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Analysis: US military mission in Niger in focus after coup

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General Abdourahmane Tiani, who was declared as the new head of state of Niger by leaders of a coup, arrives to meet with ministers in Niamey, Niger July 28, 2023. REUTERS/Balima Boureima/File Photo

Last month’s coup in Niger has raised questions over whether the United States can continue the 1,100-strong military presence in the country that officials and analysts say has been key to fighting Islamist militants in the Sahel region.

Over the past decade, U.S. troops have trained Nigerien forces in counterterrorism and operated two military bases, including one that conducts drone missions against Islamic State and an Al Qaeda affiliate in the region.

After ousting President Mohamed Bazoum from office on July 26 and placing him under house arrest, the junta revoked military cooperation agreements with France, which has between 1,000 and 1,500 troops in the country.

So far the United States has not received any request to remove its troops and does not have any indication that it will be forced to do so, said two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But with the West African regional bloc ECOWAS threatening military intervention and Russia’s Wagner mercenary group offering help to the coup leaders – both of which could pose safety risks for U.S. military personnel – U.S. planners could find themselves contemplating a future without a foothold in a part of Africa facing insurgencies and where the U.S. vies with Russia and China for influence.

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“Our drone base in Niger is extremely important in countering terrorism in the region,” one of the U.S. officials said. “If that closed down, it would be a huge blow.”

FOREIGN ASSISTANCE

The Biden administration has not formally labeled the military takeover in Niger a coup, a designation that would limit what security assistance Washington can provide the country.

Still, the United States last week paused certain foreign assistance programs for Niger and said on Tuesday that included funding for international military education and training and programs that support Niger’s counterterrorism capabilities. Military training is on hold.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declined to comment on Tuesday in a BBC interview on the future presence of U.S. troops, who are in Niger with the approval of the ousted government.

The U.S. drone base has grown in importance due to a lack of Western security partners in the region.

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Military juntas have come to power through coups in Mali and Burkina Faso – both neighbors of Niger – in recent years. More than 2,000 French troops left Mali last year and a 13,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force is due to shut down by the end of the year after the junta abruptly asked it to leave.

The drone base, known as airbase 201, was built near Agadez in central Niger at a cost of more than $100 million. Since 2018, it has been used to target Islamic State and Al Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), in the Sahel.

Since the coup, U.S. troops are largely staying on their bases and U.S. military flights, including drones, are being individually approved, according to the U.S. officials.

Cameron Hudson, a former U.S. official who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said he thinks it is likely Washington will try to keep using the drone base irrespective of who was in charge of Niger.

“From a political or from an optics perspective, it’s certainly easier to defend,” said Hudson, explaining that while the cooperation of Niger’s authorities was needed to stay, it helps the U.S. gather intelligence on militant targets across the region and would not directly benefit the junta.

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The U.S. may have to reconsider its presence if the members of ECOWAS, who will meet Thursday, decide to intervene militarily. The junta defied an Aug. 6 ECOWAS deadline to reinstate ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.

Terence McCulley, who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Mali, Nigeria and Ivory Coast and is now at the United States Institute of Peace, said that the U.S. military would make a “force protection decision” if conflict erupted, adding that such an intervention was theoretical at this point and he did not expect ECOWAS would stage such an operation rapidly.

WAGNER COMPLICATION

Another complicating factor could be any decision by Niger’s coup leaders to seek help from Wagner Group, which the U.S. has designated a transnational criminal organization. Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has welcomed the coup in Niger and said his forces were available to restore order.

Wagner mercenaries teamed up with Mali’s junta in 2021 and has about 1,000 fighters in the country, where jihadists control large swathes of the desert north and center.

One of the U.S. officials said if Wagner fighters turn up in Niger it would not automatically mean U.S. forces would have to leave.

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The official said a scenario where a few dozen Wagner forces base themselves in Niger’s capital Niamey was unlikely to affect the United States’ military presence.

But if thousands of Wagner fighters spread across the country, including near Agadez, problems could arise because of safety concerns for U.S. personnel.

Regardless, the U.S. will put a high bar for any decision to leave the country.

“The only way this mission ends is if the Nigerien government asks us to leave,” the first U.S. official said. “It’s too important for us to abandon.”

