And the cheers from the crowds seeing off the expelled French ambassador must be seen for what Europeans are.

The chicken or the egg? Did the Mali military junta’s decision to bring in Russian military contractors create the inertia for Emmanuel Macron to reduce his own troops’ presence there and initiate EU sanctions – or did his earlier decision to reduce troop numbers push the regime to take the measure to bring in around 400 Wagner mercenaries to keep it in power?

Regional buffs might mull this at length, but in many ways it doesn’t matter. What is important is that Macron’s childish reaction to the Russians coming shows the world so much about him and the French and their outdated and unrealistic views about themselves. The apparent lack of gratitude for being the big brother in Mali with originally 5000 troops and supporting the regime is the real issue. For the junta to turn to Russia, it was showing not only a lack of gratitude but also a lack of respect. It was, in a nutshell, saying ‘we can’t take Paris seriously’ and even in the best scenario, can’t imagine the French helping the generals stay in power if the brown stuff hits the propellers.

The reality is that the regime saw through the flawed narrative and could see why Macron had the troops there in the first place. On paper, it was all about fighting terrorism as Mali is at a crossroads of Islamic terrorism to plague the Sahel and terror groups there could take control. What this means for Macron is simply huge migrant flows to France which is just another headache for him battling to take a second term as serving President and aiming at lapping up the far-right votes with his stand on nailing immigration. And if that wasn’t bad enough, France has huge investments in Mali as French multinationals operate there, staffed by French expats who need protecting in the event of another attempted coup.

The tenuous link which kept Macron happy and kept the troop numbers high was the promise recently by the generals in Bamako of elections which would usher in a civilian government, but when the junta announced that these would be rescheduled to a new date in five years time, Macron’s patience waned. How much longer could he juggle the awkward scenario that he was, in effect, propping up a military regime which didn’t even have the decency to tug its forelock and show reverence to France as the only world power which mattered?

Last year in October, he announced that France would reduce its numbers in Mali starting with its presence in Timbuktu. We can assume that the regime decided that this was the time to turn to the Russians for help to fill the void.

What the Mali regime probably didn’t count on though was the reaction from Macron. Within days, literally, of the news emerging of the Russian presence Macron had not only raised a flag signaling his anger and disappointment with the junta but also managed to stir up similar discontent in Brussels which wasted no time in slapping sanctions on Mali.

Red in tooth and claw

The move though makes the EU look weak and France even weaker. So, when France can’t sustain the respect from former colonies in Africa who are required to play a certain role to keep the French happy then the Elysee turns to the EU to stick the knife in the back? And what does this say about the European Union as a whole? Ready and willing to keep the French dream alive in Africa and even happier for its own so-called foreign policy to be hijacked by a French President red in tooth and claw from a ruse based on revenge and score settling?

The signal to the whole of Africa is far worse though. As we are witnessing in the Middle East with Gulf Arab countries welcoming Syria’s Assad back into their pack following Russia’s intervention, the Mali move will be watched keenly by a number of failed francophone states in Africa. Either accept full hegemony and all that it entails and more or less stay a colony – and don’t seek any geo military support from anyone else – or face the petulant wrath of the EU and France in one almighty blow which will more or less push you in the arms of the Russians anyway.

For those countries who don’t think they have a good deal from France and the EU anyway, their regimes might well consider working more closely with the Russians in either case as Wagner mercenaries will at least go the extra length in keeping a junta in power with no conditions or silly EU human rights handbook.

What Macron has done is signal to African countries and to Russia itself that there is rich pickings for Putin there as all he has to do to expand his empire is send in the Wagner boys and clean up. With one swift move, armies of EU countries scarper once they even hear the word ‘Wagner’ and any remnants of trade with the EU is wiped clean. The clean slate is the perfect basis for Moscow to step in with its partners China, Iran and others to offer a new deal – to be part of a new bloc which sticks two fingers up to western sanctions and backs up the security component with real soldiers prepared to do real fighting. The talks recently between Nicaragua and Iran where the latter proposed a new trade bloc made up of countries sanctioned by the US is a glimpse of the future, which may well include African countries like Mali who now stand tall as the Russian model for others to consider replicating.

The recent bizarre meeting in Paris between Macron and Ursual Von Der Leyen, the European Commission president where both harp on about the need for a new defence strategy for EU countries (probably within NATO) was a desperate move by both the French President and his EU concubine. Macron was clinging on to an informal arrangement in Mali where other EU countries as well as the UK show support to his disingenuous stand against Islamic terrorism in the Sahel. But he is clearly afraid that countries like Germany, which has 800 troops there will be asking themselves just how far this farcical situation can sustain itself all in the name of keeping the Elysee fantasy alive of still being the only relevant power in francophone Africa. After all, if the EU has imposed sanctions and France is pulling out its own troops, then why should others keep theirs there? Mali now knows that the blurred lines of diplo talk with Macron’s people who might have suggested that France would help keep the junta in power have now been made clearer. The UN mission there now can only be there to keep Islamic fighters at bay but not to keep a junta in power. If others follow Macron, then isn’t this a clear sign that western powers are more interested in their own geopolitical goals and hegemony over fighting terrorism? Just look how the Europeans run like chickens when the Russians turn up. And the cheers from the crowds seeing off the expelled French ambassador must be seen for what they are. A landmark between the West and Russia, just as the current talks are between EU leaders and Putin. The times really are a-changin’.

The hypocrisy is both stunning and comical. Mali has been in the news in the last couple of years for having a military coup in 2020 which installed a junta and then again in 2021 when the temporary civilian leader experiment was annulled by the military who took full control.

During this period, France has also been in the news for helping Mali with its fight against terrorism as the country stands at a pivotal point in the Sahel where Islamic terror groups operate and which, we are led to believe, were threatening the stability of this West African country and former colony of France.

Macron’s perceived position at the beginning was to send 5000 French troops there are a vanguard to a UN mission to keep the extremists at a distance and install France’s supremacy. The troops sent a message to the world and to the West in particular that showing a force against Islamic extremist groups operating in Mali and neighbouring countries was the right thing to do.

