Why France is Actually Preparing for War With Russia
as most of the world's attention remains
focused on the major Wars still ongoing
in Ukraine and Gaza there is another
massive proxy war going on right now
between the French and the Russians
across the African continent that also
has the potential to send shock waves
around the entire rest of the world for
a moment last July in 2023 the world's
attention was briefly focused on this
emerging proxy war between Moscow and
Paris when Military Officers in ner a
large landlocked country in West Africa
orchestrated a cou d'a and overthrew the
country's government it was a
particularly shocking development
because ner was the sixth country in
only 3 years since 2020 in Africa's
Sahel region to experience its
government getting successfully
overthrown in a coup following the
previous successful coups that toppled
governments in Mali in 2020 and 2021 in
Chad Sudan and guinea all in 2021 then
in Burkina Faso in 2022 and then finally
in ner in 2023 which established this
continuous belt of recently CED
countries across the whole of Africa
from the Red Sea to the Atlantic a
geopolitical region that some analysts
have started to controversially refer to
as Africa's C belt and after the coup
overthrew the government in nier in July
of 2023 another coup broke out nearby in
gabone only a month later in August that
overthrew the longtime government there
as well the cou belt overlaps some of
the most violent conflicts going on in
the world that tragically fail to
attract the international attention that
they deserve with an apocalyptic Civil
War still raging in Sudan between rival
generals that exploded in April of 2023
and with large swamps of territory
across Mali Burkina Faso and ner
currently dominated by radical islamist
factions like Isis and Al-Qaeda then
might be on the brink of unilaterally
declaring their own independent Jihad
States after the collapse of Isis in
Iraq and Syria and after the expulsion
of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan both groups
have reformed themselves and reentered
their primary territorial bases of
operations away from the Middle East
towards here in the Sahel region amidst
The Chronic instability in the CB Bel
and tens of thousands of people have
lost their lives and millions more have
been displaced in the process for the
very first time since the global
terrorism index began compiling records
13 years ago a country other than
Afghanistan or Iraq climbed into the
number one spot for Dudley Terror
attacks in 2023 and it wasn't Israel
even after the widely publicized scale
of hamas's October 7th attack it was
burina Foo who suffered nearly 2,000
deaths from terrorism in 2023 alone that
represented nearly a quarter of all
terrorism related deaths worldwide and
represented a surge of terrorism related
violence in the country up 68% compared
to 2022 and neighboring Mali wasn't far
behind it in third place overall
suffering more deadly terrorism in 2023
than either Pakistan or Syria this has
made the TriPoint border region between
Burkina Faso Mali and ner the new
epicenter of global terrorism in the
21st centur country as much of it has
fallen under the direct control of
either Isis or Al-Qaeda there is a
genuine fear that many of these
countries may be on the verge of
imminent State collapse and with a sole
exception of Sudan who has its own
problems all of these unstable and
fragile countries and Africa's KUB Bel
are former and arguably still current
economic if not political colonies of
France that in nearly every case were
home to thousands of French troops who
were ostensibly there fighting against
the likes of Isis and Al Kaa but who are
also there to defend major French
economic interests before the coup
leaders took power and expelled them
from the country since the C overthrew
governments in Mali Bina Faso and ner
French troops and even the French
ambassadors have all been collectively
expelled as a wave of anti-french
sentiment sweeps across the continent
and in nearly every instance the
expulsion of French troops and French
ambassadors have been met with a
welcoming of hundreds to even thousands
of new Russian troops from the mercenary
Vagner group in the newly rebranded
Russian Africa Corps to fight against
the ongoing insurgencies instead as the
spaces on the board in West Africa begin
rapidly shifting like falling dominoes
away from France's sphere of influence
and towards Russia's it's a complicated
proxy war that overlaps the struggles
between West African nations tribes and
ethnicities themselves that is directly
challenging France's long profitable and
largely invisible neocolonial domination
over their former former directly ruled
colonies in Africa that has continued on
for Generations after most westerners
believed it all ended it is directly
threatening the foundation that France
has built its Prosperity upon for
centuries and it appears to be a theater
of Russia's war with the West that
Moscow is currently winning and that
hardly anybody in the western world ever
reports on or really even understands
and so in order for you to understand
why Russia is beating France here why
the Sahel region of Africa has become so
stable in the 2020s and why it's all so
important to the outcome of both Europe
and Africa's future it helps to
understand the uniquely exploitative
history of French colonialism in Africa
and the uniquely longlasting vestiges of
French neocolonialism in Africa that
have persisted long past all of the
other former European Colonial regimes
in Africa into the present day and how
this all intersects with geography
climate change and Russia's own current
geopolitical objectives and ambition
the Sahel region is a very long and
narrow band of Aid land that runs across
the African continent from more than
3,500 km or 2200 mi from the Red Sea in
the East to the Atlantic in the west it
is a biogeographical transitional zone
between the vast deserts of the Sahara
to the North and the wet savanas and
rainforests further to the South and its
name Sahel is derived from the Arabic
word for Shoreline the shore of the
Sandy Sahara sea across thousands of
years of History Inland trading ports on
this shore of the Sahara made the region
an epicenter of global trade and one of
the wealthiest regions in the world
cities like Timbuktu and gaw in modern
