Last month, Niger’s government kicked US troops out of the country, a new blow to Washington’s counterterrorism efforts in the increasingly conflict-ridden region. It’s just the latest failure in the US’s long and destructive “war on terror” in West Africa.
Dressed in green military fatigues and a blue garrison cap, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to local television last month to criticize the United States and sever the long-standing military partnership between the two countries. “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” he said, insisting that their twelve-year-old security pact violated Niger’s constitution.
Another sometime Nigerien spokesperson, Insa Garba Saidou, put it in blunter terms: “The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer.”
Read the rest of the story at Jacobin, here.