Critics of Macron both in Bamako and Paris point out however that there is a hidden agenda to Macron’s Mali policy, which is to serve France’s interests as an investor in the country and to stop any impending immigration flows to Paris. The French soldiers are also there to protect French nationals working for French companies.

But the relationship between the junta and France was always a fragile one. In early January, that relationship reached a breaking point as Macron threw the lever which set those relations to ‘reset’.

The official line from France’s foreign minister is that a recent move by Mali’s military to reschedule elections in five years has exhausted the patience of Paris.

The real reason however which prompted Macron to rapidly respond to his demands to sanction the regime in Mali is Russia.

In recent days it has emerged that around 400 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group have arrived in Mali to support the regime.

This, and only this, is what has caused the fuse to jump. This is the ‘klack’ which has overloaded the circuit and got Macron in a state, to such a point that analysts in France have suggested that his decision to reduce French soldiers there since a year ago will now be accelerated following the Wagner presence.

Many will wrangle over the question whether it the reduction of French soldiers itself which prompted Russia to fill the vacuum. Or whether intelligence which got to France months ago that the regime was about to make such a move prompted Macron’s withdrawal.

In either case, it doesn’t show France and the EU to be very convincing powers in the region. France’s attitude was always a paternalistic one as it expected the regime to fall into line with the Elysee’s folly of democratising in the same way it has attempted to do in Lebanon. But the decision to turn to Russia for help was salt in the wound for Macron and his delusional views of France holding onto the hegemony in this failed state. The fact that Mali’s regime can’t take Macron seriously or rather sees through its veiled objectives and has turned to Russia is hardly surprising. In the region, Russia is playing a role more in line with what the West aspires to, but cannot pull off: regional super power hitting terror groups hard and building states. What Moscow has achieved in Syria is practically a geopolitical miracle which has won the praise and respect of former enemies in the Middle East who are now lining up in Washington to harangue the Biden administration to bring Assad in from the cold.

In Africa, both France and the EU have big ideas. The EU showed this week, by supporting Macron’s demands to hit it with sanctions, that it will support Macron’s absurd ideas about Paris being the big brother of its francophone former colonies. It’s about keeping a dream alive as, with France still playing such a paternalistic role, the EU is then afforded the opportunity to pump aid money into such countries and claim them as theirs, rather than America’s or Russia’s.

But the Mali debacle is showing the whole world how the EU model of hegemony, arm in arm with Paris, is failing. If Macron is so upset by the regime’s move that he is prepared to resort to such shameful vitriol against the regime, then France should forget about its African wet dreams and accept a new reality in the world, a new world order which we can see on our TV screens every day, which is that Russia, China and Iran are taking more power in Africa and the Middle East and are delivering on their side, when it comes to giving sovereign states what they want in return. The news just this week that China was developing new relations with Morocco is proof of that, or indeed that Beijing is helping Saudi Arabia with its ballistic missiles program. What happened in Mali is just another example of how the West’s model on hegemony is both outdated and fatally flawed. Macron is so obsessed with his media coverage and taking every opportunity to swipe at Brexit Britain’s economic success that he probably hasn’t time to read the memos from his advisors. This week France became almost a minor EU member state, turning to Nanny Brussels for help in its role as bully in the playground. Pathetic on so many levels. Just like Macron being scared that Russian mercenaries will intimidate French soldiers as part of a power struggle between Russia and the West which the latter is losing time after time in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan Belarus and even Poland. Mali has fallen, but others will follow and no new “EU pillar” in NATO would have ever prevented it.

Russian private military contractors propping up a military junta which France originally supported has now led even France to pull its own troops out. So what the hell are British soldiers doing there risking their lives?

The deployment of British soldiers in the West African country of Mali has reached a new farcical level, prompting the question why did Boris Johnson send them there in the first place?

In theory at least, 300 British troops of two regiments were sent there in February of last year to boost a UN operation fighting international terrorism. But in reality, they there to give tacit support to the French who have vital business interests in their former colony and need help in both preventing Islamic terrorists from harming those operations and protecting French nationals working for them.

But if that wasn’t farcical enough, in recent days, it has been revealed by the French press that Macron is actually withdrawing French troops from the UN operation, which initially had 5000 French soldiers leading it.

His reason? The presence of Russian private military contractors in Mali, believed to be there to support the military junta which took power in a coup in 2020 followed by a second one last year to oust a civilian government. In fact, Macron has been quietly reducing his own troops from Mali since June of last year but this initiative is expected to be accelerated when the news of around 400 Wagner private military contractors had been hired by the Mali junta.

In recent days, the tension has reached fever pitch. A senior French diplomat said that alleged Wagner-group activity in Mali was still being assessed.

“It is still unacceptable for Wagner to deploy to Mali,” the diplomat said, adding that the group’s presence creates security risks.

“The problem we have in Mali is first of all a political problem,” he said.

“There is a junta which has staged a coup, which exercises power illegitimately and which, to save itself, resorts to Wagner’s services.”

And so, if you’re struggling to grasp how or why 300 British squaddies are fighting Islamic terrorists there to ostensibly keep the status quo in the country which helps France and its investment, you might be wondering what the hell Boris is doing now keeping them there given recent announcements from the Elysee. As France speeds up a massive withdrawal of its own troops from its former colony is Britain expected to deal with terrorists having the edge now? And what about the Russian private military contractors? Will British soldiers have to accept them as a dominant military power on the ground?

Clearly Boris Johnson, who is facing a political revolt from his own backbenchers, would be wise to take a second look at the Mali situation and Britain’s relations with France given Macron’s pugnacious attitude towards Brexit Britain. Many will argue that enough is enough from Macron who has deliberately allowed record numbers of migrants in France to make the crossing into UK. France’s own navy won’t hold illegal immigrants on flimsy dinghies from making the channel crossing – which puts a strain on housing resources, leaving some Brits out in the cold – let alone exasperating tensions within the cabinet as Priti Patel looks increasingly useless at dealing with the crisis.

So what links Britain’s own migrant crisis from France’s shores and British squaddies in Mali? In fact, they’re both two sides of the same coin. Unwanted asylum seekers.