-Reuters

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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Syrian Christians attend services, schools reopen a week after Assad’s overthrow

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Members of the Orthodox community of Latakia attend a Sunday Mass conducted by Athanasios Fahed, Metropolitan of Latakia and its dependencies for the Greek Orthodox, at St. George's Cathedral in Latakia, Syria, December 15, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Syrian Christians attended regular Sunday services for the first time since the dramatic overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad a week ago, in an early test of assurances by the new Islamist rulers that the rights of minorities will be protected.

As the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept to power last week, it sought to reassure Syria’s minority groups that their way of life would not be at risk.

Before Assad fell, historic religious minority groups, including Christians, worshipped freely and some remain jittery at the prospect of an Islamist government.

Streets in the heavily Christian Damascus neighbourhood of Bab Touma filled with worshippers returning from church on Sunday morning but some struck a note of caution.

“We’re scared, we’re still scared,” said local resident Maha Barsa after attending Mass at the local Greek Melkite Catholic church.

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Barsa said she had barely left her home since HTS took over one week ago, though she said that nothing had happened to warrant her concern, adding: “Things are ambiguous.”

In the coastal city of Latakia, long an Assad stronghold, Lina Akhras, a parish council secretary at the St George Greek Orthodox Cathedral, said on Sunday that Christians had been “comfortable” under his rule in terms of freedom of belief but that they just wanted to live in peace and harmony.

“(Assad’s fall) happened all of a sudden, we didn’t know what to expect… Thank God, we received a lot of assurances and we saw that members of the (HTS) committee reached out to our priest,” she told Reuters.

“God willing, we will return to our previous lives and live in our beautiful Syria,” Akhras added.

Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious minorities including Christians, Armenians, Kurds and Shi’ite Muslims. The Assad family itself belongs to the minority Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, in Sunni Muslim-majority Syria.

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Tens of thousands of mostly Shi’ite Muslims have fled Syria for Lebanon in the last week out of fear of persecution by the country’s new rulers, a senior Lebanese security official told Reuters last week.

The protection of Syria’s minorities was a key concern on Saturday when top diplomats from Arab nations, Turkey, the United States and European Union met in Jordan.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said they backed an inclusive and representative government that would respect minority rights and not offer “a base for terrorist groups”.

SCHOOLS REOPEN

Syrian students also returned to classrooms on Sunday after the new rulers ordered schools reopened in another potent sign of some normalcy.

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The country’s new de facto leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, faces a massive challenge to rebuild Syria after the civil war, in which hundreds of thousands were killed. Cities were bombed to ruins, the economy was gutted by international sanctions and millions of refugees still live in camps outside Syria.

Officials said most schools were opening around the country on Sunday, the first day of the working week. However, some parents were not sending their children to class due to uncertainty over the situation.

Pupils waited cheerfully in the courtyard of a boys’ high school in Damascus on Sunday morning and applauded as the school secretary, Raed Nasser, hung the flag adopted by the new authorities.

In one classroom, a student pasted the new flag on a wall.

“I am optimistic and very happy,” said student Salah al-Din Diab. “I used to walk in the street scared that I would get drafted to military service. I used to be afraid when I reach a checkpoint.”

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ENDING SANCTIONS?

As Syria starts trying to rebuild, its neighbours and other foreign powers are still working out a new stance on the country, a week after the collapse of the Assad government that was backed by Iran and Russia.

Sharaa – better known by his rebel nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani – leads the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that swept Assad from power last week. HTS is a group formerly allied with al-Qaeda that is designated a terrorist organization by many governments, and is also under United Nations sanctions.

U.N. Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said on Sunday he hoped for a swift end to the sanctions to help facilitate economic recovery.

“We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria,” Pedersen said as he arrived in Damascus to meet Syria’s caretaker government and other officials.

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-Reuters

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Who is Abu Mohammed al-Golani: former al Qaeda chief who led overthrow of Syria’s Assad?

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Then-Syrian Islamist rebel group Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani speaks at an unknown location in this still image from 2016 file video obtained December 5, 2024. Orient TV/Reuters TV via REUTERS
  • Summary
  • Golani fought for al Qaeda, designated terrorist by US
  • Cut ties with al Qaeda in 2016
  • Rebranded Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, moderating image
  • As rebels take over, Golani tries to reassure minorities
  • Golani’s HTS had for years governed chunk of northwest

As the commander of al Qaeda’s franchise in the Syrian civil war, Abu Mohammed al-Golani was a shadowy figure who kept out of the public eye, even when his group became the most powerful faction fighting President Bashar al-Assad.

