Uprisings in the Sahel

“A slave who cannot assume his own revolt does not deserve to be pitied. We do not feel sorry for ourselves, we do not ask anyone to feel sorry for us,” declared Ibrahim Traoré, military officer and current interim president of Burkina Faso, in a speech at the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit. His outfit — complete with a red beret and a military uniform — was an homage to Thomas Sankara, the mighty revolutionary who rose to power in the 1980s.

Traoré is the youngest head of state in Africa, a testament to the ethos embodied by the continent’s youth. Traoré is also living proof of the challenge to global imperialism from Africa’s Sahel region to Palestine. Oppressed people’s struggles everywhere are intertwined against one globalized ruling class. As Malcolm X said in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” “They attack all of us for the same reason; all of us catch hell from the same enemy.”

The Sahel region sits between the Sahara desert to the north and the Sudanian savannas to the south. It spans 10 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. The region has been under Western domination, primarily from the French, making its inhabitants’ lives insufferable. Due to the massive debts demanded by Western states, 80 percent of those in the Sahel live on less than $1.90 a day. The irony is that the wealth of countries like France, the United States, and the United Kingdom was made off the backs of the people of this region. As Marx wrote, the original capital at the advent of capitalism “comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”

As we see in Palestine, resistance to subjugation is inevitable. Four countries in the Sahel, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger, have experienced military coups in the past four years. It is important to note that the tactics used in resistance can take various forms — the existence of a coup does not tell us its character. In a situation where military leaders have access to the best education and are equipped with important knowledge of the colonial powers, they represent a potential political force for the masses of oppressed people. This is akin to how Amílcar Cabral, a leading revolutionary in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, described his conception of "class suicide" — when the petit-bourgeois class (in this case, the military officers) sacrifices its own class position in service of the masses of people. This is precisely what has happened.

Mainstream media would have us believe that the coups present “a threat to democracy.” What about the constant presence of a foreign military constitutes “democracy”? Is a country’s wealth being siphoned off by a colonial power “democracy”? This condemnation is akin to the immediate denunciation of the Palestinian resistance after October 7.

The new administrations in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have adopted clear anti-imperialist stances towards France. Do not conflate these dramatic policy shifts with the mere exploits of rogue military actors seeking power for themselves. In each of these countries, there has been mass resistance to French colonialism. After a coup in 2021, the people of Mali ousted the French military at the beginning of 2022. In Burkina Faso in September 2022 and Niger in July 2023, thousands took to the streets in support of the coups ousting their pro-French, Western-aligned leaders. In February 2023, Burkina Faso announced that they had driven the French military from their territory as well. In September 2023, Niger did the same.

French troops are only in the Sahel because of NATO’s 2011 bombing of Libya, which completely destabilized what once was one of Africa’s most prosperous countries. The bombing led to a massive resurgence of terrorist groups in Libya that spilled over into the Sahel. Under the guise of “counterterrorism,” France launched Operations Serval and Barkhane, stationing troops across the Sahel.

Since then, France has achieved none of its goals; all the while, civilians have been killed en masse by the French forces. The French seek to justify their presence in the Sahel by using a situation that they manufactured — a classic imperialist tactic. The Sahel states have since reaffirmed their right to self-determination by removing the French, a foreign power that does nothing for the good of the people of their countries.

Without boots on the ground, France — and the West writ large — have scrambled for the other imperial instruments at their disposal. These include ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, an empire-aligned political and economic union of countries. ECOWAS sanctioned Mali after their coup as punishment for the state’s anti-imperialism. In July 2023, ECOWAS threatened Niger with military intervention if Mohamed Bazoum, the deposed president, was not reinstated. Burkina Faso and Mali quickly issued a joint statement saying that any French or U.S. intervention in Niger would be “tantamount to a declaration of war” against their own countries.

Recognizing ECOWAS — and their own shared anti-imperialist aims — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formed a defense bloc against neo-colonialism, the Alliance of Sahel States, on September 16, 2023. Four months later, all three countries also left ECOWAS.

The future of the Sahel is uncertain. While these developments do not constitute a total revolution, the anti-imperialist posture of new administrations paves the way for these countries to develop themselves on a more independent basis and spur revolutionary consciousness. These are massive blows against the neo-colonial regime of France and the West in Africa. The uprisings in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have had broad influence: Chad, Senegal, and Ivory Coast are actively working to expel the French.

We are in a time of global intifada. Certainly a turning point, this moment is potentially the beginning of a new decolonial era. The footsteps of those on the march to liberation in Gaza are felt and heard in the Sahel and the freedom cries of the Sahel carry forth toward Gaza. Our histories — and futures — are interconnected. This is where our solidarity lies.