day Molly became major trading hubs in
the medieval period between subsaharan
Africa and the Mediterranean as vast
camel trains carried the Region's
natural and Human Resources like gold
Ivory and slaves northward and luxury
goods Southward which brought enough
wealth and prosperity to the Sahel that
timbuk 2 was once one of the biggest
cities in the world in the 14th century
and was the core of the empire of monsam
Musa who is often regarded as
potentially having been the richest
human being to have ever lived but then
beginning in the 15th century European
trading vessels began sailing down the
African West Coast and open up new
Maritime trading routes for these
resources between subsaharan Africa and
the European World instead the trade
routes shifted from the Inland ports in
Timbuktu and GAO towards the new
Maritime ports in places like Ghana and
Ivory Coast and the economic fortunes of
the Sahel began declining over the
following century
by the time of the Berlin Conference in
the late 19th century the relatively
small French Colonial Empire in Africa
that had already been established in
modern day Algeria Sagal and gaban was
dramatically expanded along arbitrary
lines to cover nearly the entirety of
the continent's West and the vast
majority of the Sahel region the French
Colonial Empire then rapidly expanded
across the continent without taking into
consideration the historically important
Overland camel trading routes they were
still important for the Region's nomadic
peoples who had no concept cept of
nation states or settled societies nor
did the French take into account
biogeographic realities like the
ecological differences between the
Sahara the Sahel and the wetter Southern
regions and nor did the French take into
account the boundaries of various ethnic
groups or consider the differences
between nomadic groups and settled
groups the French Colonial authorities
like the rest of the Europeans who
carved up Africa at the time were
exclusively interested in acquiring the
Region's Rich natural resources
establishing their own authority and
crushing local political rulers and
unlike other 19th and 20th Century
European colonial projects in Africa the
French went so far as to declare in 1848
that Algeria was being annexed directly
into the French Nation itself Algeria
therefore extended Beyond a mere colony
from the perspective of Paris and for
more than a century until the
1960s it was regarded as a core integral
part of France the same way as Paris
hundreds of thousands of European French
settlers came to colonize Algeria
following the 1848 an ex to the point
where by 1959 still under French control
there were around 1.4 million French
settlers present in Algeria who
represented about 133% of algeria's
entire population at the time after the
conclusion of World War II in which
France had been occupied by Nazi Germany
for years the French economy was in
Ruins and France's post-war leaders
sought to use their vast Colonial
project in Africa to maintain their
status as a global great power going
forward and to try compete competing
with the Americans and the Soviets as
much as possible part of this included
France's idea to push back against the
US dominated Global Financial system
that emerged after the war by
establishing a brand new currency for
all of their African colonies in 1945
that they called the CFA Frank an
acronym that in French stood for the
French colonies in Africa Frank the CFA
Frank to be used in France's African
colonies was to be paged directly to the
French currency the French Frank in a
way that was deliberately designed to
strengthen the French Frank against the
US dollar in the postwar world the
French Frank was devalued near the end
of 1945 in order to establish a fixed
exchange rate with the US dollar and by
1948 the CFA Frank was paid to the
French Frank at a rate of two French
Franks to one CFA Frank which spared the
CFA Frank from going through the same
devaluation as the French Frank did and
deliberately overvalued the CFA Frank
relative to the French Frank essentially
what this meant in practice was that the
colonies using the EFA Frank would
experience higher costs to export their
raw materials to anywhere that wasn't
France since France would benefit from
the frictionless conversion between
their currencies which ultimately
crushed the competitiveness of CFA Frank
user exports to anywhere that was in
France while at the same time it also
made the colony's Imports of
manufactured goods from France less
expensive than from anywhere else which
essentially enabled France to import raw
materials from their African colonies
for below Market Market rates and then
sell them back finished products for
above Market rates and with a direct
convertibility of the CFA Frank being
directly paid to the French Frank French
companies could open up mines and
operations in the colonies and extract
their resources while easily sending
their profits back home to France
without the fear of Foreign Exchange
fluctuations it was a great system and
deal for the French and it enabled Paris
to partially fund their post World War
II economic recovery through a rather
Sly wealth transfer from their African
colonies to themselves but by the mid
1950s there was increasing sentiment
Rising among the Africans for their
independence from Europe in the
beginning France initially responded to
these calls for Independence in their
colonies with overwhelming violence in
1954 Algeria rose up in a revolution to
shake off the French settler Colonial
project there and what followed was a
brutal 7-year war for independence the
French were particularly ruthless in
crushing the Algerian independence
movement because Paris still officially
considered Algeria to be a core integral
territory of France itself the French
army committed brutal and widescale
massacres and other atrocities across
Algeria and across the 7 years of war
it's estimated that around 1 million
algerians were killed at least 8,000
Algerian Villages were destroyed and
more than 2 million algerians were
rounded up and placed into French Run
concentration camps the French also
treated the sparsely populated Algerian
Sahara as their testing ground for
nuclear weapons during the war as well
testing and detonating a total of 17
nukes in the country between 1960 and
1966 that exposed thousands of locals to
