Editorial: Niger Coup, imperialists mine their downfall

On July 26, a group of generals in Niger staged a coup and seized control of the country. Although Niger is no stranger to coups, with five to date, the latest is yet another blow to capitalist rulers’ liberal democracy and to U.S. and French imperialism in the Sahel region of Africa. Niger joins Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Chad, and Sudan among nations in the Sahel region of Africa that have dumped U.S.-friendly stooges like ex-President Mohamed Bazoum in favor of military juntas aligned with Russian imperialists. This pivot is a telltale sign that the old U.S.-led liberal world order is imploding.  

Despite sanctions and threats of war from the spurned imperialists and their allies in the West African bloc Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the coup leaders are showing no signs of backing down. To this point, threats of intervention have been all bark and no bite. Even so, the region’s chaos and volatility, plus the desperation of competing capitalists, could mean that war in Africa is on the horizon. Meanwhile, the Niger generals are rallying thousands of workers behind them in a move to oust the post-colonial French bosses, who maintain four military bases and two thousand troops in the country.

If history is any guide, however, the latest set of misleaders will do nothing to improve the lives of workers in Niger. As in Mali and Burkina Faso, these workers will be forced to renegotiate the terms of their misery and exploitation with Russian imperialists and military gangsters. The only way out of this imperialist hell is a communist revolution. True independence for workers means smashing the deadly capitalist system that breeds imperialism, poverty, and war in the first place.

Uranium and imperialist atrocities
The Sahel, a vast region south of the Sahara Desert, is rich in gold and oil. It has long been in the lethal chokehold of French imperialism. Beginning with a bloody invasion in 1899, the French army committed unspeakable atrocities, bombing villages and murdering tens of thousands of Nigeriens before bringing the country under colonial control in 1922. Although Niger gained its independence in 1960, France reasserted its control eight years later, after the discovery of uranium in the Saharan city of Agadez (European Environmental Bureau, 10/18/17).

Niger today is the world’s seventh-largest source of exploitable uranium, which generates more than 70 percent of France’s energy supply (The Guardian, 8/5). The French bosses continue to rake in massive profits through Orano, a multinational mining company that is 90 percent French-owned. To sustain this exploitation, the French bosses have used graft and terror by local security forces to help keep brutal and corrupt politicians in power to do their bidding (The Guardian, 8/5). Fueled by inter-imperialist rivalry, anti-regime terrorists have gained strength throughout the region. Even after the U.S. spent millions to build a military base and sent 1,500 troops to Niger in 2014, the violence has intensified (The Intercept, 8/2). Now the chickens have come home to roost. Power-grasping monsters like General Abdourahmane Tchiani, a former United Nations “peacekeeper” who was trained at a U.S. military academy, is leading a move to steal the French and U.S. turf (The Intercept, 8/10).

Tchiani has been emboldened by coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso, who declared that any invasion of Niger by ECOWAS troops would be a declaration of war against them as well. The new capitalist rulers in Niger are standing defiant. They have suspended the country’s constitution, revoked defense agreements with France, and prevented foreign planes from landing (Vox, 8/12). With the coup now entering its third week, French bosses are desperate to protect their foothold in the region, including the $13 billion dollar Trans-Saharan pipeline designed to send oil through the Mediterranean and break France’s dependency on Russian oil (DW, 7/28/2022). The U.S. bosses, meanwhile, are faced with ceding more ground to China’s bosses, who own two-thirds of Niger’s oil fields and want to build a 1,200-mile pipeline through Benin to the Atlantic. The Niger coup gives China a huge opportunity to expand its imperialist presence (The China Project, 8/6).

Down with French imperialism!
While French bosses rake in billions from Niger’s mineral riches, ten million workers and youth live in extreme poverty. They are devastated by famine, pollution, and a lack of drinkable water due to capitalist-caused climate change. Thousands are being slaughtered by terrorist groups aided and abetted by French and U.S. imperialists. When workers flee their homes, they are killed or enslaved by smugglers, or succumb to the dangerous journey through the Agadez (UNHCR, 5/4/22). The French bosses had relied on their puppet Bazoum’s efforts to terrorize migrants at Niger’s borders and stem migration to Europe (Al Jazeera, 7/26).

After the coup, on the eve of the sixty-third year of Niger’s independence, 30,000 workers took to the streets shouting “Down with France!” while waving Russian flags. The French bosses are under siege within their borders and without. Workers in France have sustained an open rebellion against raising the retirement age and to protest racist police brutality. In France’s former colonies, from Africa to Haiti, coups d'etat, mass demonstrations, and seizures of fuel depots are the order of the day. But for the international working class, it’s not enough to exchange one set of capitalist exploiters for another. We need to take that slogan further–to “Down with capitalism!” Workers in Niger need Progressive Labor Party, not another coup or “democratically elected” African misleader who’s only looking for a share of imperialist spoils while maintaining the dictatorship of the bosses.

Russia vs. U.S. proxy war
As the Niger coup unfolded, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a summit with African leaders in St. Petersburg, hoping to expand Russia’s growing influence in West Africa. Using the mass-murdering mercenary Wagner Group, Russia’s bosses are trading its military services in exchange for minerals and other natural resources. They cynically use anti-colonial, anti-Western rhetoric as they exploit and slaughter workers. The old Soviet Union is still viewed favorably by many workers in Africa because of its help in overthrowing their European colonizers. Though Russia’s position in West Africa remains tenuous, and they are spread thin by the Ukraine war, one thing is clear: their presence in the region has escalated the stakes of the Niger coup.

Western Africa has become a flashpoint in the imperialist competition between the U.S. and Russia. Both sides, whether through drone strikes or the Wagner group, are indiscriminately murdering workers in the region and pushing many into jihadist militias. As long as the working class in Niger is weakened by ethnic divisions and nationalist illusions, they will continue to be the imperialists’ sacrificial lambs. Even so, these workers’ militant protests show that they are hungry for an alternative. That alternative is communist revolution, led by Progressive Labor Party! From Africa to South Asia, from Latin America to Australia, we are building an antiracist, antisexist, internationalist movement to smash this rotten imperialist system and build a new world run for and by workers. Join us!