Anyone who fights against a colonial power and its compradors is an anti-colonial fighter. In this case, at the 10,000’ view, it’s the Alliance of Sahel States.

The confederation is against neo-colonialism and has demonstrated this with acts such as downgrading the status of the French language, renaming of colonial street names, and in the case of Mali suspending teaching of the French Revolution in schools. The AES is also anti-French and anti-ECOWAS in outlook, as it disagrees with many of their policies.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I know Niger is involved in the AES, but where does Nigeria come in?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 11 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Oh hah, my bad. This is happening not far from the border with Niger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoto_State

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Sokoto has a population of Muslim pastoralists, who are undergoing proletarianization.

Their frustration with this gets expressed through a fascistic Islamism, with appeals to the Golden Age of the independent Sokoto Caliphate (hence the name of the Nigerian state).

Insurgent movements like this are a bit problem for States in the region, and it's part of why AES formed. ECOWAS was largely incapable of dealing with internal security issues, due to its main role as a mechanism of Imperialist value extraction

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 hours ago

I don’t know what exactly is going on there right now, but among the possibilities I can think of, perhaps these are Salafi Jihadists who got pushed out of Niger and went over the border. That’s one of the least nefarious reasons the US might be attacking.

[–] fire86743@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Oh okay, thought you were talking about ISIS for a second. But then again, I wasn't really sure who they were targeting in the first place.

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 20 hours ago

ISIS are an Anglo-Zionist creation and pawn.