radiation over time the Algerian War's
brutality and high costs gradually
turned French public opinion against it
as did international support for the war
from France's allies like the United
States which eventually forced France to
concede and Grant Algeria its
independence in 1962 which led to a mass
Exodus of more than 900,000 of the
French who lived in Algeria back to
Metropolitan France who were terrified
of suffering Algerian
reprisals and as all of this brutality
and horror was very publicly going on
for the whole world to see in Algeria
France began attempting to hang on to
the rest of their African colonies
through more covert less expensive less
bloody and less internationally damaging
methods after having pressed the CFA
Frank currency on them in 1945 the
French essentially hijacked and co-opted
genuine Independence movements and the
rest of their West African colonies by
courting influencing and placing their
handpicked local Elites into positions
of power as essentially puppets before
offering them their theoretical
Independence each of these colonies were
then offered so-called cooperation
agreements by Paris that would define
their future relationship with France
going forward post Independence these
agreements differed from colony to
Colony they sometimes granted French
companies continued privileged access to
their natural resources they sometimes
enable the French to continue
maintaining military bases in their
country countries but they always
advised the colonies to continue
remaining within the CFA Frank Financial
system the colonies accepting these
cooperation agreements and remaining
within the CFA Frank system after 1958
was and has always been presented by the
French as being a supposedly completely
voluntary Arrangement where they were
all free to say yes or no post
Independence but the French also made it
extremely clear what would end up
happening 20 any of these future
countries post dependence if they
rejected the arrangement Guinea was the
only one of France's colonies in Africa
who Flatout rejected France's offers
post Independence in 1958 including
remaining within the CFA Frank system
with Guinea's then leader seku té
defiantly declaring during a speech in
front of France's then president Charles
deal that he preferred to be poor in
Freedom rather than rich in slavery and
the French decided to make as painful an
example out of him and of Guinea as
possible the French agreed to fully
withdraw from Guinea and granted them
their independence early but on the way
out they deliberately tore down and
destroyed everything that they could
that they considered to have been French
contributions to guinea Society they
destroyed Machinery burned their plans
for the capital sewage system destroyed
their medicine rather than leave it
behind and even unscrewed their light
bulbs in their offices and took them all
back to France all French foreign aid to
guinea was eliminated and after Guinea
subsequently turned towards the Soviet
Union and the Eastern block for
financial experts to help them develop
their own independent currency in 1959
the French took it as a direct threat to
their CFA Frank system and so they began
flooding Guinea with counterfeited
guinean currency to try and generate
hyperinflation and crash their economy
and they even started to begin arming
guinean Rebels and when responding to
other threats in Africa against their
neocolonial system the French responded
with similar violent methods a
cameroonian anti-colonialist leader of
the era named Felix Roland moury was
assassinated by the French Secret
Service in Switzerland in 1960 using a
method evoking the current
assassinations carried out by Vladimir
Putin against his enemies in Europe they
poisoned him with radioactive thalium
and gave him an agonizingly painful
death in 1957 just before the colonies
began getting offered their deals on
Independence French geologists
discovered large uranium reserves in a
remote part of Northern ner and as it
turned out ner had the seventh largest
known reserves of uranium in the entire
world and the highest quality uranium
ore that has ever been discovered on the
African continent initially the French
wanted continued access to this uranium
and ner to develop their own independent
nuclear weapons Arsenal so that they
could achieve strategic autonomy from
both the United States and the Soviet
Union but later on they also wanted
continued access to nier's uranium to
power their burining nuclear energy
industry the first commercial
french-owned uranium mines in ner were
opened in 1971 and nier's uranium has
has ever since become a majorly
important component of France's energy
strategy no other country in the world
has pursued nuclear power as
aggressively as the French have to the
point where today in 2024 the country is
home to 56 nuclear reactors in 18
separate nuclear power plants that
generate roughly 63% of France's total
electricity output in order to fuel them
and continue generating all of that
electricity France currently requires
around 8,000 tons of raw uranium oil per
year and without any uranium within
France's own borders all of it has to be
imported from abroad Kazakhstan is by
far the modern world's single largest
producer of uranium accounting for 43%
of the entire world's production of it
as of 2022 while ner by comparison on a
global scale is a fairly minor player
producing only about 5% of the world
Supply but because of the way that the
CFA Frank Financial system has always
worked in France's former colonies for
decades after their theoretical
Independence n's exports have always
been expensive and uncompetitive unless
they are exported to France who was able
to use their own undervalued currency
that was Peg to the overvalued CFA Frank
to purchase them for below their market
value ner had no other choice but to
sign grossly unfair deals with French
multinational companies that exploited
their uranium resources and brought them
back to France orano the multinational
uranium mining company that's
headquartered in Paris Paris that is
currently 90% owned by the French
government currently operates three
uranium mines in each air though only
one of them continues to remain in
active operation today as of 2024 and
even though nir is a fairly minor
uranium producer globally with 5% of
worldwide uranium production it