Is the British military is expected to help France with its own potential immigration problem if Mali sinks into the abyss and thousands of its citizens head to France for asylum? This is the heart of the matter. Macron cannot afford politically new immigration flows from Mali and so begged the international community for help there to boost the UN mission.

But the hypocrisy is stunning.

Many will surely argue that given our all-time record low relations with Macron, that the abusive nature of the relationship has now reached new level of travesty and that British troops really shouldn’t be helping keep terrorists at arms length from the military regime in Bamako when even France itself no longer wants to prop it up.

The reality is that aside from the press on both sides of the channel bashing one another’s governments, Boris and Macron have a bold vision of teaming up on playing the world’s policemen in the troubled hotspots, with a garnish of peace keeping and humanitarian work thrown in to keep the PR boys happy. This is the real reason why Boris made the decision to help Macron in Mali and why he is so servile to the French president.

But we may well be at breaking point.

Heaven forbid the day a British soldier is seriously wounded or killed and it transpires that the incident was as a result of a vacuum left by France’s retreat. Does Britain have to keep law and order in Mali just so France can cling to the absurd idea that it is still the colonial power there?

The leader of the opposition and Johnson’s own backbenchers now need to be asking questions in the Commons as to the wisdom of the decision to send British troops to Mali. This madness has to come to an end. Or are they hoping for the draped coffins at Britain’s RAF base Brize Norton which would be the final nail in Boris’s coffin?

In the coming weeks and months Boris has a number of major hurdles to jump, namely a massive tax rise and local elections in spring. If he can survive the present debacle over office parties, most of the main hacks in Westminster are betting on these two events being his downfall. But it may well be long before that, when Russians in Mali become a huge news story and Boris struggles once again to give a coherent answer to why British soldiers are there. Cue ‘This is the End’ by The Doors and watch the murky water rise.

The Gallic gall erupting between France and the United States, Britain and Australia has overshadowed the new military alliance that U.S. President Joe Biden announced last week for the Indo-Pacific region.

That alliance was supposed to signal a U.S.-led initiative to challenge China. But the strategic move is turning out rather stupid and shortsighted as it has backfired to slam a hole in Washington’s alliance with France and wider NATO partnerships.

French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered the recall of ambassadors from the U.S. and Australia in a sign of the intense anger in Paris over the newly unveiled alliance known as AUKUS – standing for Australia, United Kingdom and the United States. The return of French envoys from these allied nations has never happened before.

What’s at stake is a €56 billion contract to build a fleet of 12 submarines for Australia by France that was first signed in 2016. That deal has been scrapped and replaced by a contract with the U.S. and Britain to supply Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines. The French subs that were on order were diesel-electric powered.

That’s a huge loss in financial revenue for France as well as a hammer blow to French naval jobs and ancillary industries. But what’s more damaging is the stealth and a palpable sense of betrayal. The French were evidently hoodwinked by the Americans, British and Australians over the whole backroom deal.

France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian did not beat around the bush to express the rage being felt in Paris at the highest level. “I am outraged… this is a stab in the back,” he fumed to French media on news of the new Anglo-American military alliance in the Indo-Pacific and the consequent cancellation of the French sub contract.

“There has been duplicity, contempt and lies – you cannot play that way in an alliance,” he added referring to the NATO military organization of which France is a prominent member.

Apart from the recall of its ambassadors, France has also cancelled a scheduled summit in London this week between French and British defense ministers.

Sir Peter Ricketts, a former British national security advisor and past ambassador to France, said the growing row was “just the tip of the iceberg”. He said it was much worse than when France fell foul of the United States and Britain back in 2003 over the Iraq War.

Ricketts told the BBC as quoted by The Guardian: “This is far more than just a diplomatic spat… this puts a big rift down the middle of the NATO alliance.”

What is particularly galling for the French is that the new U.S. alliance with Britain and Australia was obviously under private discussion for several months to the exclusion of Paris and other NATO members. The French only found out about the pact when it was announced on September 15 in a joint virtual press conference between Biden and his British and Australian counterparts, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison.

When Biden made his first overseas trip as president in June this year to attend the G7 summit in Cornwall, England, and later to meet other NATO leaders in Belgium, there was no mention of the AUKUS plan. Biden even held a bilateral and apparently cordial meeting with Macron in Cornwall without any hint of the new alliance under formation nor the impending impact on the French submarine contract. More bitterly in hindsight, Biden also held a closed meeting with Johnson and Morrison during the G7 summit even though Australia is not a member of the forum. They must have discussed AUKUS in secret. No wonder the French are aggrieved by the contempt shown.

But it’s not only France that is stunned by the Anglo-American skullduggery. The other European NATO allies were also left in the dark.

Last week, European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell presented a new EU strategic vision for the Indo-Pacific region the day after the AUKUS alliance was announced. Borrell had metaphorical egg dripping off his face when he answered media questions about the U.S., UK, Australia initiative. “We were not informed, we were not aware… we regret not having been informed.”

The brutal irony is that Biden came to the White House promising that he would repair transatlantic partnerships with Europe and NATO which had been ravaged by Donald Trump and his browbeating over alleged lack of military spending by allies. When Biden visited England and Belgium in June it was something of a love-in with European leaders who swooned over his vows of “America is back”.

After Biden’s unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan last month when European NATO partners were not consulted and their apprehensions were brushed aside, now we see Biden poking France in the eye and kicking it in the coffers with €56 billion pain.

“Political trust has been shattered,” said Frederic Grare of the European Council for Foreign Affairs as quoted by the Euronews outlet.

But the whole sordid betrayal and bickering have more than money and loss of trust involved – far-reaching though that those issues are.

Washington’s willingness to supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia with British collaboration shows that the United States is moving ahead with a more reckless offensive policy towards China. Biden is explicitly declaring a strategic move to confront China more openly and provocatively, ramping up the hostility of previous administrations under Trump and Obama.

Beijing condemned the new AUKUS alliance as a harbinger of more “Cold War”, saying that it would bring insecurity to the region and lead to a new arms race. That may be an understatement as the Anglo-American alliance spells move to a war footing.

