Image is of General Abdourahamane Tiani, leader of Niger (left) and Ibrahim Traoré, leader of Burkina Faso (right).
The Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) formed on September 16th in the wake of the coup in Niger in late July, in which Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso created a military and increasingly economic alliance in which attacking one would result in the other two joining. This was initially most relevant militarily, as ECOWAS was threatening an invasion of Niger if they did not restore civilian rule. Nonetheless, due to a mixture of a lack of real strength in ECOWAS due to Nigeria’s internal problems, and the influence of Algeria, a very strong regional military power who negotiated against a war which could further destabilise an already destabilised region, and the vague promises of future civilian rule, the external military threat seems to have mostly dissipated.
However, internal threats remain. Burkina Faso is fighting against ISIS and al-Qaeda, which commit regular massacres of civilians; the government controls only 60% of the country. In Mali, the government is fighting against similar groups as well as the Tuareg, which inhabit the more sparsely populated north of the country - the government is in the process of kicking out the UN mission to Mali, and in the process retaking rebel stronghold cities like Kidal, which is raising some eyebrows as to what exactly the UN was doing all this time; and Niger is fighting against similar Islamic groups too, and is kicking out the French for being exploitative motherfuckers. Combine this with the sanctions against Niger which are crippling the country, disease outbreaks in Burkina Faso, and just the general shitty state of the world economy, and the situation is not looking very good currently.
That all being said, economy and trade ministers from all three countries have met this past weekend in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There, they recommended that the countries: improve the free movement of people inside the ASS (don’t laugh!); construct and strengthen infrastructure like dams and roads; construct a food safety system; establish a stabilization fund and investment bank; and even create a common airline. This is all attracting foreign attention too - Russia has signed a deal to build Africa’s largest gold refinery in Mali, and China is the second largest investor into Niger after France, ploughing money into the gold and uranium industries there. And, of course, the Wagner group is in the region - though I’m unsure if they’re having a major or minor impact on events there.
The weekly update is here on the website.
Your Monday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Tuesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Wednesday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
Your Thursday Briefing is here in the comments and here on the website.
The Country of the Week is Burkina Faso! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches. Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Israel has violated the ceasefire by moving their forces inside Gaza. The Resistance responded by attacking the moving force.
If this does escalate into a full-blown breaking of the ceasefire, I can already predict the future in perfect clarity: Israel will claim (and the western media will dutifully report) that Hamas singlehandedly broke the ceasefire by firing upon their forces, without mentioning that the terms of the ceasefire prevented them from moving their forces. Then, once people start/continue protesting against the war and demanding a ceasefire, the media’s message will be something like “Why are you demanding that we make a ceasefire against the group of terrorists that just broke it? You should demand that Hamas agree to the ceasefire, not us.” This squirt of squid ink will only confuse a minority of people and the rhetoric will be forgotten within two weeks when the Israelis create some new horror, just like every other major event in this war (the Baptist hospital massacre, the refugee camp massacre, the Al-Shifa occupation, etc).
So predictable and so very, very tiring.
The average internet newsreader will just say “it’s a ceasefire, not a ceasemove! Fckn tankies”
This was always going to be the outcome of ceasefire rhetoric. It will eventually be overtly at odds with the Palestinian cause, and it doesn’t even require Israel breaking it and then lying about it. Literally just… a ceasefire ending and the resistance continuing.
It’s fundamentally an anti-war position rather than a pro-justice or anti-imperialist position. It will demand that Palestine stop fighting even if it’s the popular position in Palestine and the only avenue of resistance left.
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Yes, I agree. Even groups like Jewish Voices for Peace, while taking personal risk to oppose forms of Israeli settler-colonialism, hold to this line and seem to still be, at the end of the day, Zionist. I’ve talked to folks from that group and they seem incoherent. Simultaneously saying:
Reminded of The White Moderate lines from MLK. An urge to quell conflict, implicitly supporting the status quo, rather than demanding immediate justice.
I have mixed feelings about it. Obviously, the final outcome of a ceasefire would be a return to the status quo (though not even, because Gaza has been completely demolished. There is no status quo to return to). A ceasefire in and of itself will not lead to Palestinian liberation.
On the other hand, it was such a simple fucking demand to rally around. Two words. That is what the moment demanded. Not a leftist wall of text meme. Not a manifesto. Quite simply say, “stop bombing fucking hospitals,” and let the Zionists write the walls of text. That’s all it took to expose the utter depravity of the Zionists and the unflinching commitment of their US sponsors. And it got nearly every sect activated and working together, from the ultras to the squishy fucking progressive Liberals.
From here, we will see how the coalition holds together. There will be fallout, but a year ago I thought the anti-war movement in the imperial core was completely fucking dead. People are activated now, and I believe a good number of them are capable of adapting to the circumstances as events unfold.
And yeah, there’s a difference between the anti-war movement and the anti-imperialist movement - but there is a lot of crossover. Once you have millions of people who care about ending war, all it takes is for them to figure out what causes war.
I bet the IDF thought “we can get away with this, Hamas needs the ceasefire more than we do.” and Hamas fucked up their shit hard because the IDF were cocky.
A longer ceasefire might have been nice but it was never going to last. There are still a ton of hostages and that means there will be more pressure on israel for another ceasefire soon. The current swaps showed the hostages are alive and well. If this was actually a breach by the IDF and international monitors are able to confirm it that will give Hamas more leverage to get a better deal on the next ceasefire and maybe get 5:1 prisoner swaps.