continues to be a major source of French
uranium Imports to this day Kazakhstan
as the world's largest uranium producer
is also France's largest uranium
supplier having provided roughly 37% of
France uranium Imports in 2022 but ner
is still France's second largest source
of uranium Imports having provided 20%
of French Imports the same year this
meant that in 2022 80% of all the
uranium produced in ner by French owned
multinational companies like orano was
exported to France which went on to
power roughly 12 a half% of France's
total electricity or in other words
about 8 million French citizens continue
to rely on the importation of uranium
from nier to power their homes nier's
uranium has therefore remained a core
strategic interest for France into the
present day meanwhile for ner despite
mineral mining like uranium taking up
40% of the country's export volume it
only accounts for about 3% of the
country's GDP because very little of the
profits from uranium mining have ever
remained within ner and the uranium of
ner weren't the only raw materials in
France's Colonial Empire that Paris
wanted to maintain their access to after
granting them their
independence significant oil deposits
were discovered in Gabon when it was
still directly ruled as a colony by
France in 1931 and after gabon's
theoretical independence in 1960 the
French also wanted to maintain their
access to the oil just like they did
with nier's uranium in the mid 1960s a
gabane man named Omar Bongo was
essentially interviewed by French
president Charles deal for the position
of gabon's President and appointed
shortly thereafter
Bongo was an Ardent Frank ofile who
ruled the country for decades afterwards
all the way until 2009 and then his
young son Ali Bongo took over and
continued the pro- French dictatorship
in Gabon until he was finally overthrown
just last year in August of 2023
throughout the decades that the Bongos
ruled the country they enabled the
precursor of today's giant French Oil
Company total to dominate gabonese oil
production in exchange for an annual
bribe thattime amounted to 50 million
EUR a year in 1988 the New York Times
reported that France was covering about
13 of The Bongo government's budget in
gabone most of which flooded into Omar
bongo's own personal accounts enabling
the Bongos themselves to get ludicrously
rich while the French were able to
maintain their privileged access to the
country's oil and other resources while
also maintaining a permanent military
presence in the country too in 1999 a US
Senate investigation into City Bank
discovered that Omar Bongo had about
$130 million stashed in the bank's
personal accounts which alone made him
one of the wealthiest heads of state in
the world despite gabon's oil dominated
GDP per capita growth being among the
highest in Africa during his more than
40 years in office his government only
paved about 5 kmet worth of Roads per
year while he was in charge and Gabon
continued to have one of the world's
highest rates of infant mortality at the
time of his death in 2009 while 13 of
the population continued living in
poverty largely because the Bongo family
hoarded all of the nation's wealth for
themselves and for France Omar Bongo
apparently said at one point that gabone
without France is like a car with no
driver and France without gabone is like
a car with no fuel The Bongo family was
so exorbitantly wealthy from their
Decades of corruption and exploitation
of their own people for the benefit of
France that in 2007 his daughter-in-law
made a bizarre appearance on the US
music Channel VH1's reality TV show
really rich real estate where she
attempted to buy a $25 million mega
mansion in Malibu California France's
deep and endearing grip over its former
colonies in West Africa after granting
them their theoretical Independence in
the early 1960s became so unique and so
all-encompassing that it gave rise to a
new term to describe the phenoma know as
France of freak French Africa to protect
its continued economic interests across
France of freak the French launched no
less than
122 separate military interventions into
Africa just between 1960 in the mid
1990s including a surge of hundreds of
French Marines and tanks to gabone in
1990 to help put down riots that erupted
against their puppet Omar bongo's Rule
and ever since France's West African
colonies were granted their theoretical
independence in 1960 the CFA Frank
system has remained largely in place for
decades to the continued benefit of fr
France its name has changed over the
decades to what it currently is an
acronym in the French language for the
financial community of Africa Frank
rather than the old French colonies in
Africa Frank though its original purpose
has largely remained intact some
countries have withdrawn from the system
as guiney did early on and as Madagascar
and morania each did in 1973 While
others have joined that were never
original French colonies to begin with
like Equatorial Guinea in 1985 and
guinea BAU in 1997 and is still
ultimately used by 14 countries in West
and central Africa today though the
majority of whom used to be directly
ruled as colonies from Paris and ever
since 1999 after France adopted the Euro
the CFA Frank currency simply evolved to
become PID to the euro instead instead
of the old French Frank the current Peg
as of 2024 has remained the same ever
since 1999 and remains set at € euro
equals precisely
65597 CFA Franks modern proponents of
the CFA Frank system continuing which
are very often French or european point
to the fact that the CFA Frank being Peg
to the euro has helped keep these 14
African countries currency stable and
kept their inflation rates low when
compared to their neighbors for example
the inflation rate in Ivory Coast which
has always remained a CFA Frank user has
been markedly lower than what the
inflation rate in neighboring Ghana has
been which has never been a CFA Frank
user Equatorial Guinea and guinea basau
two countries that were never French
colonies and were there for not original
members of the CFA Frank back when it
was originally conceived of in 1945 each
decided to join the CFA Frank system
later in 1985 and 1997 respectively
largely out of a desire to stabilize
their own currency systems and to crush
what at the time was their rampant
inflation rates the system is not
completely without its merits but the