China warned that despite Australia’s insipid assurances to the contrary, the nuclear-powered submarines could be armed with nuclear missiles in the future. Beijing said Australia would be targeted for a nuclear strike in the event of any future war with the United States.

Biden’s strategic move to engage with Britain and Australia in order to threaten China is proving to be a loose cannon in relations with France and other European NATO allies. That speaks of Washington’s desperation to confront China. 

Just recently Morocco’s foreign minister, a man who usually shies away from the media spotlight, gave an interview with a Spanish news agency berating Spain’s recent decision to admit the leader of the Algerian-backed Polisario to one of its hospitals.

The interview itself raised few eyebrows in Morocco itself as many commented that Nasser Bourita is just parroting what the Rabat elite and the palace itself would have seen as a betrayal by Spain, Morocco’s largest trading partner and by far most important neighbour. Indeed, there is some logic to questioning why Madrid would take such a move, especially given its special relations with Morocco and not to mention the irony of the number of legal cases against Brahim Ghali being lodged by victims in Spanish courts.

But what is even odder is Morocco’s almost Icarus-like approach to handling this particular spat and others with its EU neighbours. There is an almost auto-self-destruct mode which Rabat goes into when handling problems with EU countries which, for international observers, shines a spotlight on Morocco’s weakness, rather than its strengths, around the world.

For Bourita to instigate such an interview where he delivered his bellicose messages, means a shocking contempt for two professions which would have served his intentions better, if put to good use: diplomacy and public relations.

The fact that Mr Bourita bypassed these two ancient institutions completely signals that Morocco has got some real problems coming up in the future over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

The recent spat with Spain followed one with Germany, a heavyweight in the EU. The subject is always the same: Western Sahara.

Germany has spoken openly since the Trump decision in December which officially made the U.S. acknowledge Morocco’s sovereignty there – dismissing it and underlining that the only process to a solution is the UN one. This, plus one or two other minor rows with Berlin last year, was enough for Rabat to throw a massive tantrum and suspend diplomatic relations in early March.

Any yet, perhaps if Rabat had better diplomatic relations with Germany via its ambassadors and better rapport with German journalists, the overreaction by Rabat might have been avoided.

Or even if it had skills at how to manipulate media, rather like the British government using Bellingcat to stoke a row between the EU and Russia, which we’ve seen lately, Rabat might have a shot at winning over EU governments.

However, in recent years Morocco’s ambassadors, like their ministers in Rabat, have retracted within themselves with the dark art of self-censorship being their main raison d’etre. These days, to reach a government minister over the phone in Rabat as a foreign journalist is impossible. Ministers are just too scared to talk, fearing reprisals from the revered business elite (called the ‘Makhzen’) which is really running the whole show. So, it is hardly surprising that Morocco’s ambassadors have really anything important to say or do around the world, muted by their masters who keep the leach tight. To say that Moroccan ambassadors are hardly important is an understatement. Indeed, Mr Bourita’s previous communications guru who he fired in 2020, was given an ambassador’s job as a severance package.

Equally in recent years, since 2010, Rabat relations with its own foreign journalists has receded with some special privileges removed for those who live in the country and a new mentality akin to contempt, similar to what it has for domestic journalists. While it’s true that international media is less interested in Morocco due to penny pinching, it is also true that Morocco has adopted a new treatment towards its dwindling, remaining few foreign hacks who have to jump through more and more hoops just to get a press card. In 2011, there were over 150 foreign correspondents accredited in Rabat. Now there is barely 80 and in future years, I estimate this will fall to just a handful. The last British correspondent of a UK broadsheet, The Guardian, left last year. There are no salaried correspondents of any British newspaper in Morocco presently, as just one example – a remarkable achievement by Rabat’s elite which no doubt would consider this as a triumph.

But sometimes you need foreign correspondents to oil the wheels.

Pick your fights

Trump’s decision to back Morocco was really all about serving Israel’s interest and in many respects has given Rabat a poisoned chalice. A recent, well overdue, telephone call from Antony Blinken to Mr Bourita, may have assured him that the U.S. will always be a good friend to Morocco, but this friendship will be strained in the coming months when it is clear to Rabat that Biden is uncomfortable about the position he has been put in, over Western Sahara – with Bloomberg even going as far as to call it a “mess”.

Biden will not revert the decision by Trump, but Rabat should brace itself for the U.S. position to remain opaque and lean towards the UN itself to find an amiable solution, even on a token level – and towards the EU to beat the drum.

The problem for Morocco, is that the EU and many of its big guns like Germany, are less likely to be so patient with Rabat over Western Sahara and will happily take up this role. Picking a fight with any EU country is unwise during these delicate times when Morocco should be working overtime to woe journalists in EU countries and bolster existing relations with their countries. But to try and teach Germany a lesson is foolish at best, given that it more or less runs the EU and holds key posts in places, like the prestigious European Parliament foreign affairs committee, just to mention one.

Mr Bourita is going to have to set quite a few interviews with EU news agencies if a new, smarter approach is not cultivated by Rabat as the recent debacles with Germany and Spain are only going to get worse, when the EU finally gets round to developing a policy on Western Sahara which puts the Trump decision in the long grass and finally reigns in Morocco on its human rights record. I don’t envy the role of Mr Bourita’s new attractive press mandarin when she has to explain how prestigious EU news agencies have declined his offer of an interview, refusing to be used as an extension of Morocco’s blundering PR endeavours.

Moreover, the new relations with Israel and in turn the GCC countries should be put into context. A opportunity for Morocco to whip up a foreign investment theme, of course. But the reliance on Israel in the first place to be the choice for outsourced lobbying and public relations comes with a heavy price as the same country might be the only option to continue the theme, given Morocco’s near zero influence in Washington, London and Paris. Heaven forbid that the Makhzen which is running the government now and has reverted back to the period of Hassan II in terms of domestic suppression of liberties and human rights, actually goes back to those days on how it treats foreign correspondents.

