The aftermath of the military putschs in Mali – first against Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK) then against the transitional power put in place after his overthrow – had led me to make a promise to myself: truce of indignation, motus and closed mouth ! Whether the course of things makes me right or wrong. I had come to this resolution after having exposed at length, for the umpteenth time, my fear that this double coup in Mali orchestrated by the same roughneck, was driven by dark designs. Now I'm afraid I'm right.
Assimi Goïta and his band did not file IBK and repeat their blow against the President of the transition by chance. They were carriers of a project which is anything but a project of sovereignty, which they could not conceive alone in their barracks and which obviously no one with common sense, no one but them, could put implemented: to pave the way for Russia's influence on our territories and to allow it, in these places, to wage the war on the West, but above all on France, which it cannot wage directly on them in Europe. The project of the roughnecks is not to drive out some master but to change our masters, since it seems understood that we Africans do not have a vocation to be free. We would be condemned to eternal servitude.
To mark the ground for Russia, France must therefore be driven out. To drive out France, we must destroy from within the regimes deemed Franco-compatible and instrumentalize the anti-French feeling that is smoldering or growing in our country. All this is easier to achieve in democratic countries where, despite the impedimenta, the democratic institution and a certain practice of fundamental freedoms persist. In a democracy, political regimes are civil and peoples can, instinctively or not, revolt in the streets against those who govern. This context favors the mission of paving the way for Russia, well introduced into the purses of Vladimir Putin through those of Wagner, his militia of white supremacists, fascists, neo-Nazis and other racists recruited even in the high security quarters of the Russian prisons. These are the ones that Russia, the new friend who wants to treat us with respect and on an equal footing, sends us. We are in partnership with Moscow but have to deal with a gang of barbarians who offer us their services for profit - cash and/or wide access to the resources of our basements - an army of savages in the service of Putin's dark plans, a horde of mercenaries with whom he long denied any connection, until the lord of the mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigojine, tried to step on his authority. And there, huge revelation! Wagner receives his funding from the Kremlin and, no doubt, his orders as well. The confession is signed by our great comrade himself, betrayed by his outbursts of anger against his former cook whom he propelled boss of his shadow army.
The pustch in Mali is an anarch. The balance sheet of the Goïta junta is disastrous. She, too, failed where IBK and its predecessors failed. She has internalized and implements kagebist methods and maneuvers of mass manipulation and intoxication. She fired the foreign media because, according to her sentence, they are in the pay of French and Western imperialism. She muzzled the national press, established a hyper-presidentialized regime through a new constitution aligned with her wishes and a referendum to adopt it, which resulted in a 28% turnout.
The putschs in Mali inaugurated a rancid era in the West African sub-region, a wandering that is likely to last. Because the project is vast.
It is a project to substitute military kakistocracies for civilian cacocracies. The path openers condemn the Ivorian Alassane Ouattara for his third term, are headwind against the Senegalese Macky Sall whose renunciation of the third term is not yet certain but they carry in triumph the Central African Faustin Archange Touadera who maneuvers for his arrogate a third lease, extending it from 5 to 7 years and removing the limitation on the number of terms in the Constitution. What makes the difference? The third man, unlike the other two, is Francophobic and Russophile.
It is a project of recolonization of our lands by Russia, a project of militarization of our countries for the benefit of Vladimir Putin. The modus operandi no longer holds any secrets: a soldiery seizes power by force under the pretext of growing insecurity and poor governance. Citizens take to the streets, wave the Russian flag, violently attack French and sometimes European diplomatic representations. A second putsch intervenes inside the first putsch when it is not the pro-Russian element tipped to lead the junta which is invested. All that remains is to formally establish contact with the command center in Moscow.
The overthrow of Roch Kaboré followed by a second intra-junta putsch in Burkina Faso, in line with the double coup in Mali, gave us a perfect illustration of this. That Assimi Goïta and Ibrahim Traoré consider that an armed intervention by ECOWAS in Niger is a declaration of war against Mali and Burkina Faso says a lot about the nature of their roadmap.
The current project is a vast initiative to dismantle democracy. If Touadera's hoax for a lifetime presidency under the protection of Wagner does not give him enough credit in your eyes, the gratuitous coup d'Etat in Niger should convince you of it. As much in Mali, there was a popular revolt against IBK; as much in Guinea, Condé was ready to kill to have his third mandate; as much in Burkina Faso, there was no danger in delay. The case of Niger goes beyond all understanding. Here is a country which, politically, economically and socially is not in crisis, which does more than not be in crisis. He holds out better than anyone in the face of terrorism. It defeats, all by itself, everything that the henchmen of Moscow in the sub-region ventilate as the founding speech of their adventures. Niger was a big rock in the wheels of military expansion and pro-Kremlin propaganda. The pustch is, here more than elsewhere, a personal enterprise. In January, the putschists praised the investments in favor of the Nigerien army and the security policy of President Mohamed Bazoum. In July, they dismiss him arguing to the contrary. The putschist in chief, General Tchiani, looked very mismatched when he finally came out of his hole to finally take charge of his business. Soon he will go to Moscow to formalize his allegiance or Moscow will come to him. This is the stage that follows the movement of the crowd favorable to Russia and hostile to France. It is not that there are no crowds committed to the cause of democracy and Mohamed Bazoum in Niger under boots. Supporters of the deposed president were the first to take to the streets as soon as the putsch was announced. They have been subdued and have been hiding ever since. It's not that there aren't any anti-junta crowds in Burkina Faso, Mali or Guinea. They are silenced.
To all those crowds who cannot express themselves or who cannot be heard beyond organized borders, I dedicate these lines.
Democracy is not the problem. She never was. The problem is the men, it is our crooked politicians corrupted by power, it is the officers and non-commissioned officers of our armies who refuse to go to the front to take refuge under the golds of the Republic.
The choice before us is a decisive one, between plague and cholera. As long as I am not free, I much prefer the influence of the West to that of the East, the tutelage of France to that of Russia, the European yoke to that of China.
The future will judge us!
By Deo Gratias Kindoho
