The incomplete withdrawal from Niger

On the 23rd of October, 2023, France withdraw her troops from their Northern base in Niger. It was the aftermath of the July 26 coup d’etat, ousting a supposed western-friendly regime.

And a few things in this regard ties into prior events in a way not entirely expected. But then again - perhaps they were.

The backstory here is… well, I’m feeling lazy and will quote Wikipedia in this regard.

But while French forces left, American stayed put. So was announced only a few days later, on the 26th of October, 2023.

It’s a badly kept secret that the French more or less exploited Niger for the sakes of sourcing uranium ore at prices far below market, to power their impressive - and famous - cache of electricity generating nuclear reactors. However, within 48 hours of military coup, exports were brought to a complete stop, and the French were sent packing.

However, let’s return briefly to the Wikipedia article, because there’s another detail of note here. Niger is part of ECOWAS, and said threatened military intervention - however, when the day came, the words were outed as empty.

In other words - no ECOWAS intervention, no UN intervention, French withdrawal… yet the Americans decided to stay?

And in that regard, ECOWAS does actually have a history of following up. Them deciding to not intervene could be due to becoming more friendly with Russia, but that still doesn’t really explain why the Americans are staying put.

A hint here could be in the next paragraph -

‘The United States, France, and many other countries and groups have been involved in Niger because of the Islamist insurgency in the Sahel…‘

I’ll get back to this in a minute - and no, it’s not what you think.

I will be honest - when I first heard of the coup, I immediately thought of One Health surveillance installations - because there’s plenty of activity relating to the World Bank, and ECOWAS is easily connectible to One Health in general.

The World Bank’s REDISSE, and the French Fondation Merieux are both present in the area. The latter builds labs, and the former is a surveillance initiative, on which $114m has been spent.

Anyway, plenty of material in this space. Let me just add this, as it outlines another $100m being allocated going forward.

So let me show you where this starts to appear a bit… engineered. Coincidental. Because Niger also partake in the RESAOLAB Network, and it just so happens that phase 3 of their project came to a close in 2023.

The expected results with this program? Fully functioning and ‘regionally harmonised’ labs and surveillance.

In other words - One Health surveillance, all up and running.

I have found no suggestion that this has gone off-line post coup. But there’s a similar project down there, named Labo2s on the Fondation Merieux website.

And there’s yet another astonishing coincidence in that regard; that project came to a close on July 6, 2023.

Three weeks prior to the coup d’etat.

And drawing in the above, could it be, perchance, that the meet was about merging the two, or transferring knowledge or material from Labo2S to RESAOLAB prior to closure of the former?

And given that the latter does not appear to be affected by the coup whatsoever, it somewhat appears as if the One Health surveillance grid remains intact.

The claims of Niger’s new regime becoming friendly with Russians appear somewhat at odds with the Americans staying put. Sure, you can argue they don’t want American retaliation, but if so, why would the Americans want to get rid of their allies in Niger?

What could - hypothetically - be happening here? And how would that connect to the French having their supply of cheap uranium ore cut?

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Well, about a year ago, a supposed RAND Corp leak did the rounds suggesting the US torch Germany financial/geostrategic benefit. Naturally, memo was 'fake', 'debunked', pointed fingers at and promptly ignored as soon as it came to light. Which is actually why I became interested in it, because the response was smeared a bit thick, and very promptly so.

And there are a number of details in this document which appear strangely familiar. And with one in particular I struggle, as it ties in explicitly with the situation in Niger.

The January, 2022 document - if legit - discusses the role of Germany in Europe, and how it’s in American geostrategic interest to ensure they never rise, or enter into closer cooperation with Russia, as this combination could long-term pose a threat to global American hegemony. Russia supply the cheap energy, and Germany the industrial might.

It discusses pushing Germany into a ‘controlled crisis’, for sakes of a flow of capital leaving Germany, and entering the United States - which would in short cost Europe no less than 200-300bn Euro. And should it continue, it would contribute to drastically lower living standards, ensuring a brain drain, benefiting the US greatly. The cherry on top would be to leave Europe dependent upon the United States, in short, create vassal states out of Europe.

And the way this could come about would be to - yes - take out the NordStream, an operation carried out later in the year, and quite obviously engineered by the US and UK.

But there’s an additional detail which ties in with Niger, and it’s this -

'The French energy sector could also soon begin to experience heavy problems. The predictable stop of Russian-controlled nuclear fuel supplied combined with the untenable situation in the Sahel region, would make French energy sector critically dependent on Australian and Canadian fuel'

With sanctions on Russian uranium ore, coupled with their supply from Niger suddenly taking on entirely different terms, …

… the American geostrategic interests win again!

... and this is to be seen in the context of 'The current German economic model is based on two pillars. These are unlimited access to cheap Russian energy resources and to cheap French electric power, thanks to the operation of nuclear power plants'

And this is the detail with which I struggle. Because one coincidence (NordStream; Russian energy) is not uncommon, major as it is. But two major coincidences (French energy) - and in the same document? It’s the nightmare scenario - German dependence on energy import is well-documented.

But where this starts to look even worse, is that even after Russian energy was cut, Germany still went ahead, shutting down their remaining nuclear capacity. By April, 2023, their final three nuclear reactors were shut down.

For whom, exactly, do German politicians work?

And all of this, on the background of the coup in Niger taking place after the regional One Health surveillance became fully operational, feeding into the global, real-time surveillance database?

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Cui bono?