Niger breaks off military cooperation with the USA

The July 2023 coup in Niger received some popular support when the junta, dubbed the Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie (National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, (CNSP), broke off military cooperation agreements with France. French troops were seen as the guarantors of the plundering of the country by multinationals such as Orano, which exploits the uranium reserves essential to France’s nuclear power plants. The U.S. administration was not averse to the elimination of French imperialism.

But on March 16, the Niger junta decided to break off its military cooperation with the United States. Washington has a drone base and 1,100 soldiers in Niger, the second largest American base in Africa after Djibouti.

It seems that it was the diktat that Washington tried to impose that precipitated the break. On the eve of March 16, an American delegation arrived in Niamey, including the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and the Commander-in-Chief of AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Command). The junta “forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation towards the Nigerien government and people. » According to the latter, the American delegation accused the government of having signed secret agreements with Russia and Iran. No more than in Mali or Burkina Faso, does the military power in Niger express the will of the workers and the peasants. But it is the Niger people’s inalienable right to get rid of foreign troops who are only there to guarantee imperialist plunder.

Jean Alain