Sudan saw two coups, one in 2019 and a second in 2021. Mali experienced its first coup in August 2020 and a second in May 2021. Chad saw a coup in April 2021. Guinea Conakry had a coup in September 2021. In Burkina Faso, two more coups have taken place, one in January 2022 and one in September 2022. Niger's coup took place at the end of July 2023, and the latest was in Gabon on August 30, 2023. 

A wave of coups d'état has once again rocked West Africa. Indeed, coups appear to be a regional tradition. Many, most, are non-bloody, some are even blatantly staged, but in some others, blood has been shed. While all are aided or driven from outside, they are not the same. The respective peoples have come out to celebrate each of these coups because each has given them the chance to dream and get excited about the long-awaited change. But in general, this tradition has not brought any change for their people.

African peoples have not been silent. Protests, demonstrations, rebellions, and anti-imperialist and anti-colonial resistances have always been present. But the global West pays no attention to them, neither when they protest, nor when they are massacred and violently suppressed by the security forces of their respective Western-imposed governments. 

We are living in a moment of global transformation. The United States and its allies are losing their hegemonic position, and a multipolar world is being born at a rapid pace. The virulence of the falling empire should not be underestimated. Surely, it will not give in easily, but its loss of grip has become evident (unable to win in Syria, unable to win in Ukraine...), so evident that the African peoples and their good leaders, of which there are some, have wasted no time in taking advantage of this crack in the empire's wall, with which they have always clashed.

They are rising up once again in search of those long-dreamt changes: freedom and dignity. And at this moment in history, in some countries, they are touching those dreams with their fingertips. This is making the empire nervous and will be a spur for other peoples to imitate their revolts and their coups for change. We will see more, for sure. But watch out, we will also see stagings of faking change, so that everything stays the same, although better controlled.

Just as suspension from regional and international bodies is automatic and has no major implications, so too is public condemnation of a coup. It is obligatory for leaders and organizations to say in public that it is wrong. However, a coup can be condemned by threatening violent intervention, or it can be condemned with a small mouth, as Borrell did with the coup in Gabon, where he was sympathetic to the coup leaders.

The best indicator that a coup is a staged coup is that the people like Borrell endorse it. The West's hand is undoubtedly behind it. Another unmistakable indicator of the imperialist hand in African countries is the absolute silence and blackout by the Western media, as is the case with the criminal military junta that now rules Guinea Conakry, following the coup by one of its US-boys, Mamadi Doumbouya, of dual Guinean and French nationality. He was trained by France and the US and is married to a French police commander. The coup in Guinea was very bloody. There were many deaths, but Doumbouya was not stained with a single drop of blood, because during the hours of the violent assault on the presidential palace, he was not in combat, but safely secured in an armored 4x4 at the entrance to the US embassy. On the other hand, the best proof that a coup is truly revolutionary and in defense of its people, or is likely to evolve in that direction, is when the empire threatens to intervene to restore its "democracy", i.e. its dominance.

By all means, the United States and its allies want to prevent the influence and access to raw materials of Russia, and above all China, on the continent. They are also desperate to avoid cooperative alliances with China's "One Belt, One Road" project, but this stream can no longer be contained, no matter how much violence they use to do so. 

Let us not forget a very important lesson that Gaddafi taught us as he warned at the African Union summits, "The Israelis are always behind all conflicts in Africa." The presence of the Zionist entity is always subtle but very real. This presence, which Africa continues to officially reject, is realized through cooperation with dozens of arms sales and private security companies, whose personnel are former members of the Israeli army. Their personnel and weapons are always at the service of any counter-revolution and they are effective at what they do.

And finally, let us not forget that practically all of these coup plotters have been trained by the empire, through the many training exercises that AFRICOM (NATO Africa Command) carries out annually on African soil, such as Flintlock or African Lion, or directly in the United States, such as Niger's Colonel Abdourahmane Tiani, who received military training in Washington in 2009-2010. Moreover, we can see some photos published by AFRICOM of another Nigerien military junta member, Mohamed Toumba, speaking to US military and African authorities at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Flintlock training exercises. 

Russia

Demonstrators, celebrating this new and more real possibility of change in their own or a brother country, display Russian flags. How could they not when they are feeling the results of the Wagner group's presence in their own lives? Wagner fights terrorists and even wipes them out in a matter of months, while Western missions spend years occupying their countries, and the terrorists get stronger instead of weaker.

Niger's deposed leader, Mohamed Bazoum, acting as a loyal defender of French and US interests against his own people, took the decision to release from prison all militants serving sentences for assassinations, attacks, and massacres. The Western powers tirelessly claim that they are there to fight terrorism and teach African soldiers how to fight it, but at the same time, their delegate releases these same terrorists, always protected and sheltered, because they are useful to the empire. The face of Niger's soldiers must have looked astonished when they learned of this. 

When several African governments have approached Wagner to hire its services for real counter-terrorism, they have done so by making a sovereign decision. Rightly or wrongly, they have exercised their sovereignty. We should feel envious of that in the European garden.

In Borrell's garden, where we think Africans don't know where Russia is, we have never been so offended by the activity of a private security company as we are now. We seem not to know that hundreds of Western and Zionist mercenary companies, accountable to no one (Wagner is essentially accountable to a government, like it or not), have been operating in these countries for years, contracted not by their governments, but by ours! And the list of abuses and illegalities committed by both private and public missions, including those of the UN, is endless. Anyone who doubts this should take a look at WikiLeaks. 

Can it be that is us, in Borrel's garden, who don't even know where we, our army, and public money are?

The jungle, an example to the garden

I would like to highlight another tremendously hopeful observation. African peoples and many of their elected leaders at more local levels are displaying exemplary internationalism from which the whole world should learn. 

The Western powers' delegate body in the region, ECOWAS, has had to tone down its threats against Niger because it could risk being extinguished, like Europe, for defending its master.

Demonstrations in support of Niger in the face of the threat of intervention have been massive across Africa and especially in ECOWAS member countries themselves. When two neighboring governments, Mali and Burkina Faso, decide to take a stand against the delegate of the imperial beast, (not on its side, as those of us in the garden have done), their peoples go out to celebrate this decision to go to war, like David against Goliath, ready to give their lives for the freedom and dignity of all.

When the Nigerian government, the incumbent chair of ECOWAS, was emboldened to carry out French and US orders to attack, its own people took to the streets massively against the decision. Its national parliament voted against the decision, forcing the executive to back down. ECOWAS has not dared to go so openly against much of its own membership (governments, elected representatives, and people), because if it did, it would be committing suicide, considering the current scenario. 

I conclude by confessing that I am a little disturbed to see the burning of French and not American flags. I cannot help but recall a story of disinformation with which I am quite familiar: the official narrative conveyed to the world about the US takeover of Central Africa in the 1990s. This staging of an intoxicating history, executed to perfection by the US empire and its delegates in the region, pointed accusingly at France with great fuss, while they committed genocide to take control of the region and no one was watching. The whole world uncritically swallowed this intoxication until today. 

France is finally losing its influence in its former colonies in the Sahel. It has been a suffocating military, cultural, and economic domination that must end completely and as soon as possible, but in order to strengthen the sovereignty of these countries, not to cede the way to US control. I would be more relaxed if I saw American and French flags being burned at the same time, although I have to admit that times have certainly changed. The world forces are fluctuating, and the empire is collapsing. The African countries know it and are looking for new alliances and new international relations of respect on an equal footing. Whether they get it right or wrong, they have every right to do so. Whatever the case may be, it is impossible to be more wrong than Europe. Those from “the garden” are not in a position to give lessons to anyone, but rather to learn from the jungle.