Earlier this month, coup supporters in Burkina Faso waved Russian flags as they protested near the French Embassy in the capital city of Ouagadougou. In September in Niger, people protesting Western military presence draped Russian flags across a monument in front of the National Assembly building. Similarly, in Mali before the 2021 coup, Russian flags often fluttered above protesters.
In the United States and Europe — where media coverage of the Russian invasion is pro-Ukraine — it’s easy to assume that protesters in West Africa must be misled. Russian propaganda is indeed rife on social media. Videos circulating on WhatsApp and Facebook amplify Russia’s justifications for the invasion of Ukraine, and they make claims about the hypocritical, covert and colonial nature of French and Western military interventions in the Sahel. Many of these claims are falsehoods — including that the French support jihadist groups.
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But some of these claims are true. The French government supported the unconstitutional postponement of elections in Chad following a military coup in early 2021, then months later called for sanctions against Mali when coup leaders there decided to postpone elections. Most defense agreements between France and West African nations are not made available to the public, leaving people suspicious about what has been agreed between France and its former colonies.
The post-colonial nature of the relationship between France and West African countries persists in different forms. Most obvious is the CFA currency — used in many West African countries — that dates from the colonial period and continues to benefit French companies. These realities mean that West Africans have reasons to ask questions about Western interventions in the Sahel. But why do so many people believe that Russia is a better partner?
Even in areas that experience terrorist attacks, people have doubts about Western military interventions
In my research, I explore how people living in areas where terrorist groups operate perceive Western military counterterrorism interventions. Between January and May 2022, I carried out 42 hour-long interviews with people who had either fled the conflict-affected zones in west Niger and are now based in regional capitals, or who were visiting a regional capital for work. The interview group included pastoralists, farmers, chiefs, administrators and students. Alongside these qualitative interviews, I analyzed data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), which collects real-time data on all reported political violence and protest events around the world.
The Nigeriens I interviewed had doubts about the real purpose of Western troops operating in their localities. These doubts were not based on Russian propaganda but on direct experiences.
One example involves German military operations in Tahoua, a region in the west of Niger, bordering Mali. Germans built a military base there in 2018 and began training Nigerien Special Forces. Since then, insecurity in the Tahoua region has massively increased. In the five years leading up to the establishment of the German base, ACLED data show the average annual number of attacks on civilians by armed groups or militaries in Tahoua was zero. Since 2018, the average annual number of attacks on civilians has reached 16. In 2022 to date, the database has tallied 45 attacks on civilians.
To be sure, the German base is in an area where the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) was starting to become active in 2018 — making this a strategic location to support counterterrorism operations. But for those living in the area around the base, it didn’t feel like that.
While the base was being set up, ISGS began shifting across the Malian border, into the area around the base. At first, the group demanded zakat (Islamic tax) from Tuareg and Fulani communities and seized livestock when people refused to pay up. Tensions escalated and in March 2021, ISGS forces killed almost everyone in three Tuareg camps, one of which was located approximately 15 miles from the German base. According to my interviews and ACLED data, 144 people were killed. In the months that followed, Tuareg militia groups, believing that Fulani pastoralists were involved in the attacks by ISGS, carried out revenge attacks against Fulani communities living between the base and the Malian border.
The German operation in Tahoua forms part of the European Union Training Mission in Mali, which has no direct mandate to protect civilians. The Nigerien Special Forces are trained in conducting high-precision operations that focus mainly on “neutralizing” jihadist group leaders. The Nigerien Gendarmerie — the national paramilitary force — is responsible for protecting the population but people complained help was slow to arrive and the attackers had long since departed. Most interviewees attributed the Gendarmerie’s slow response to their lack of vehicles and helicopters, but found it difficult to understand why the Special Forces and the German military did not respond. Local people mentioned the vehicles and equipment at the disposal of Special Forces patrols in the area, for example.
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Conspiracy theories help people make sense of confusing events
Cognitive psychologists have shown that the human mind is primed to see causality between co-occurring events. Conspiracy theories about French and German troops supporting jihadist groups make rising insecurity coinciding with their arrival more understandable.
There are other confusing events that feed belief in conspiracy theories. Several interviewees reported seeing a low-flying plane about 40-to-60 minutes before ISGS attacked their village. Interviewees incorrectly assumed that these were French surveillance planes that passed information onto ISGS. Few people imagine that ISGS has surveillance equipment, but ISGS has recently started to use drones before launching an attack.
Do West Africans really think that cooperation with Russia would be better than French or German cooperation? Yes and no. They have heard about the allegations of violence carried out by the Wagner Group, a private Russian mercenary group operating in Mali as part of the cooperation between Mali and Russia, but many believe these allegations to be Western propaganda.
Interviewees consider the situation in Niger to be dire, and they can only hope that a change in partner would bring an improvement. As one interviewee remarked, “We have to choose between the bad and the worse.”
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Aoife McCullough (@aoifemccullough) is a PhD candidate in international development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on the foreign militarization of Niger and legitimation processes.