Today, he is the most recognisable of Syria’s triumphant insurgents, having gradually stepped into the limelight since severing ties to al Qaeda in 2016, rebranding his group and emerging as the de facto ruler of rebel-held northwestern Syria.

The transformation has been showcased since rebels led by Golani’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly known as the Nusra Front, swept through the nation and declared they had ousted Assad on Sunday after seizing the capital Damascus.

Golani has featured prominently in the takeover, sending messages aimed at reassuring Syrian minorities who have long feared the jihadists.

“The future is ours,” he said in a statement read on Syria’s state TV, urging his fighters not to harm those who drop arms.

When rebels entered Aleppo, pre-war Syria’s largest city, at the start of their sweep to Damascus, a video showed Golani in military fatigues issuing orders by phone, reminding fighters to protect the people and forbidding them from entering homes.

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He visited Aleppo’s citadel accompanied by a fighter waving a Syrian revolution flag: once shunned by Nusra as a symbol of apostasy but recently embraced by Golani in a nod to Syria’s more mainstream opposition.

“Golani has been smarter than Assad. He’s retooled, he’s refashioned, made new allies, and come out with his charm offensive” towards minorities, said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

PR EFFORT?

Aron Lund, a fellow at think-tank Century International, said Golani and HTS had clearly changed though still remaining “pretty hardline”.

“It’s PR, but the fact they are engaging in this effort at all shows they are no longer as rigid as they once were. Old-school al Qaeda or the Islamic State would never have done that,” he said.

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Golani and the Nusra Front emerged as the most powerful of the multitude of rebel factions that sprang up in the early days of the insurgency against Assad over a decade ago.

Before founding the Nusra Front, Golani had fought for al Qaeda in Iraq, where he spent five years in a U.S. prison. He returned to Syria once the uprising began, sent by the leader of the Islamic State group in Iraq at the time – Abu Omar al-Baghdadi – to build up al Qaeda’s presence.

The U.S. designated Golani a terrorist in 2013, saying that al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria, and that Nusra had carried out suicide attacks that killed civilians and espoused a violent sectarian vision.

Turkey, the Syrian opposition’s main foreign backer, has designated HTS a terrorist group, while supporting some of the other factions that fight in the northwest.

Golani gave his first media interview in 2013, his face wrapped in a dark scarf and showing only his back to the camera. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he called for Syria to be run according to sharia law.

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Some eight years later, he sat down for an interview with the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service’s FRONTLINE programme, facing the camera and wearing a shirt and jacket.

Golani said the terrorist designation was unfair and that he opposed the killing of innocent people.

He detailed how the Nusra Front had expanded from the six men who accompanied him from Iraq to 5,000 within a year.

But he said that his group had never presented a threat to the West. “I repeat – our involvement with al Qaeda has ended, and even when we were with al Qaeda we were against carrying out operations outside of Syria, and it’s completely against our policy to carry out external action.”

MESSAGES TO MINORITIES

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Golani fought a bloody war against his old ally Baghdadi after Islamic State sought to unilaterally subsume the Nusra Front in 2013. Despite its al Qaeda ties, Nusra was regarded as more tolerant and less heavy handed in dealings with civilians and other rebel groups compared to Islamic State.

Islamic State was subsequently beaten out of territory it held in both Syria and Iraq by an array of adversaries including a U.S.-led military alliance.

As Islamic State was collapsing, Golani was cementing the grip of HTS in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, establishing a civil administration called the Salvation Government.

Assad’s government viewed HTS as terrorists, along with the rest of the rebels.

With the Sunni Muslim rebels now in control, the HTS administration has issued statements seeking to assure the Shi’ite Alawites and other Syrian minorities. One statement urged the Alawites to be a part of a future Syria that “does not recognise sectarianism”.

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In a message to residents of a Christian town south of Aleppo, Golani said they would be protected and their property safeguarded, urging them to remain in their homes and to reject the Syrian government’s “psychological warfare”.

“He’s really important. The main rebel leader in Syria, the most powerful Islamist,” said Lund.

He said HTS had displayed “logistical and governance capacity” by ruling its own territory in Idlib for years.