No matter how scary or violent an internet video from a far away land may be, the reaction of Washington to it is far more terrifying in the long term. Recently, some rather disturbing footage has supposedly come from the tense Tigray region of Ethiopia. The interesting thing here is that it has been brought into the public’s consciousness by United States Senator Chris Coons and Mainstream Media outlets like CNN and the BBC. In the past the combination of media and government seemingly working in tandem to present a problem that requires a bombing solution has happened many times. So what should we think about this new situation in Ethiopia, is this another tragedy worth fighting over?

Image: Protestors in New York are already trying to raise public consciousness of the situation in Ethiopia.

When looking at the language CNN is using to describe the ugly scenes caught on blurry video, the verbiage very much plays to the heartstrings of the audience. We have terminology like “atrocities”, “massacre”, and “mass killing” that naturally pushes on the emotions of any sane morally upright person. But the problem is that any sane morally upright person’s natural sense of reasoning leads them from any tragedy to the desire for “something to be done about it”. This is where the real problem lies but more on this topic later. Another typical tactic (or tendency) being used by the Mainstream Media to describe the Tigray video is placing the opposing view way at the bottom of the article. If human beings were angelic rational beings this would not be a problem but the human mind tends to build a picture of an event based on the information that comes first with all contradictory views later having to unseat or drive out the first view.

This is, in short, is why everyone wants to get to the hearts and minds of children first – storming an empty ideological trench is much easier than one with decades of opinions standing in it with bayonets. To be clear, this does not mean that every article that presents the opposite views of the author second is some grand scheme of manipulation, but certainly when you have 80%-90% of the article pushing one view that briefly touching on the absurd notion that there could be a counter view, then we know that we are certainly the PR zone. This type of strategy is very often used against Russia and China having their official reactions and viewpoints shoved to the bottom with unenthusiastic wording.

So what is to be done about this “deeply disturbing” footage?

How about doing nothing? Let’s not allow our First-World egocentric altruism to blind us from the fact that launching some sort of intervention will cause far more horrors than the occasional deaths of a few dozen men. Perhaps Saddam Hussein was brutal to his political opponents but for all his years in power he never “achieved” anything close to the Iraqi death toll caused by the invasion and destabilization of the nation. Living under a mid-twentieth century Communist dictatorship in its revolutionary phase sounds rather “unpleasant” and one would certainly have to walk on eggshells to keep their brains inside their heads, but being napalmed from the sky on a daily basis still seems like a downgrade for your average bloke in Vietnam.

Image: Can our “great” Western minds really be so sure that we understand the plight of this armed gentleman?

Judging by the racial chaos in American society that relatively recently set the nation ablaze in protest both metaphorically and literally, it is clear that Washington cannot solve its own interethnic problems and yet it is always sure it has the key to the puzzle of racism in regions all over the world that U.S. Senators cannot find on a map.

If we look at the dustry Sudan-Ethiopia-Somalia corner of Africa we see a lot of various ethnic and religious groups with official borders that may be arbitrary. There have also been generations of brutal poverty sitting on top of ancient culture. Perhaps at the top universities of the Ivy League there are professors who have lived in these regions, dedicated their lives to knowing the language(s) and culture and have a solid knowledge of why this area of the world sees so much seemingly (to us) avoidable violence. But those experts are not in Congress nor are they in the top brass of the U.S. Armed Forces. The people who have the ability to enact a U.S. Foreign Policy move in Ethiopia are too ignorant to possibly solve the problems there.

So what’s the plan of action?

Let’s take a deep breath, “check our white privilege” like the Lefties tell us to, and just let this one go. Black Africans are competent just like the rest of us and if anyone can understand the solution to the problems in the Sudan-Ethiopia-Somalia corridor then it will surely be the locals. Furthermore, I think we have all had enough of seeing former marines slowly rot away living under bridges addicted to one thing or another after losing their minds overseas after years of risking it all and seeing their buddies die for nothing.

The Ethiopian government rightly said about this viral violent video that “social media posts and claims cannot be taken as evidence”. So let’s admit that we cannot be fully sure of what’s going on and that our Western involvement will make things work since that is exactly what happens every time we’ve played regime change since the end of WWII. It’s finally baseball season, turn on your TV, crack open a beer, and let the Ethiopians find their own destiny.

An ominous development underway in Ethiopia’s devastating civil war is the intervention by the United States under the pretext of humanitarian relief.

The U.S.’ international aid agency – USAID – announced last week it has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in the northern Tigray region where millions of people are facing starvation.

A humanitarian crisis has been created in Ethiopia after the central government in Addis Ababa launched a military offensive against the Tigray region in November last year. Heavy fighting continues between Tigray militia and the Ethiopian National Defense Force. The Ethiopian government forces are being assisted by Eritrean troops which have invaded Tigray. There are reports of widespread violations against civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a phone call on February 27 to open up Tigray to humanitarian access and he expressed deep concern over possible war crimes. Washington then promptly deployed the USAID intervention apparently without authorization from the Ethiopian federal government.

The American move came despite a row during a closed meeting at the UN Security Council last week when it is understood that Russia and China objected to U.S. intervention plans in Ethiopia, which they said was over-riding legal processes and issues of national sovereignty.

USAID said its disaster response team is “assessing the situation in Tigray, identifying priority needs for the scaling up of relief efforts”. Given the dire humanitarian and security situation in Ethiopia that provision is logically paving the way for a major U.S. military intervention under the guise of the “right to protect” (R2P) presumption which has been unilaterally invoked by Washington in other conflicts.

President Joe Biden has picked Samantha Power as the new head of USAID. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former national security advisor to President Barack Obama, Power is a stalwart proponent of R2P foreign interventions. Biden also wants to make Power a member of his national security council.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is, like Power, another staunch advocate of “humanitarian interventions”. They were senior members of the Obama administration who formulated American military interventions in Libya and Syria. The “humanitarian” remit is rightly seen as a cynical moral cover for what would otherwise be condemned as American military aggression to achieve Washington’s own political objectives, such as regime change.

USAID – with an annual budget of over $27 billion and operating in over 100 countries – is notoriously intertwined with covert operations run by the CIA.

The damnable thing about Ethiopia’s current crisis is that arguably it was provoked by the United States from its geopolitical ambitions to control the Horn of Africa region and in particular to cut out China and Russia from this strategically important global hub.

Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed worked previously as a top military intelligence officer in the Ethiopian army before he became prime minister in early 2018. A long-time bilateral security partnership between the U.S. and Ethiopia made Abiy an ideal CIA asset. He was involved in developing Ethiopia’s telecom spying network in a replication of the National Security Agency in the U.S.. He was also educated at a private American university.

Before Abiy’s rise to political power, Ethiopia had an independent policy on foreign relations, pursuing strategic partnership with China for economic development. Ethiopia – the second most populous country in Africa and home to the African Union – was seen as a crucial link in building China’s new silk routes from Asia to Africa.

Oddly, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of 2019 for a supposed rapprochement with Ethiopia’s northern neighbor Eritrea. The two countries fought a bitter border war in 1998-2000. In hindsight, the award was a travesty given how Abiy has invited Eritrean troops into Tigray to wage war against the civilian population there, committing horrendous massacres.

But the Nobel prize can be seen as part of Abiy’s image-building by his CIA handlers for their objective of reordering Ethiopia. Tellingly, the Western media during his early months in office gushed with praise about the “young democratic reformer” and “peacemaker”. How foolish and fawning those media look now in light of the mayhem and suffering that Abiy unleashed in Tigray over the past four months.

In truth the war was building ever since Abiy took office. Almost from the get-go, there was a campaign of low-intensity aggression directed against the Tigray region. (This author was living there.) This was while the Western media were hailing him as a “reformer”. Abiy’s campaign of hostility towards Tigray involved the central government cutting electricity, water and communications as well as political assassinations. The purpose was to wear down the region and the people’s support for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which had been the previous dominant governing party before Abiy’s ascent. The Tigray region represented a bastion of opposition to the plan by Abiy and his CIA handlers to refashion and reorient Ethiopia geopolitically. The power struggle culminated in the full-blown war launched against Tigray on November 4, 2020, under false claims of being a security operation against a “terrorist junta”.

The terrible irony is that the war and humanitarian crisis inflicted on six million people in Tigray was predictable because Abiy seems to have been following an American imperial plan to destabilize Ethiopia for boosting its great power rivalry with China and Russia. The Horn of Africa is a geopolitical hotspot: it provides a commanding position for North Africa and Sub-Saharan mineral-rich countries, overlooking the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and proximate to the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula. Russia last year opened a naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, while China’s only overseas military base is located in Djibouti adjacent to Ethiopia.

Now humanitarian interventionists in the Biden administration are stepping in to “resolve” a mess that the U.S. was instrumental in creating. If the USAID mission is scaled up, as seems intended, then American military could be deployed in Ethiopia giving Washington an unprecedented foothold in a strategically vital region.

It is notable that while the Biden administration seems to be over-riding the authority of the Abiy regime in Addis Ababa, the American objective does not necessarily seek regime change on this occasion. The Biden administration is promoting itself as a mediator in Ethiopia’s civil war, even though this war would not have come about were it not for America’s covert manipulation of Abiy. Recently, the Tigray militia have appeared to be gaining the upper-hand against Abiy’s forces and their Eritrean allies. The American intervention seems prompted in part by concern in Washington to prevent the Abiy regime collapsing in defeat.

You may not know exactly where Somalia is. Or really much about its history. But this unique African country on the North Eastern tip of the African continent – which was both a former Italian and British colony – is going to be in the newspapers you read and on your social media timelines a lot in 2021 – if the petulant outgoing president Trump gets his way and pulls out 700 or so U.S. troops.

While it’s still unclear whether Trump will really go ahead with the total troop withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which will almost certainly lead to the Taliban gaining the upper hand during the so-called Doha peace talks, in Somalia it is almost certain he will go ahead with the ruse, because its impact – he probably believes – will be less and will draw less wrath from the press. Somalia is bite-sized, he will figure.

But he couldn’t be more wrong.

Somalia, a troubled country which fell into the abyss in 1991 and has been controlled by terrorist groups since, is more important than most western journalists realise. And although the small contingent of U.S. troops there is tiny, in terms of military capabilities, it is hugely symbolic in keeping the international community there and preventing the country slide into a civil war.

The worry from many Somali apparatchiks is that if the U.S. pulls out, then the rest of the international contingent – including the EU and several important European governments – will also do the same, leaving the country vulnerable to Al Shabab taking total control over a fragile patchwork of troubled federal states. Of course, there will be resistance to this from a great many clan leaders who will feel they have no choice now other than to remove the knife from the sheaf to defend their lands and their political enclaves.

Initially it was Bill Clinton, who, almost as soon as taking office in January 1993 was presented with the problem of armed clans taking all of the food aid arriving in the port of Mogadishu, causing a famine in the interior. The democrat president from Arkansas signed off for U.S. troops to go in, which led to the Black Hawk Down catastrophe, which Clinton never really recovered from on the international circuit, even contributing to the genocide in Rwanda, following the Tutsi coup which was also an ill-conceived CIA plan which blew up in everyone’s face.

Will Joe Biden and his new secretary of state Antony Blinken suffer a similar ill fate when they take office in January?

For years, Somalia has been on the brink of a brink of a total civil and military meltdown. The only stalwart measure of wisdom from the west, which has prevented total calamity leading to an inevitable civil war, was keeping U.S. troops there as a reminder that America has the ability to strike quickly if it needs to. To remove those soldiers, as Trump is likely to do, for most educated Somalis is for the country to take a suicide pill.

Al Shabab’s roots are in a Salafi extremist movement which was born from the post-Siad Barre period but later boosted both by foreign jihadists post 9/11 under the affiliation to Al Qaeda – and then an invasion by Ethiopia in 2006 which swelled its ranks even further. It had, at one point, taken control of the capital but was pushed back by a UN-backed African Union peace-keeping mission. The very real worry is that this mission AMISOM simply won’t be able to cope with anarchy on all sides as its resources are limited. It simply won’t be able to operate in a civil war situation even with the present numbers of U.S. troops and other contingents there. Certainly if U.S. troops pull out, this will be the hair trigger that starts a civil war on all fronts.

