ECOWAS VERSUS SAHELIAN STATES ALLIANCE: NEOCOLONIALISM VERSUS AFRICAN EMANCIPATION IN THE SAHEL

For many centuries now, Africa has been a theatre of terrorist operations mainly thought and realized by western powers. Those operations have always one precise goal : looting African human, natural, and cultural resources for the economic, cultural and political hegemony of the West on all the globe. In the 16th century, the first great terrorist and systemic attack of western powers against Africa was the organization of black slave trade. By deciding that the black colour of the skin was a good criterium of discrimination between free and slave men throughout the entire globe, the western powers created an inferior humanity on absolutely absurd and insane biological concepts.[1]

Walter Rodney explains it very clearly in his famous essay published in 1972. At the beginning of the 19th century, Africa had to face the second massive terrorist attack of the same western powers, after their first capitalistic accumulation by enslavering at least one hundreds, thousands and millions of African people. The colonial invasion of Africa by France, England, Portugal, Spain, Italia, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and so on was a massive era of crimes against humanity. The Colonial Invasion of Africa and its tragical consequences are probably the most important mass crimes of all the times in human history.

But, after the African struggles against colonial occupation during the 20th century, notably with the help of the East Block leaded by USSR and China, there was a third massive terrorist attack of the western powers against Africa : it is the fake decolonization process which occurred in the former French colonies. On one hand, the French president General De Gaulle, who liberated is country from the Nazi domination with the main contribution of African colonial troops, acknowledged the African formal independence. But on the other hand, the same mister De Gaulle organized a neocolonial system, by keeping French troops in a strategy of squaring fifteen African countries, by maintaining the control of the French central bank on fifteen African economies through the CFA colonial currency, by supporting the worst African dictators at the head of those states and by the control of African ideas, through the Francophonie system of values and medias.

BIRTH OF ECOWAS UNDER NEOCOLONIALIST DOMINATION IN 1975

The birth of ECOWAS on May 28th, 1975 occurred in that context of continued domination. While England was reorganizing its hegemony in Africa through the Commonwealth system, France was creating the system of Françafrique, a mafia of French and African political élites against African people rights and lives. Two of the main creators of ECOWAS in 1975, General Yakubu GOWON of Nigeria and General Gnassingbe EYADEMA of Togo were two putschists under French Anglo-American and French control. The facto, ECOWAS was created under the big western alliance, the NATO’s influence. From the beginning till today, all NATO powers have their hands in ECOWAS affairs, somehow or other. This is precisely why ECOWAS is a very weak organization in west Africa because the principles and rules of its original Charter have never been seriously respected by all the members, and especially those who figure in its highest instance, The Conference of the Heads of States.

Let’s take some examples to illustrate this obvious weakness of ECOWAS. When the African continent was attacked in 2011 by the NATO and its terrorist allied forces (AL QAIDA and the ISIS) in Libya, no African political organization considered the attack like an infringement of the African sovereignty. Even better, many African leaders of the ECOWAS  and of the African Union (AU) supported the West and the NATO, and reproduced the fake storytelling of the NATO concerning Muammar Gaddafi’s regime[2]. They pretended that Gaddafi was genociding his people and justified the aggression of the NATO and its terrorist allies by this obvious lie. The NATO’s attack against Africa was leaded by the USA of Barack Obama, the United Kingdom of David Cameron and France of Nicolas Sarkozy. How can one understand that some African governments will later accept the so-called help of the same country to fight against terrorism in Africa? How can Africa accept to cooperate in the struggle against terrorism with the west pyromaniac firefighters?

“As was suspected at the time - and was later shown in the published emails of Hilary Clinton - NATO acted to prevent Gaddafi founding an African central bank with its own gold-backed currency. That institution would have challenged the power of the dollar and finally allowed Africa to escape its colonial shackles”[3], writes Ellen Brown.

When the terrorist organizations, armed by the NATO in Libya invaded the whole Sahelian zone, and notably Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Tchad, Nigeria, Cameroon, the same ECOWAS and UA never called the NATO to stop its pioneers. They continued to cooperate with the NATO in the AU and in the ECOWAS, while clearly knowing that the NATO was deeply involved in the destabilization of the entire African continent. So, a deep and objective analysis of ECOWAS impact on the well-being of the western African populations, will conclude with me that it is a big failure.

