PUBLISHED BY The Washington Post
Today's WorldView
By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall
Email Ishaan TharoorEmail
The U.S. is in retreat in a crucial part of the world
Protesters demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Agadez, Niger, on Sunday. (Issifou Djibo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
For boosters of U.S. security interests in Africa, the past few days carried grim tidings. At the end of last week, the United States informed the coup-plotting leadership of Niger that it would comply with its request to withdraw U.S. forces from the country, which had been operating in a counterterrorism role there for more than half a decade. Around the same time, reports emerged that authorities in Chad had sent a letter this month to the U.S. defense attaché based there, ordering the United States to cease activities at a base that also accommodates French troops.
The potential withdrawal of a detachment of U.S. Special Forces based in Chad would mark yet another blow for the Western security presence in the Sahel — the vast arid region that stretches below the Sahara desert that has seen a wave of coups in recent years toppling fragile Central and West African governments. Chad is slated to stage elections in May, and the orders to the United States may amount to a bit of nationalist preening by the country’s vulnerable interim leadership.
But elsewhere, the writing on the wall is more stark. Successive coup-plotting regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have ousted weak civilian-led governments; angrily railed against the presence of the former colonial power, France; and turned toward Russia and China for support. Before the coup last year, Niger was seen by Western diplomats as something of a democratic bulwark in a region where juntas and radical Islamist insurgencies were gaining ground. Now its regime has pivoted the impoverished country firmly away from the West, booting out French troops before it moved to end the significant U.S. footprint in the country’s desert uplands.
“The agreement will spell the end of a U.S. troop presence that totaled more than 1,000 and throw into question the status of a $110 million U.S. air base that is only six years old,” my colleagues reported. “It is the culmination of a military coup last year that ousted the country’s democratically elected government and installed a junta that declared America’s military presence there ‘illegal.’”
The U.S. exit in Niger follows the arrival of a detachment of Russian military trainers in the country this month. Le Monde sketched what had preceded this deployment of some 100 officers of the Africa Corps, the rebranded Russian paramilitary successor to the mercenary Wagner organization, which had a broad, murky presence in Africa before disbanding late last year.
“Their official mission was to train Niger’s army, particularly in the use of a Russian-supplied anti-aircraft defense system,” the French newspaper noted. “Three months earlier, Niger’s PM had flown to Tehran to outline plans for closer cooperation with Iran, without providing any details of the nature of the envisioned contracts. This was a clear cause for concern for Western countries, particularly the U.S.”
The developments are “a blow to Western counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel and Libya,” Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank, told me. “Perhaps even worse, a U.S. pullout will further open the door for an expansion of Russia and Iran in the Sahel.”
A mess of geopolitical intrigue courses through the region. “Like Libya, this part of Africa has become a playground for foreign powers, not least Russia, which provides security for coup regimes and orchestrates massive disinformation campaigns leading to the ousting of Western forces,” an editorial in Le Monde observed. “This is a major trend, of which Americans and Europeans have too belatedly become aware of its cost, without knowing how to respond.”
The Wall Street Journal was more blunt in its own editorial: “In the new era of great power competition, Africa is one place where the U.S. is losing.”
China, less conspicuous than the opportunistic Kremlin, has steadily shouldered its way into Niger. The country’s junta announced this week that a Chinese state oil company had made an advance $400 million payment for crude purchases from Niger’s Agadem field. The deal, structured with further interest payments to the Chinese company, would help Niger’s cash-strapped government reckon with mounting domestic debts.
Some Nigeriens who spoke to my colleagues in the capital of Niamey see the junta exercising a new kind of sovereignty after years of overweening French interest. “Why is it a problem for the Americans and France that the Russians are helping us?” Abdoulaye Oussein, 51, said. “I think we’re free to make our own choices.”
New polling from Gallup sees strong approval for Russia and China in many parts of the Sahel. “Last year, China recorded its highest approval rating in Africa in over a decade,” Julie Ray, managing editor for world news at Gallup, told me. “It picked up substantial support in countries in Western Africa — which helped nudge it ahead of the U.S. by two percentage points.”
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it lost significant support across the continent. But, Ray added, “Moscow’s image has recovered since then,” especially in the Sahel, where it scored high approval ratings in Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad.
“Washington was seen in the region as a credible partner without the colonial baggage of France, which is on its way out in the region,” Laessing, who is based in Bamako, Mali’s capital, told me. But U.S. messaging to West African governments may have not been particularly effective, and U.S. officials have been faulted for perhaps bullying their African counterparts in private.
“Washington has a lack of self-awareness about how it is coming across,” Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told my colleagues this month. “They have made Russia the boogeyman in all of this, like what the French have done, but that is a way to deflect responsibility and to avoid any kind of introspection about the policies the U.S. has pursued.”