Yet unlike before, the situation is made even more complicated by Somalia’s relationships in recent years with regional powers who some might argue would thrive in the chaos of civil war and revel in the opportunity to pursue their agendas. Qatar has always had an opaque, if not two-faced relationship with the Somali government and is often accused of fuelling terrorism within Somalia, pitching one clan against another. It is also often accused outright of wrecking the relative peace that the country’s president Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo had built, when Doha raised the stakes in the so-called special relationship and installed their own TV propagandist from Al Jazeera into the position of security chief.

What happens to Faramaajo when the country slides into civil war? Does he become the puppet which Qatar props up, exactly in the same way the Saudis kept Yemen’s president in office, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in exile? Will Somalia be the new Yemen war which Joe Biden will be a spectator of while the world’s media catches up onto the farce of Trump’s claims to be a peace broker? As DC based analysts scramble over the idea that it could have been Trump himself to have resolved the four-year dispute between Qatar and its GCC neighbours, the final nail in that particular coffin could be Somalia, given that the UAE is also an active player in this country and has its own ambitions of hegemony there. If Faramaajo is to become Qatar’s own Hadi, no doubt exiled to Doha, then does that make the internal battle between the UAE and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, replicated more or less in Somalia? Does the UAE find its own group of rebels – Al Shabab itself? – which it backs, so as to topple “Mr Cheese”? Will the war spill over into peaceful Somaliland, a breakaway state which has its own scores to settle in Somalia?

It’s a cruel irony though that the power vacuum that Obama himself created when he reduced America’s role in the entire region to ‘soft power’ opened up a chasm for Qatar, UAE and Turkey to fill in failed states like Somalia – and now one which is about to bite Joe Biden on the arse before he even enters the Oval Office. The democrats are cursed by Somalia, it seems, but just as Bill Clinton had to make his toughest foreign policy decision almost immediately entering the Oval Office, so too will Joe Biden.

The Ethiopian central government has also requested South Sudan to deploy 4,000 troops to augment its forces in the offensive against Tigray.

Leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) admitted firing several rockets at an airport in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, over the weekend. There were apparently no casualties, but the TPLF said the airport was a legitimate target because it is being used to dispatch warplanes belonging to Ethiopian federal forces to attack Tigray. Civilian centers in Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigray, have been hit with air strikes. Washington condemned the attack on Asmara as “unjustifiable” but has not condemned air strikes on Tigray.

Tigray leaders say they are fighting a war on two fronts: against Ethiopian federal forces coming from the south, and against Eritrean military crossing the border to the north.

More alarming, there are reports of the United Arab Emirates deploying combat drones to support the Eritrean-Ethiopian axis. The UAE maintains an air base in Eritrea’s Red Sea port city of Assab from where it has been flying drones in the Yemen war against Houthi rebels.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has rebuffed appeals from the United Nations for peace negotiations. He has accused the TPLF of treason and terrorism, and is calling his offensive on the region of five million people a “law and order operation”. That is contradicted by a policy of what is blatant siege tactics and collective punishment against the civilian population. The region has been cut off from electricity and water supplies. Abiy’s warplanes bombed a hydroelectric power station last week in Tekezé, Tigray, and a sugar factory. His forces bombing civilian centers amounts to war crimes and state terrorism.

So much for Abiy being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year and Western media spinning his image as a “liberal reformer”. Abiy got the prize for his supposed peace-making with Eritrea soon after he became Ethiopia’s prime minister in April 2018. How he came to power is shrouded in mystery, involving backroom political deals. He was not elected.

Anyway, the curious thing about his so-called detente with the Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki is that so little is known about their private discussions. No details about the purported peace settlement have ever been published. Abiy, who comes from the Oromo ethnic group, never consulted with the Tigray people on what he discussed with Afwerki, even though it was the Tigrayans who suffered the brunt of the 1998-2000 border war. It was strongly felt that Abiy was cutting a deal to suit his own interests. Oddly, too, the seeming rapprochement was sponsored by the United Arab Emirates whose royal rulers donated an ornate gold medal and chain each to Abiy and Afwerki for their “peace efforts”. (A payment-in-kind worth several million dollars.)

But in practical terms, the people of Tigray and Eritrea (both are ethnic Tigrayans and share common family ancestry) have not seen any normalization in relations. The border remains closed and families are still prevented from traveling to visit each other.

This suggests the Nobel prize to Abiy was more about public relations to build up a benign international image. The accolade has come in useful during the recent offensive against Tigray. Western media routinely mention his Nobel prize alongside his claims of conducting a “law and order operation” against the “terrorist TPLF”. The Nobel gives him a vital credibility. Without it, his actions would be more clearly seen for what they are: crimes against humanity.

Since Abiy came to power, Ethiopia has been thrown into turmoil and violent clashes between its many ethnic groups. The Western media typically report that the mayhem is a result of “reforms” which are credulously said to have “lifted the lid” on internal tensions. It is never explained by the media how exactly these “reforms” somehow magically “lift the lid” on tensions.

What his reforms amount to is the formation of one-party rule under his leadership. He dissolved a coalition of parties last year known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to form the Prosperity Party under his leadership. Abiy was previously a minister of science and technology in the EPRDF government, which contradicts claims that the old regime was privileging the TPLF faction. In any case, the Tigray faction refused to join his new unitary party. Then Abiy cancelled elections slated for this year, allegedly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The TPLF accused him of seeking dictatorial powers and it went ahead with regional elections in September. He has never been elected by a popular vote.

That seems to have triggered the drive by Abiy to finally bring the TPLF opposition to heel.

Abiy’s targeting of the TPLF has been on the cards since he came to power more than two years ago. In Ethiopia’s nine regional administrations, it has been relatively easy for him to sack incumbents and to replace them with his own lackeys. That reshuffling caused much of the inter-communal violence, or what the Western media coyly refer to as “lifting the lid” on tensions. Not so the Tigray region, which has always been strong politically and militarily. The Tigrayans have long suspected Abiy as being a Trojan Horse figure whose purpose is to weaken Ethiopia’s political and economic independence in order to realign the strategically important nation away from partnership with China to be open for Western capital. Ethiopian sources say Abiy was recruited by the CIA when he previously served as a Lieutenant Colonel in military intelligence and liaised with American counterparts, before moving into politics. Ironically, he accuses the Tigray opposition of treason.

