The chief of Niger’s new navy junta has vowed to defy any makes an attempt to revive the previous president to energy.
Final Wednesday, Nigerien navy officers introduced that they had overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum, an in depth ally of the US and France. ECOWAS, an financial bloc of West African international locations, has threatened to take navy motion until the coup is reversed by Sunday. However the chief of Niger’s new navy junta has vowed to defy any makes an attempt to revive the previous president to energy, whereas Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea — all, like Niger, former French colonies which have undergone navy coups previously three years — have warned in opposition to any international intervention in Niger. In the meantime, Niger’s new leaders have introduced the nation will finish navy cooperation with France, whose outsized presence in its former colony is a significant supply of resentment within the resource-rich however nonetheless poverty-stricken nation. We converse to Nick Turse, an investigative journalist and contributing author for The Intercept. He just lately revealed that one of many leaders of the coup in Niger, Brigadier Basic Moussa Salaou Barmou, was beforehand educated by the U.S. navy, as had been the leaders of almost a dozen different coups in West Africa since 2008. We additionally converse to Olayinka Ajala, a senior lecturer in politics and worldwide relations at Leeds Beckett College, who says Niger and its neighbors should tread rigorously with the intention to keep away from a “very bloody” navy battle.
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