“They have adopted the symbols of the wider Syrian uprising… which they now use and try to claim the revolutionary legacy – that ‘we are part of the movement of 2011, the people who rose up against Assad, and we are also Islamists’.”

-Reuters

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COUP! Syrian rebels have toppled Assad in state television announcement

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Rebel fighters, Homs countryside, Syria, December 7, 2024. REUTERS/Mahmoud Hasano

Syrian rebels said on Sunday that they have ended Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year authoritarian rule, in their first announcement on state television following a lightning offensive that took the world by surprise.

Syria’s army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad’s regime had ended, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters.

But the Syrian army later said it was continuing operations against “terrorist groups” in the towns of Hama and Homs and Deraa countryside.

Assad, who had crushed all forms of dissent, flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination earlier on Sunday, two senior army officers told Reuters, as rebels said they had entered the capital with no sign of army deployments.

“We celebrate with the Syrian people the news of freeing our prisoners and releasing their chains and announcing the end of the era of injustice in Sednaya prison,” the rebels said, referring to a large military prison on the outskirts of Damascus where the Syrian government detained thousands.

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Thousands in cars and on foot congregated at a main square in Damascus waving and chanting “Freedom” from a half century of Assad family rule, witnesses said.

The dramatic collapse marks a seismic moment for the Middle East, ending the family’s iron-fisted rule over Syria and dealing a massive blow to Russia and Iran, which have lost a key ally at the heart of the region.

The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a new wave of regional instability.

A Syrian Air plane took off from Damascus airport around the time the capital was reported to have been taken by rebels, according to data from the Flightradar website.

The aircraft initially flew towards Syria’s coastal region, a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect, but then made an abrupt U-turn and flew in the opposite direction for a few minutes before disappearing off the map.

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Reuters could not immediately ascertain who was on board.

Two Syrian sources said there was a very high probability that Assad may have been killed in a plane crash as it was a mystery why the plane took a surprise U turn and disappeared off the map according to data from the Flightradar website.

“It disappeared off the radar, possibly the transponder was switched off, but I believe the bigger probability is that the aircraft was taken down…,” said one Syrian source without elaborating.

The head of Syria’s main opposition group abroad, Hadi al-Bahra Syrian, declared Damascus was now “without Bashar al-Assad”.

As Syrians expressed joy, Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said he was ready to support the continuity of governance and prepared to cooperate with any leadership chosen by the Syrian people.

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U.S. President Joe Biden and his team were monitoring the “extraordinary events in Syria” and were in touch with regional partners, the White House said.

The frontlines of Syria’s complex civil war were dormant for years. Then Islamists once affiliated with Al Qaeda suddenly burst into action, posing the biggest challenge to Assad, who had survived years of gruelling war and international isolation with the help of Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

But Assad’s allies were focussed on and weakened by other crises, leaving Assad at the mercy of his opponents with an army that was not prepared to defend him.

Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Sunday that it was prohibited to go near public institutions that he said will remain under the supervision of the “former prime minister” until they were officially handed over.

Israel, which has severely weakened the Iran-backed groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, will likely celebrate the fall of Assad, another of Iran’s key regional allies. But the prospects of an Islamist group ruling Syria will likely raise concerns.

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Just hours before reaching Damascus, rebels announced they had gained full control of the key city of Homs after only a day of fighting, leaving Assad’s 24-year rule dangling by a thread.

Thousands of Homs residents poured onto the streets after the army withdrew from the central city, dancing and chanting “Assad is gone, Homs is free” and “Long live Syria and down with Bashar al-Assad”.

Rebels fired into the air in celebration, and youths tore down posters of the Syrian president, whose territorial control has collapsed in a dizzying week-long retreat by the military.

The fall of Homs gave the insurgents control over Syria’s strategic heartland and a key highway crossroads, severing Damascus from the coastal region that is the stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base.

Homs’ capture is also a powerful symbol of the rebel movement’s dramatic comeback in the 13-year-old conflict. Swathes of Homs were destroyed by gruelling siege warfare between the rebels and the army years ago. The fighting ground down the insurgents, who were forced out.

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Rebels freed thousands of detainees from the city prison. Security forces left in haste after burning their documents.

Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad’s rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for jihadist militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighbouring states.

-Reuters

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