counterarguments against the CFA Frank
that largely come from Africans
themselves revolve around a lot of
notable issues for one thing because
their currencies are directly pay to the
euro their monetary policies are
effectively still outside of their own
sovereignty and are still decided by the
European Central Bank in Frankfurt and
the European Central Bank has very
different economic priorities than the
CFA Frank countries in Africa do the
European Central Bank is primarily
interested in combating inflation within
the highly developed economies of the
Euro Zone in Europe While most of the
underdeveloped African countries who use
the CFA Frank are primarily interested
in investing in infrastructure and
creating jobs for their people which are
policies that drive inflation up
historically there was also a condition
all the way up until 2019 that CFA Frank
members had to maintain 50% of all their
liquid reserves with the French treasury
in Paris for safekeeping but even though
that policy was removed via reform in
2019 France still prints all of the CFA
Frank currency in circulation while the
European Central Bank still effectively
controls their monetary policy that is
often against their best interest which
has led many people over many decades to
argue that without any control over
their own monetary policy these
countries in France ofek have never
truly achieved their full sovereignty
and independence from France and so
their struggle for True decolonization
has continued into the present day and
since the CFA Frank countries exports to
the Eurozone and imports from the Euro
Zone have remained cheaper than
elsewhere it has continued financially
benefiting France and Europe while also
crippling their own ability is to make
significant revenues from their exports
which has made export-driven economic
growth in them largely impossible to
achieve and which has further
discouraged any domestic Industries in
them from ever developing and so for
these reasons while CFA Frank users
inflation rates have indeed been lower
than that of their neighbors their
economic growth rates have also
generally been significantly lower too
comparing Ivory Coast who uses the CFA
Frank with Ghana who doesn't again
you'll see that Ivory Coast's constant
GDP per capita actually peaked decades
ago back in 1978 and has never since
recovered well ganos has consistently
risen ever since 1983 nearly year after
year and the story is largely the same
across the whole CFA Frank area nier's
real GDP per capita peaked at an
all-time high in 1965 only 5 years after
their official independence from France
and is never recovered ever since
gabon's real GDP per capita peaked in
1976 and is also never recovered while
the Republic of The Congos and
cameroon's real GDP per capita is each
peaked in the 1980s and have also never
recovered and because domestic economic
growth has always been so low in all of
these CFA Frank countries it has
incentivized the local despotic Elites
who lead them who are usually very
closely connected to France to Simply
plunder what little wealth there is for
themselves and their own tribes which
exacerbates the underlying economic
issues and barriers to growth even
further the whole system has benefited
France at the expense of the vast
majority of Africans for more than 60
years now after most westerners thought
that European colonialism in Africa
ended in 2007 the then French president
jacqu shurak summed the whole situation
up when he said quote don't forget one
thing and that is that a large portion
of the money that we have in our purses
comes precisely from the exploitation of
Africa over the centuries so we need a
little measure of good sense I didn't
say generosity but good sense and just
ice to render to Africans I would say
what we took from them this is necessary
if we want to avoid the most severe
turmoil and difficulty with all of the
political consequences that this will
bring in the near future end quote so
Shak knew as early as 2007 that without
major reforms to France's exploitative
system in Africa the Africans themselves
would one day eventually rebel against
the system especially as the Region's
demographics were expected to continue
growing further into the 21st century
ner Mali berina Faso and Chad have all
seen their population growth rates
exceed 100% since the turn of the 21st
century and as their populations rapidly
increased so too did each of their
demographic abilities to question and
challenge their France Centric economic
systems moreover the borders of nation
states that the French imposed on the
Sahel and elsewhere in Africa were
mostly arbitrarily defined and didn't
line up with the Region's ancient and
still important Overland trade routes
nor with the Region's many different
ethnicities and tribes many of whom have
always been nomadic hurting people who
have never understood the concept of
European style nation states and have
never respected what they consider to be
arbitrary in Porous borders carving
across their ancient hering lands the
targ are one of these nomadic ethnic
groups in the area still today without a
state of their own whose traditional
lands span across the sparsely populated
parts of Mali BAU nier Algeria and Libya
the fani are another ethnic group across
the Sahel without a single state of the
own who number about 38 million today an
estimated 1third of whom continue to be
fully nomadic which makes them the
largest nomatic pastoral group remaining
anywhere in the Contemporary world and
on top of all of these problems climate
change has been exacerbating the
potential for conflict in the region in
the 21st century as well it is estimated
that since the start of the Industrial
Revolution worldwide temperatures have
risen by an average of 2° fah or 1.1 de
C but the average temperature rise in
the Sahel region has been estimated to
be 50% higher than that since the mid
20th century the rapidly increasing
populations in the Sahel have stripped
most of the land bare of trees for
firewood while a corresponding increase
in the numbers of cattle present in
nomadic herds meant that more of the
sahel's grass began getting gedon which
combined with the loss in trees led to
rapidly increasing soil erosion and
increased desertification as the Sahara
Desert began expanding Southward into
the Sahel like a slow moving tsunami of
sand since 1950 the Sahara Desert is