1,000 WORDS
Families of Israeli hostages protest next to an empty Seder table in front of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea on Monday, the first night of Passover. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
Families of Israeli hostages protest next to an empty Seder table in front of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea on Monday, the first night of Passover. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
Maya Raviv, center, and her 8-year-old daughter, Liyah, stand in protest with families of the hostages outside Netanyahu’s home. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
Maya Raviv, center, and her 8-year-old daughter, Liyah, stand in protest with families of the hostages outside Netanyahu’s home. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
Around the world, Jews left empty seats at their Seder tables as they marked Passover — the religious celebration of the Jewish people’s freedom from slavery in Egypt. The vacant chairs served as a reminder of the more than 130 hostages still captive in Gaza.
Israelis said the holiday was shrouded with sadness. “You can’t walk and say happy holidays to people,” said Maya Raviv, who came to demonstrate outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence with her 8-year-old daughter, Liyah. “It’s not.”
Liyah’s friend and classmate, Naveh Shoham, was taken hostage on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked communities in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 250. Although 8-year-old Naveh was released last year, his father, Tal Shoham, remains in Gaza.
TALKING POINTS
• The Senate overwhelmingly passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill, delivering billions of dollars in weapons and support to key U.S. allies Ukraine and Israel despite some opposition from both parties’ bases. The legislation, which passed by a 79-18 vote, had seemed all but dead for several months due to opposition in the GOP-led House. Biden said he would sign the bill into law as soon as it crosses his desk.
• Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it has suspended consular services for Ukrainian men of military fighting age who have left the country, potentially cutting off their ability to renew passports or access other essential citizen services. Thousands of Ukrainian men are believed to have left their country rather than risk being drafted and thousands of others were already living abroad.
• Canada’s broad support for immigration has set the country apart. The country is growing fast, with about 98 percent of the rise coming from immigration last year. But now, amid a housing affordability crisis and strain on social services, Trudeau’s government is rolling up the welcome mat for some immigrants. It has capped the number of permanent residents it will welcome, announced a temporary limit on international student visas and pledged to shrink the proportion of the population made up of temporary immigrants.
• Nestlé adds more sugar to baby food sold in poorer countries, according to new report released by a nonprofit group. Nestle’s products in lower-income countries contained up to 7.3 grams of added sugar per serving, while the same food sold in Europe often contained none. In several countries, including the Philippines, Nigeria, and Pakistan, added sugar content was not declared on the packaging.
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THE SURVIVOR SPECIES
Camels are released for distribution to new owners, a scene captured in Samburu County, Kenya, on February 20th.
Camels are released for distribution to new owners, a scene captured in Samburu County, Kenya, on February 20th.
NTEPES, Kenya — The camels had thump-thumped for seven days across Kenya, ushered by police reservists, winding at last at a tiny village where something big was happening. People had walked for miles to be there. The governor pulled up in his SUV. Women danced, and an emcee raised his hands.
The camels had arrived to replace the cows.
Cows have been the most important animal for eons across Africa — the foundation of economies, diets, traditions.
But now grazable land is shrinking. Water sources are drying up. A recent three-year drought killed 80 percent of the cows in this part of Kenya, shattering so many livelihoods.
Millions in the region are being forced to adapt to climate change — including those who were now drawing numbers from a hat, each corresponding to one of the 77 camels that had just arrived.
“Your number?” a village chief asked the first person to draw.
The regional government had purchased the camels from traders at $600 per head. So far 4,000 camels, as part of that program, have been distributed across the country’s lowlands, speeding up a shift already happening in other cattle-dependent parts of Africa.
The global camel population has doubled over the last 20 years, something the U.N. attributes partly to the animal’s suitability amid climate change. In times of hardship, camels produce more milk than cows.
Many cite an adage: The cow is the first animal to die in a drought; the camel is the last.
Camels can go two weeks without water, as opposed to a day or two for a cow. They can lose 30 percent of their body weight and survive, one of the highest thresholds for any large animal. Their body temperatures fluctuate in sync with daily climate patterns. When they pee, their urine trickles down their legs, keeping them cool. When they lie down, their leathery knees fold into pedestals that work to prop much of their undersides just above the ground, allowing cooling air to pass through.
One recently published paper, perhaps straying from science to reverence, called them a “miracle species.”
Authorities had selected the recipients on the condition that they use the animal for milk, not meat. They were also those judged by local officials to be the most in need. They had stories of near-total cattle losses, of walking miles to find water.
The number drawing began. An organizer with a sheet of paper recorded who would take which camel home. Some of the camels were big, some small, some muscular, many slender, and as soon as people pulled numbers — 73, 6, 27 — they darted off to find their animal in the crowd.
Then it was Dishon Leleina’s turn. He had seen his stock of 150 cows wither away to only seven, amid drought and raids.
He reached into the hat. “Number 17,” he said.
He walked toward the camels, and used his wooden staff to poke a few of the animals, which were bunched together, obscuring the numbers painted on their necks. And then he found her: a skinny camel with a medium build, a rich tuft of longer fur on its hump.
He gave her a pat. – Chico Harlan and Rael Ombuor. Photos and video by Malin Fezehai.
Read more: How climate change is turning camels into the new cows
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