this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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I’ve yet to see any evidence of Wagner interference in these coups, and in fact, the countries they’ve been taking place in most recently have been countries with heavy western military presence, not Wagner. Not to mention, the suggestion that Africans are not capable of performing a coup themselves to me smells of paternalism, but that may not be your implication and I’m sorry if I misinterpreted it.
I'm not talking about them performing a coup. Although I don't like coups, they're property of nobody but themselves, and eventually democracy will return.
But French troops doing bad stuff, or doing neither bad nor good stuff (that's doing nothing at all), that doesn't mean they should be replaced by another foreign nation troops, being either private or not. If we agree that African nations are sovereign enough to decide their own future, they're also sovereign enough to defend themselves, or to ask for help to neighbouring countries in exchange of nothing. But in the countries we're talking about, they asked for help to another potential colonial nation in exchange of natural resources, that could be manufactured in place, thus creating employment, wealth and other benefits.
That’s a perspective I can understand. I was pretty disappointed to see Wagner given a mine in Burkina Faso, for sure.
I think, though, that unfortunately, it is an inevitable consequence of western reaction to the coups and their history of suppressing African sovereignty.
Fighting off jihadis(which is what Wagner is being contracted to do in Burkina Faso) is a global problem, and can’t be tackled by any one nation, especially not a poor, landlocked one like Burkina Faso. However, the wests actions in fighting Islamic extremism in Africa has been so heavily fraught with abuse of Africans among other issues that I don’t think we’ll ever see the return of trust between West Africa and the West, and so, when paired with the global Wests refusal to work with the coup governments, and tendency to issue sanctions which even further damage civilian populations while leaving governmental structures nearly untouched (and not to mention that sanctions have been definitively proven to increase support for a regime), the newly free African nations have no choice but to look to alternative economic blocs for support, and in our current world, that alternative block is essentially just Russia.
https://archive.ph/0xLUh
Not a successful coup but rather the planning of a coup. About the recent coups, there's somewhat of a lack of information. Time will tell whether Wagner was influencing the coups. What is obvious is Wagner is certainly supported by a large portion of the population, seeing as there's Wagner flags everywhere.
Then there's also Russia + Wagner attempting to gain control over Moldova
wagner might not be involved, and im not sure if the organisation will exist as is for long, but presence of russian flags and putin chants in sunday are surely natural?
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=W2i2r5XKnbM
I see a few Russian flags indeed, thanks for the link. Importantly, what I don’t see, are Russians. Hong Kong protestors carried US flags, but I don’t think many people think that the US orchestrated them, we’ve seen similar across the world in various times and places. I’m not sure why they’re waving Russian flags, but I sure would love to ask them. Maybe I’ll talk to my Ghanaian friends and see if they have any experience with support for Russia in their nation, but last I heard, he hated Russia and China as much as he hates France, and more than he hates the US.
there are vast social media disinformation networks employed by russia and now deceased prygozhin, which could be one of the way russia and wagner have become popular among the demonstrants. perhaps theres some other link(such as the economic cooperation between russia and african states), but i have no knowledge on state of affairs in africa.
That’s very true. Nearly all major nations employ cyber-criminals in other countries to spread narratives and control dissent. I don’t see why Africa would be any different in being targeted. I’m pretty involved in local Ghanaian affairs through local Ghanaian friends and family, and I’ve yet to see anything suggesting he or his support Russia, but it’s such a small sample size from only one country, I hesitate to use it as evidence for or against anything. He does support the coup though, and he’s even more angry at ECOWAS than I am, and his own government which he believes is gearing up for war.
I’ll ask him what he thinks of Russia though, I don’t think I’ve ever directly broached the subject with him.