believed to have grown in size by
roughly 8% and advanced into the Sahel
region by about 100 km or 62 Mi a trend
that is only expected to continue across
the rest of the 21st century when their
lands are flooded by sand and when
increased droughts and erosion kills
their grasses for grazing the nomadic
people of the Sahel like the targ or the
fani are physically forced to move their
herds onto other areas usually further
south into more traditionally sedentary
societies and cultures which frequently
leads to the opportunity for violence
the targs in particular have never
really recognized the legitimacy of the
postcolonial states that they have
always viewed as being forced upon them
the first targ rebellion in the Sahel in
the postcolonial era happened in 1962
only 2 years after these countries
theoretical independences from France
were granted and theyve continued
periodically ever since a major tarag
rebellion in Northern Mali in 2012
managed to take over the entire north of
the country before declaring their
independence as the so-called state of
azawad before it all got Itself co-opted
by islamist forces like Al-Qaeda at the
time it appeared to Paris that Al-Qaeda
backed militants were on the verge of
expanding from the north of Mali and
toppling the entire country and setting
up a jihadist state like the talibans
Afghanistan on the doorstep of Europe
which was one of the most catastrophic
challenges to the France of freak system
that had ever presented itself if they
had been successful millions of refugees
would have likely fled northward to
Europe the targs might have gotten more
ambitious and begun expanding across
their other ethnic lands like in nier
where France's uranium mines are located
that power millions of French homes with
electricity and so at the request of the
malan government itself the French
decided to launch a major military
intervention into Mali in 2013 to beat
the rebels in Mali back and to restore
control over the entire country to the
Malian government more than 5,000 French
troops were rapidly deployed and quickly
res secured control over the country for
the malan government and afterwards the
French settled in for a long
counterinsurgency campaign in the Sahel
there was ostensibly in place to push
back against islamist rebels in the area
to defend the sovereignty of States like
Mali Bina Foo and Chad but was also to
protect France's neocolonial interests
in the area like the uranium in nier and
the continuation of the CFA Frank
Financial system at its peak the French
counterinsurgency operation in the Sahel
in the late 2010s co-named operation
barain had 5,500 deployed French troops
assisted by 5,000 more troops committed
by the Sahel States themselves of Chad
ner Burkina Pau Mali and morania but
that was only a little more than 10,000
total troops tasked with patrolling and
monitoring a vast area of the African
continent roughly 1.9 million square
miles in area which is about 60% of the
size of the Continental 48 United States
they could not possibly adequately
defend this whole area and so were
largely forced to rely on drones and
Special Forces instead in this huge and
sparsely populated expanse of land that
the islamist forces could always just
Retreat back into and virtually
disappear from sight and as the years
went on the islamist Insurgency that
began in Mali among the targs in 2012
began to creep back to life and then
expanded rapidly into other groups in
the Sahel that had longstanding previous
grievances against the system including
among the fani al-Qaeda and later Isis
seized on these people's deep-seated
Grievances and by mid 2015 they were
already back in Northern and Central
Mali and by 2016 they had expanded their
operations across the poorest sparsely
populated and lightly defended borders
into neighboring Burkina Faso and ner as
well and the scale of violence exploded
to unprecedented levels between 2007 and
2022 deaths from terrorism in the Sahel
Rose by an almost unbelievable
2,000% while the epicenter of global
terrorist attacks shifted away from the
Middle East to the TriPoint area between
the borders of Mali Bina Faso and ner
which has since become one of the most
dangerous places in the entire world
since 2015 alone the year after the
French Le counterinsurgency operation in
the Sahel began around 20,000 people in
Burkina Faso have been killed in Terror
attacks and after the French troops were
expelled from the country in 2022 the
violence surged even higher to the point
where currently in 2024 the country has
become the deadliest in the entire world
for terrorism an islamist faction in
Mali known as Jim that's backed by
Al-Qaeda currently controls a large
swath of Northwestern Mali along the
border with morania while another group
that calls itself the Islamic State
Sahel Province dominates the TriPoint
area and large swas of land across Mali
ner and Burkina Faso while more moderate
secular tarag Rebels are back in control
over most of the rest of Northern Mali
again within these countries frustration
steadily mounted at the lack of progress
against the insurgencies that their
government in the French were achieving
which also revived old and hard feelings
in them over the lasting negative
impacts of France's neocolonial
practices in the area as the
insurgencies continued spiraling out of
control many Africans in these countries
began wondering if the French were
really there to protect the Africans at
all or if they were really just there to
protect their own continued national
interests and the continuation of the
exploitative fronts of freak system that
had lingered on for the past 60 years
this building anti-french sentiment in
the Sahel eventually boiled over in
Molly by 2021 when a coup led by
Military Officers brought a new
anti-french military regime into Power
led by a man named aimi go in the
aftermath the new government expelled
the 1,000 French troops that remained in
the country as a part of France's swide
counterinsurgency operation and even
severed their relations with Paris by
expelling the French Ambassador and then
immediately sensing the unique
opportunity that this presented the
Russian mercenary Vagner group that was
then led by of gu prosan stepped in to
fill the vacuum that Francis sudden
departure had caused by offering up
their own troops to replace the French
