One way you should not understand recent coups in Africa, Vox (2/5/22) suggests, is as a consequence of the US training coup-leading military figures.
Vox (2/5/22) recently published a piece titled “How to Understand the Recent Coups in Africa,” interviewing Joseph Sany from the Africa Center at the US Institute of Peace, a US government research center. The article had much to say about the potential causes of African conflict and instability, but pointedly left out any reference to the role of US training programs in constantly generating coup leaders.
Writing for the Intercept (1/26/22), Nick Turse showed that US military training operations in the region were associated with the growing instability and antidemocratic tendencies. “Since 2008,” Turse wrote,
US-trained officers have attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries, including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali (three times), Mauritania and the Gambia.
The Vox piece specifically mentioned the coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, where US-trained officers accounted for a total of six coups. In its initial form,* the Vox article even cited a later Intercept piece (2/4/22) piece by Turse:
In Mali and Burkina Faso, Sany notes, the governments were dealing with violent extremism from ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates in the Sahel, where between 2020 and 2021, the Intercept’s Nick Turse reports, citing statistics in a recent report by Siegle and his team, attacks by militant Islamist organizations increased 70 percent, from 1,180 to 2,005.
So while he is evidently familiar with Turse’s work, Sany failed to include the role of the US military operations that Turse had reported on in his analysis.
‘A robust relationship’
Nick Turse (Intercept, 7/29/19): “Since Africom began, key indicators of security and stability in Africa have plummeted.”
This is a major omission. US-trained officers overthrew the government of Mali in 2012, 2020 and 2021, and in Burkina Faso in 2014, 2015 (reversed after popular pressure) and 2022. This is part of a broader trend; a study published in the Journal of Peace Research (7/13/17) looked at 189 countries between 1970 and 2009 and found “a robust relationship” between US training programs and coups d’etat. The greater the number of US trained officers, the greater the probability of a military coup. Turse noted that this study likely understates the relationship.
Turse (Intercept, 7/29/19) has also previously reported on a Pentagon study that found a massive spike in violence correlated with the US military presence in Africa. Since the establishment of the US military’s Africa Command (Africom) in 2008, the number of “violent events” has increased 960%, jumping from 288 in 2009 to 3,050 in 2018. In 2010, there were just five “active militant Islamist groups,” but by 2018, there were roughly 24.
These numbers seriously challenge the legitimacy of Africom, whose stated mission is to “promote regional security, stability and prosperity.”
A call for ‘outside intervention’
In its piece, Vox warned against discounting “the influence of outside powers,” but fingered Russia, China, Turkey and Qatar as potential agitators. These nations, counseled Vox, may try to exploit the conflict to “exercise influence” or “extract resources from nations rich in diamond, bauxite and other valuable materials.” There was no mention of the United States’ influence in Africa. A later passing mention of Western debt traps was wholly unconnected to the warning against outsiders.
Later in the piece, Vox quoted Sany’s warning of Russian involvement specifically in Mali and Burkina Faso, again singling out two countries where US-trained officers overthrew the government: “‘If you want to know where Russia will go next, look for instability,’ Sany said, pointing to situations in Mali and Burkina Faso.”
Despite warning against “outside powers” Vox ended the piece with a vague call for “outside intervention” to affect either “the undoing of a government takeover or a transition to democracy.” Sany claimed that “Western powers need to work better with these countries to look honestly at the root causes of conflict, poverty and instability.”
The piece briefly nods to the West’s “brutal, exploitative and extractive history of colonialism in Africa; and their own strangleholds on poor nations in the form of debt.” But alluding to neocolonial relationships in the abstract is far less relevant to the piece than acknowledging active US military training operations. The current expanding US military footprint was one root cause that Vox and their interview subjects declined to include in their analysis.
* Days after the piece was published, Vox inexplicably removed any reference to Turse’s work. The new version of the piece doesn’t contain any note about why this section was edited, or even any indication that it was edited. (The old version is preserved through the WayBack Machine.)
The copy now reads (emphasis added):
In Mali and Burkina Faso, Sany notes, the governments were dealing with violent extremism from ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates in the Sahel. Between 2020 and 2021, according to a recent report from Siegle and his team, attacks in the region by militant Islamist organizations increased 70 percent, from 1,180 to 2,005.”
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The post Vox Omits US Military Role in African Instability appeared first on FAIR.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Bryce Greene.
Bryce Greene | Radio Free (2022-02-15T17:00:12+00:00) Vox Omits US Military Role in African Instability . Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2022/02/15/vox-omits-us-military-role-in-african-instability/
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