Russia in Africa Part Two--Marat Khairullin's Analysis

Niger’s Sahel

Sahel in the rain season, between Bamako and Kayes, Mali.

Before getting to Marat’s latest installment of his investigation into Russian’s relations with Africa, specifically the nations of the Sahel, I should share with my readers an effort by one of Marat’s collaborators to post his writings to substack along with other translations from Russian and other European media articles and interviews that are similar to what I provide here at the Gym: East’s Substack. Yes, there’s a delay in transmittal from Marat’s Telegram and his other related sites, but not having to scroll forever to get to the current entry is quite nice if being informed immediately isn’t a reader’s priority. So, give the link a click and subscribe if you judge it worthy!

Now for Marat’s latest on Africa that he titles “The African Challenge to Russia
On the Eve of a Big War”:

We continue our African cycle of investigative journalism. The first text of the cycle was published a month and a half ago, [Available here] and since then events in the Sahel countries have been developing at a tremendous speed. But before moving on to them, let's talk a little about why Russia has become interested in Africa in the first place. A common place in the discussion is the presence of huge fossil resources on the continent. The second point is large human resources, which in the future gives good markets. However, from my point of view, the main thing is Russia's main mission in the world—to save human civilization from the destructive influence of the West. Such is the role of our country at this stage. You can joke about this thesis, you can ignore it. But it is the recent history of Africa that shows how much the world needs a country like Russia capable of balancing all the destructive tendencies of a united Western civilization.

The fact is that it was the peoples of Africa, like no one else, who suffered from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unrestrained, predatory Western countries pounced on African states that had barely begun to rise after the brutal era of colonialism.
In general, this is a separate tragic page in human history. We in Russia know about the destruction of the civilization of the Indians of North America by Europeans. And we know almost nothing about the destruction by the same Europeans of a whole scattering of ancient and incredibly original civilizations in Africa. Ghana, Algeria, Ethiopia, Mali are all ancient, actively developing states, with their own culture and writing, often surpassing Europeans in development, especially in the humanitarian spheres. In the Middle Ages, these countries developed quite peacefully, at least there were not as many cruel and bloody wars as in Europe. And all this incredibly beautiful development of African peoples was stopped by the invasion of Europeans. The appearance of the Soviet Union in Africa partially stopped this ruthless extermination, but as soon as the Soviet Union left the arena in 1990, the West in Africa turned to its favorite thing—fomenting wars.

For more than 30 years of US hegemony in the world, it was Africa that paid the highest price in millions of human lives. These are those who died in direct conflicts, died from provoked famine and epidemics. The genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda is entirely on the conscience of the Americans and the French.
By the way, there are a lot of parallels in this tragedy with the current confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainians were set against Russians exactly according to the same textbooks that were used to set the Hutu people against Tutsis. Before the massacre, the Hutu killed their president (the Ukies, where is your Yanukovych?). And in the end, when the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, the Hutu were so raked by the Tutsi that they became one of the largest refugee peoples of our time - about two million Hutu fled the country, fearing the revenge of the Tutsis (the Ukies, the ashes of the martyrs of the House of Trade Unions knock on our hearts). And this is in a country of only 7.7 million people.

Today, it is considered proven that the French special services and President Mitterrand personally participated in these events—it was on his order that the Hutu were armed for the genocide of the Tutsis. In fact, behind this massacre was the struggle between French and British capital. But no matter how scary it may sound, this genocide is only an episode in a series of atrocities committed by the West on the Dark Continent.
On the same list is the complete destruction of the most prosperous country in Africa—Libya. A halt and a rollback in the development of the second most powerful country on the continent—South Africa, which miraculously avoided collapse. Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger—almost all 60 countries in Africa have been affected by external or internal conflicts in one way or another. The West bears special responsibility for inoculating Africa with Islamic terrorism (Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabab), which was regularly supplied with weapons and resources. And which had a specific task—to prevent the peoples of Africa from establishing a peace process and starting progressive state development.

Probably, it is worth writing a separate study on this topic—the West uses these gangs to incite internal enmity. Today, a huge amount of factual material has been accumulated, which unequivocally indicates that the West has been purposefully investing in the creation of zones of chaos throughout the continent for many years.

It is clear that after thirty years of violence, the peoples of Africa were tired of endless bloodshed, so when there was a glimmer of hope to escape from this horror, they immediately seized on it. That hope is Russia, which has openly challenged the hegemon. As well as the already established alliance of Russia, China and, possibly, India. Apparently, this Great Triangle today has every chance of becoming long-term, since it was created by the three oldest civilizations on the planet, which are emerging from crisis.