in Molly's continued fight against the
islamist insurgencies to which the Molly
and hun quickly accepted and then before
hardly anyone even knew it there were a
thousand Russian mercenaries contracted
by the Vagner group deployed into Molly
and Molly had flipped from being firmly
within the French sphere of influence
into the Russian the Vagner group's
operations in Africa had been a fairly
recent development dating only back to
2017 when they sent a few advisers and
geologists to Sudan to assist the
warlord hamon hamedi dealo and his rapid
support forces and to acquire access to
the Sudanese gold mines that he
controlled the neighboring Central
African Republic then became the Proving
Ground for vogner's potential
capabilities the country has been locked
in a civil war for more than a decade
ever since 2012 but the country's
government began hiring vogner's
mercenaries for military service in 2017
and by 2021 roughly 2,000 Vagner
mercenaries took part in the
government's major counter offensive and
returned most of the country's major
towns back to government control
vogner's success in the Central African
Republic proved to be a valuable
advertisement to other African nations
struggling with containing their own
rebellions and it came just in time
after the new anti-french government in
Molly took over and expelled their
previous French Partners Vagner happily
came to replace them and then after
Russia invaded Ukraine shortly
afterwards the following year in 2022
and the French began imposing massive
sanctions on Russia the vogner group was
also happy to begin Fanning the
pre-existing flames of anti-french
sentiment across the Sahel to their own
benefit too the Vagner group and by
extension Russia was able to present
itself to these countries as a capable
and alternative security partner to
France without any of the colonial and
neocolonial baggage that Paris drags
around with it in the region and despite
the group having been accused of
committing multiple war crimes and
massacres across Africa their
anti-colonial message was cleverly
crafted to resonate very well with
Africans who are already sick of France
after pran's ill-fated Mutiny against
the Kremlin and March on Moscow failed
that almost certainly cost him his life
in a supposed plane crash in August of
2023 the Russian government recognized
the usefulness of his operations he had
built across Africa and so they've
largely all been reformed now into the
semi-officially named Africa core this
rebranded vogner group in Africa is no
longer a privately owned Enterprise like
it was under progan but is now directly
controlled by the Russian military
intelligence service the gru after
further anti-french coups replaced
governments in Burkina vau in 2022 and
in ner in 2023 the new Africa Corps has
been quick to offer them similar deals
as they have with Molly which are
so-called regime survival packages
essentially the Africa Corp will send
their troops into these countries to
protect their leadership and fight
against their insurgencies and
rebellions going on in them in exchange
for access to their raw materials that
Russia wants especially gold Mali and
Bina Faso are the second and third
largest producers of gold in Africa
remaining only behind Ghana and if their
gold Productions were combined they
would be the fourth largest gold
producer in the entire world remaining
about equivalent to Canada and only
behind the top three big Global gold
producers Australia Russia and China
control over or access to these gold
mines in the Sahel has been a major
objective of the islamists like Al-Qaeda
and Isis to continue covertly funding
their operations and it's now also a
major objective of the Russian Africa
Corps who desires to smuggle the gold
out of these major mines across the
Region's poorest borders back towards
Russia itself as a means of covertly
evading Western sanctions to keep
funding their war effort in Ukraine in
addition to securing Russian access to
raw materials here like gold the Africa
core is also being tasked with
disrupting French access to as much of
the same raw materials in the region as
possible leaked documents have already
shown the Africa core's intentions to
weaponize their budding relationship
with ner to threaten continued French
access to the uranium mines in the
country that power more than 12% of
France's electricity the three main
anti-french hun Leed sahal States Mali
Burkina Faso and ner have all either
welcomed the Africa core into their
countries already or are in the process
of doing so in nier's case while all
French troops from them have been
expelled and relations with France
severed the three states also announced
their own new military defense pact
called The Alliance of sahelian states
and then in January of 2024 they all
announced their formal withdrawals from
the EOS Regional Alliance System months
after fears of a war between themselves
and the rest of ecoas had largely
subsided and then in February of 2024
the alliance of sahelian states began
hosting highlevel discussions on further
withdrawing from the CFA Frank system
with the new leader of ner insisting
that in order for decolonization from
France to be finally completed and for
ner to achieve its full sovereignty it
needed to acquire its full monetary
sovereignty back from Paris which it
hasn't ever truly enjoyed for centuries
now while the new leader of Bina Pau has
vowed that his country will never again
be dominated by Europeans if they do end
up moving forward with abandoning the
CFA Frank it will represent the largest
defection from the system that France
has ever witnessed in her former Colony
since the system was devised in
1945 and they have discussed replacing
it with their own new mutual and
independent currency and whether they're
successful or not their open Defiance to
France has already captured the
imagination of millions of other
Africans living across the rest of the
CFA Frank system that have similar
long-standing grievances against the way
that the French have treated and
exploited them for Generations now it
was only a month after n's successful
coup that another successful coup broke
out in Gabon that finally toppled the
56-year intensely pro- French
dictatorship in the country dominated by
The Bongo family that had been
personally appointed into place in the
country by Charles deal himself and
