Tag: ECOWAS
Gambian President and dictator Yahya Jammeh, facing a combined military force composed of Senegalese army troops, the Nigerian air force, and troops from Mali, Ghana, and Togo, has agreed to relinquish the presidency of Gambia. On December 1, 2016, Jammeh was defeated for re-election in a surprise upset by his little-known rival Adama Barrow. Jammeh received only 45 percent of the vote.
On April 1, the election commission of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – a country with vast mineral wealth and a population of 185 million – announced that a new president had been elected, a professional soldier named General Muhammadu Buhari… Buhari’s foreign policy is notable for its proposal to «establish a special relationship» with the BRICS countries, particularly with Russia. The new president also plans to complete the creation of a free-trade zone – the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – and to introduce a common currency in those nations…
Last week, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send some 12,500 peacekeeping troops to Mali to take over from the more than 4,000 French forces that had been dispatched there since mid-January. That dramatic French military intervention was ostensibly to save its former colony from being over-run by Al Qaeda-linked jihadists… Al Qaeda-linked jihadists are the very same type of militia and fanatical ideology that France and its NATO partners are supporting in Syria to overthrow the government of President Bashar Al Assad. So, France is working with jihadists in Syria, but somehow the same kind of jihadists in Mali are a «mortal threat to Europe»…
The concept of crisis management in Mali has gone through an about-face. The Africans are made to refuse the idea of tackling the conflict themselves. The African Mission – AFISMA has failed. One of the reasons – it never got the funds it needed. The United Nations and the donor-states have refused to finance an African mission. But they agree to reverse their stand in case the UN would be a decision maker. At that, the very same AFISMA forces would do the job, but under the command of «international community»…