstated as president. Though   
   officials say the United    
   States would be reluctant to go that far, Mr. Blinken was unequivocal.   
      
   “The very significant assistance that we have in place — that is making a   
   material difference in the lives of the people of Niger — is clearly in   
   jeopardy,” he said. “And we’ve communicated that as clearly as we   
   possibly can to those    
   responsible for disrupting the constitutional order.”   
      
   Any American withdrawal could open a door to Russia.   
      
   The sight of Russian flags being waved by coup supporters in Niamey this past   
   week echoed similar scenes after a coup in neighboring Burkina Faso last year.   
   The flags do not mean the Kremlin was behind the coup, analysts say. But they   
   do symbolize how    
   Russia has positioned itself as the torch bearer of anti-Western, and   
   especially anti-French, sentiment in a swath of Africa in recent years.   
      
   Putin sought to exploit that gap at this past week’s Africa summit in St.   
   Petersburg, where he proposed to liberate African countries from   
   “colonialism and neocolonialism” — even as his country’s own Wagner   
   mercenaries have exploited African    
   gold and diamonds, and committed civilian atrocities.   
      
   For Wagner’s mercurial boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the run of coups is a   
   business opportunity. His forces already operate openly in Mali and Sudan in   
   the coup belt, as well as in the nearby Central African Republic and Libya.   
   Hovering on the margins of    
   the St. Petersburg summit this past week, Mr. Prigozhin praised the coup in   
   Niger, then proposed sending his own armed fighters to help.   
      
   But if the coup belt has become a theater of geopolitical maneuvering, the   
   coups themselves are rooted in an explosive mix of local factors, experts say.   
      
   In Guinea, the coup leaders justified their actions by citing public anger at   
   widespread corruption; in Mali and Burkina Faso, they claimed to have an   
   answer to the tide of Islamist militancy plaguing their countries.   
      
   In fact, insurgent violence has spread under the military juntas, accelerating   
   the spiral of instability.   
      
   In Burkina Faso, attacks once confined to the north of the country have come   
   closer to the capital in recent months. In Mali, where the military replaced   
   5,000 French troops with about 1,000 Wagner mercenaries, civilian deaths have   
   soared, according to    
   the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks casualties.   
      
   Everywhere, weak states are a factor. The Sahel has some of the world’s   
   poorest countries and the highest birthrates (Niger, where an average woman   
   has seven children, tops the list). Their soaring populations of frustrated,   
   jobless young people swell    
   the ranks of the insurgents.   
      
   The youth bulge shows up among coup-makers, too. Most of the recent takeovers   
   were led by men in their 30s or early 40s, on a continent where the average   
   leader is in their 60s. Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who was just 34 when he seized   
   power in Burkina Faso    
   last year, is the world’s youngest head of state.   
      
   African countries have experienced 98 successful coups since 1952, a recent   
   United Nations report on coups in Africa found. Jonathan Powell, an associate   
   professor at the University of Central Florida, said the most coups had   
   occurred in Sudan, where the    
   latest takeover, in 2021, seeded an explosive military feud that recently grew   
   into full-scale war.   
      
   The takeovers dipped to their lowest level in the decade up to 2017, a period   
   that included the Arab Spring and the ouster of longtime autocrats like   
   Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Then the pendulum swung hard in the opposite   
   direction.   
      
   In Chad, seizing power is a family tradition. The country’s ruler, Mahamat   
   Idriss Déby, took over in 2021 after his father, who had come to power in a   
   1990 coup, was killed in a battle.   
      
      
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