there's no telling how many more might
happen across the region in the future
Russia didn't cause the wave of
anti-french sentiment sweeping across
the region of francea freak it merely
saw the wave of change that was coming
and decided to ride it out and use it to
advance their own objectives and
interests
in many ways it has been a longtime
Reckoning for France's exploitative
project in Africa and a huge part of it
all goes back to that massive targ
Rebellion that exploded in Northern Mali
in 2012 that set this entire chain of
events into motion that the sahell is
still witnessing and struggling with
today the year before that Rebellion
erupted another Rebellion broke out
across the Sahara and nearby Libya
against the longtime regime of muamar
Gaddafi NATO war planes including French
War ples initiated a military
intervention against Gaddafi's Army and
effectively destroyed it which opened
the door for the Libyan rebels to
rapidly overthrow Gaddafi and murder him
in the ensuing chaos of Libya's State
collapse thousands of Highly experienced
TG mercenaries who Gaddafi had hired and
paid for with his oil wealth simply took
all of their heavy weapons and traveled
back home to Northern Mali and within
months of them arriving they were
helping to lead the new targ Rebellion
against the central government in mly
and then then after in a way having
caused this rebellion in Mali to have
happened in the first place by bombing
Libya first the French were forced into
fixing their mistake by sending 5,000
troops in Amali to push back the tarag
Rebellion that became influenced by
Al-Qaeda France's intervention into Mali
then sort of became France's own version
of Afghanistan or Iraq thousands of
French troops remained in place
conducting counterinsurgency operations
as groups like Al-Qaeda and later Isis
appeared on the scene and continued
spreading taking over over territories
across Mali ner and Burkina Faso and
transforming the region into the
epicenter of global terrorism that the
French were incapable of stopping it
evolved into France's Forever War as the
territorial cores of Isis and Al-Qaeda
shifted from the Middle East to the
Sahel but unfortunately due to the
inherently violent controversial and
recent nature of discussing how
organizations as Infamous as Al-Qaeda
and Isis managed to establish themselves
so thoroughly here and how the fren
operations against them went the next
part of this video covering all of it
would almost certainly cause the rest of
the video to become demonetized and age
restricted which ultimately would mean
that YouTube's algorithm would have
never promoted any of this video to you
and you would probably never have seen
any of it but thankfully I was still
able to produce the next part of this
video anyway because of the power of
nebula where you can go and watch the
next 40-minute part covering exactly how
Isis and Al-Qaeda were able to spread so
rapidly across Mali binau and ner and
how the French military fought its
campaigns against them and this is also
just one of more than 30 exclusive
fulllength real life lore videos that
you can only find on nebula in My
overall modern conflict series that can
all only be found over there because of
all of their darker more controversial
subject material there are other
episodes you can go and watch right now
covering other relevant topics from this
video like the Civil Wars in Libya that
cover the 2011 NATO intervention and the
death of Gaddafi two episodes covering
the rise and fall of Isis as an
organization in Iraq and Syria an
episode covering the entire us war in
Afghanistan videos covering the Civil
Wars in Syria Lebanon and Yemen and the
Israel Hamas conflict and many many more
with brand new episodes releasing over
there every single month and brand new
for this month is also the launch of my
latest exclusive series on nebula called
war room which will track all of the
latest breaking news developing from
conflicts all around the world into a
single easily digestible monthly video
briefing series that will help you stay
even more upto-date and informed on
what's happening around the world why
the first episode of this series
covering all of the major worldwide
crises that took place in February last
month is live on nebula for you to go
and watch right now and new episodes
will be released in war room every month
just like the monthly new episodes in
modern conflicts have been meaning two
new exclusive real life lore videos on
nebula every month going forward and
what's even more you'll also get access
to all of the other amazing exclusive
content that's on nebula because the
best part about this site is that it's
jointly co-owned by all of its creat s
built by me and hundreds of other
YouTubers and podcasters and because
it's a subscription based service we all
get to work on way bigger and higher
budget Productions over there than we
could ever do on our own on YouTube
that's why there's tons of other
exclusive content you'll find equally
fascinating from all of these other
creators over there that you probably
already know as well and right now
nebula is also selling lifetime
memberships that will last for as long
as both you and nebula exist lifetime
memberships cost $300 and they'll last
you forever ever there's no tricks or
gimmicks you just pay once and you'll
have access to everything that will ever
exist on nebula forever that way you can
avoid paying a recurring monthly
subscription and the capital we're
raising from Lifetime subscriptions is
being all reinvested into even more new
content on the site to expand our even
more ambitious projects of movies plays
shows and documentaries that are all
soon to come and that I'm very excited
about and best of all if you'd rather
sign up for an annual or monthly plan to
nebula that's fine too and you can sign
up for one by clicking the button that's
here on your screen right now where by
following the link Down Below in the
description or by scanning the QR code
here on your screen any of which will
give you an insanely good 40% discount
off of an annual subscription which
means it'll only cost you $25 a month
for all of this awesome exclusive
content from myself and hundreds of
other independent creators it's the
absolute best way to help support what
I'm doing here on real life Flor and as
always thank you so so much for watching