THE SAHELIAN STATE ALLIANCE: AN ANTICOLONIALIST STRUGGLE[4]

Malian leader Assimi Goita,  Burkinabe leader Ibrahim Traoré and  Nigerien leader Abdourahamane Tiani are three inheritors of the pan-Africanist ideology in Africa today[5]. They renew with the deep consciousness of the negro-African cultural unity and destiny, rooted in an objective comparison of African national cultures before the colonial partition and the negroes slave trade.  Their political engagement is inspirated by the works of the greatest African thinkers of the African unity, like Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Marcus Garvey, Franz Fanon, Cheikh Anta Diop, Theophile Obenga, and many others. They believe that there is no hope for African people without conquering African sovereignty at first. They act to realize this precise vision of the African destiny.

 This is why the creation of the Sahelian States’ Alliance (SSA) on September 16th, 2023, is a great revolution for African geopolitics. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have decided to rebuild the African Hope in west Africa on radically different principles. First of all, the three countries leaders came to the oath through revolutionary and internal political processes in their countries. Their legitimacy is not an external one, but an endogenous movement of their people. In Mali, leader Assimi Goita appeared at the top of the state after a long struggle of the civil political society against Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK)’s regime. The IBK system was fought by the Malian people for its corruption, its dependence to French and western neocolonialism, and it’s inability to overcome terrorism. In Burkina Faso and in Niger, the Roch Christian Kabore and Mohamed Bazoum regimes were also fought by the civil societies for the same reasons. Even better, this resistance process of the west African people got inside the armies. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the revolution of the society walks with the revolution in the armies. So that patriotic, revolutionary and panafricanist forces emerged at the same time in all the bodies of these African contemporaries’ societies.

SSA, from its creation till today, decided to realize a new west African geopolitics based on three principles: sovereignty, strategical choice freedom for new partners in the world’s powers, defence of the african peoples vital interests. For the first principle, sovereignty is impossible without security of those who decide. So, the reconquest of the three countries territories by their armies is a crucial priority. At the same time, sovereignty means accountability of the leaders of each country in front of the only sovereign, the people.

For the second principle, the diversification of partnership means for the three countries that they cannot fight against terrorism in Africa while cooperating on the field of war with the western powers who created, brought and armed the same terrorists’ organizations in Africa. That is why the SSA is deeply involved in a military, diplomatic, and economic cooperation with the greatest powers of the Global South or the Multipolar World. Clearly, the destiny of the Sahelian States ‘Alliance is to be involved in the BRICS dynamical construction, out of Dollar, Euro and French supremacies.

For the third and last principle, SSA is deeply concerned with internal and permanent dialog in each country, between the leaders and the people. No step forward without the people could be one devise for the three leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, Assimi Goita, Ibrahim Traoré and Abdourahamane Tiani. That is why the SSA is self-financed and works hard for economic and cultural cooperation, and political integration as confederation of states and federation of states.

When the ECOWAS intended to attack Niger for the defence of illegitimate French control of the very strategic uranium resource of the country, Mali and Burkina Faso stood up like one only people to defend their Nigerien neighbour. Because they clearly understood that the threats against Niger are the same with the trade slave aggression, the colonial aggression, and the neocolonial occupation of the West against African people for many centuries now. It is that deep memory of the common tragic African history of these six last centuries that constitutes the cement of the new African sunrise of consciousness and justice.

Finally, the difference between the ECOWAS and the SSA is obvious. ECOWAS has many times shown its foreign dependence to western interests and powers. The SSA is working openly for a sovereign and powerful Africa, free in its minds, free in its hands, and able to shape the renewal of all African nations ‘hope. This new Africa to come is a daily battle against endogenous and external alienation forces. We need at the same time, to have a look on our own mirror and to have a look on the most powerful radars of the universe. The most difficult part of the African Struggle in this particular 21^st century, is to recover the African genius by a critical memory of ourselves, and to keep our eyes open with a lot of lucidity on the reality of the game of this world’s powers. If I could make it short, we, African, need to be realistic, but without abandoning our ideal of civilization based on Truth, Justice, and Solidarity as sacred values of Humanity[6]. So the last withdrawal of the three SSA countries from the ECOWAS is just the logic and evident consequence of the antinomy between the two different visions of the African destiny. Neo-colonialist subordination to the West on one side, radical African emancipation on the other. The choice is clear for those who really seek the Truth.