That is the geopolitical backdrop to the flare-up of war in Ethiopia. Washington and Gulf Arab states are aiming to decouple Ethiopia from China’s plans for global economic development, known as the “new silk routes”.

In doing so, however, Africa’s second most populous nation is being plunged into catastrophic war which is also threatening to engulf the Horn of Africa. It’s scorched-earth geopolitics.

After two years as prime minister Abiy Ahmed has overseen the collapse of a once strong and independent country, the only nation in Africa never to have been colonized by foreign powers.

The latest eruption of violence is centered on the northwest Tigray region which borders Eritrea and Sudan. Abiy has sent troops and warplanes to bring the oppositional stronghold under the control of the central government in Addis Ababa. Despite claims echoed by the state-run media that federal troops have succeeded in gaining control, the region remains defiant. Hundreds are reported dead from battles. But it is hard to confirm because the region has been cut off by the Abiy regime.

Incongruously, the prime minister who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 has rebuffed appeals from the United Nations to enter into negotiations with the Tigray leadership to avoid further bloodshed. There are fears that the military confrontation could lead to all-out civil war in Africa’s second most populous nation, dragging in neighboring countries in the unstable and poverty-stricken Horn of Africa.

Who is Abiy Ahmed?

The 44-year-old politician is currently the youngest African leader. He came to power in Ethiopia in April 2018 after much opaque political wrangling within a shaky coalition government. Abiy’s tenure was initially meant to be as caretake premier who would oversee elections. However, more than two years later he has postponed elections indefinitely under the pretext of safeguarding public health from the coronavirus pandemic. The Tigray region is dominated by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which was formerly the ruling faction following a revolutionary war that ended in 1991. The TPLF were always wary of a hidden agenda behind Abiy. It refused to postpone elections in September and they claim that Abiy is now ruling like a dictator without a mandate.

Abiy was formerly a member of the TPLF-led coalition regime, serving as a minister of technology and before that as a military intelligence officer. While studying for his MBA at the private Ashland university in Ohio (see notable alumni), it is believed that he was recruited by the CIA. His later work as a government minister establishing national security surveillance systems under the tutelage of U.S. spy agencies would have given him immense political powers and leverage over rivals.

Nobel Prize part of the PR makeover

Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after almost one year in office as caretaker premier owing to a surprise initiative he embarked on with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki. Controversially, Abiy refused to give press conferences to answer questions on the basis for his award. The settlement was supposed to put at end to a two-decade border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea following a three-year bloody war that ended in 2001. As a result, Abiy was generally hailed as a progressive reformer by Western media. The notable thing is, however, the purported peace deal did not deliver any practical improvement in cross-border relations between Eritrea and Tigray, the adjacent Ethiopian region. All of Abiy’s visits to the Eritrean capital Asmara have been shrouded in secrecy. No peace plan was ever published. And, crucially, Tigray people were not consulted on the deal-making undertaken by Abiy who comes from the Oromo region straddling central Ethiopia.

Regime change

While Abiy was apparently seeking peace outside his nation, the picture inside was very different. As soon as he took power in early 2018, Ethiopia’s tapestry of multiethnic population of nearly 110 million dramatically unravelled from a surge in internecine violence and massive displacement. Prior to that, the federal structure of Ethiopia under the TPLF-led regime (1991-2018) had been relatively stable and peaceful. During those decades, while the socialist orientated authorities maintained close relations with the United States in terms of regional security matters, Ethiopia also pursued nationally independent policies in terms of economic development. Western finance capital was heavily regulated, while China became the main foreign investment partner involved in key infrastructure projects.

A major project is the Blue Nile hydroelectric dam which was inaugurated by the former TPLF prime minister Meles Zenawi who died in 2012. Set to become the biggest power plant in Africa, it was largely self-financed by Ethiopia. Western capital didn’t get a look in.

Dam target

Nearly three months after Abiy’s catapult to power, the chief engineer of the Blue Nile dam Simegnew Bekele was murdered in what appeared to be an assassination. An investigation by the authorities later claimed it was suicide. Few people believe that from the suspicious circumstances, such as security cameras inexplicably failing and his security detail having been abruptly switched just before his killing. His wife was prevented from returning from abroad to attend the funeral.

The motive for the murder of the chief engineer was to throw the dam’s construction into disarray. The point was not stop its construction but to overhaul the financing of the project with the breakthrough input of Western capital to cover the $5 billion mega-dam.

Tigray subjugation the final mission

Over the past two years, the entire federal nation of Ethiopia has been rocked by sectarian clashes. It is impossible to put an exact number on the death toll but it is estimated to be in the thousands. Political assassinations have become all too common whereas before Abiy’s ascent to office such violence was rare. It appears the deadly strife has stemmed from Abiy and his clique systematically replacing the political administrations in the constituent nine regional governments of Ethiopia. He has also sacked lawmakers in the central parliament in Addis Ababa, replacing them with his own flunkies. All the while the Western media have portrayed the moves as “democratic reforms” carried out by the Nobel laureate prime minister. Violence among the various constituent nations of Ethiopia, it is implied by Western media, is the result of revanchist old regime elements instead of being legitimate resistance to Abiy’s power grab.

The Tigray region has always had strong political and military autonomy. Its five million population is unified behind the TPLF leadership. Thus the northwest region represents an obstacle to the regime-change operation in Ethiopia being carried out by Abiy Ahmed and his foreign backers. Those foreign backers include the United States and Gulf Arab oil regimes who are seeking geopolitical control over the strategic Horn of Africa. For that regime change to succeed, Ethiopia’s political independence must be broken. And in particular the national resistance of the Tigray region must be vanquished.

It is sinister indeed that last weekend while Abiy was launching federal forces on Tigray and cutting off transport, electricity and communications, he flew to visit his Eritrean dictator friend, according to Tigray sources. There are deep concerns that the two politicians are forging a pincer movement to attack Tigray from the south and north on the back of a criminal siege strangling the region.