The first landmark event on the African continent, in response to these conditions, was the process of liberation from French and American neocolonialism of three Sahel countries—Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. These three countries have united in a confederation—the Association of Sahel Countries. It was stated that the armies of these countries are also united under a single command. The case for Africa is unprecedented, especially given that this unified command is headed by one of the best commanders of our time—the Russian combat general Surovikin.
The countries of the new confederation have also announced the creation of a single bank—apparently, our Sberbank will help to create it. Now Sberbank is actively entering these countries. That is, we are talking about the creation of a single payment system that unites almost 70 million people—this is how a huge friendly market is being formed before our eyes.

The next rapid and very painful step for our opponents is the creation of a common customs space, which, in addition to the Sahel countries, includes a country like Togo. That is, the Association received de facto access to the ocean. There is one interesting point here. It is believed that the main port gateway to the Sahel countries is the port of Dakar in Senegal. And the West is now especially courting this country—the President of Senegal was even honored with a personal invitation from the President of France to the Olympics. And here is anecdotal news for you: the other day the embassy in Senegal was opened by Ukraine, and the ambassador immediately announced that he had arrived to counteract the spread of Russian influence in Africa. In past centuries, all three countries of the Sahel and Senegal were part of the ancient Mali Empire, destroyed by the French. In short, there were prerequisites indicating that Senegal should become a key country of the Sahel Alliance in terms of access to the ocean. And suddenly such a feint in the ears—the main port for the future trans-African corridor was not the port of Dakar, but the port of Lomé (the capital of Togo). And this is potentially a huge amount of money and investment. We will also talk about this separately.

And now let's return to the main problem of the new Alliance—the terrorist threat. Active Islamist gangs have settled in key areas of all three countries just on the borders between them in the Niger River basin. That is, on the one hand, these are the most fertile lands, and on the other hand, they control the border regions in order to prevent interstate cooperation. The key issue for solving this problem is the army.
I wrote in my previous article that the Sahel states were artificially imposed a priori small armies. For example, in Burkina Faso, at the time of the coup in September 22, the army numbered only seven thousand people. And today the "country of worthy people" (as Burkina Faso is translated) has in fact thirty well-trained by Russia and fully equipped battalion tactical groups—with heavy artillery, MLRS and tanks. But the most important thing is with its own combat aviation, this is precisely the national aviation with its own personnel—not the Russian or Libyan aircraft that arrived. Over the year, Russia has trained both pilots and engineers in our military-technical universities. From that moment, as you understand, the issue of the existence of terrorists in the country, one might say, was resolved. In July, the graduation of the same flight contingent for the Malian aviation took place, and now the guys from Niger have arrived for training.

In Mali, the situation is really difficult - in addition to threats from terrorists, there is still a threat from separatists—Tuaregs. And these days, two major operations are underway jointly by the Malian army and, as they say here, "Russian allies" against the terrorist stronghold in the city of Gao and the Tuareg stronghold in the city of Kidal. At the same time, a Russian humanitarian mission has been deployed in Mali to establish interethnic dialogue and reconciliation (we deployed the same mission in Syria at one time). Those Tuareg leaders who agree to lay down their arms will receive Russian guarantees and equal political rights with the rest of the inhabitants of Mali. And those who continue to support the French will be defeated by the formidable Surovikin and the Russian army.

Apparently, our country has really seriously taken up the construction of the West-East trans-African transport corridor. In the West, as I have already said, Togo's entry into the new customs union was a very unpleasant surprise [Togo is the very narrow, North-South nation squeezed between two lager North-South states and abuts Burkina Faso’s Southern border]. But it seems that the surprises do not end there. If you look at the map, the Sahel Association is separated from the Gulf of Aden by the countries of Chad and Sudan.

Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are the Alliance.

A special problem is Sudan, where the Americans are actively fomenting war.
And here it is interesting that in July our Foreign Minister Lavrov visited Chad, so there are high expectations that Chad can join the transport corridor. And through it, the conditional road can go not to Sudan, but to the friendly CAR [Central African Republic, directly South of Chad], and from there to our open ally in Africa - Orthodox Ethiopia [but is still needs to pass through strife-ridden South Sudan]. Ethiopia, by the way, has already agreed with the unrecognized country of Somaliland (which at one time broke away from Somalia) on a long-term lease of the coast of the Gulf of Aden. And it happened exactly after he came to Ethiopia, guess who? That's right, our Lavrov. That is, in fact, while we are beating our sworn partners and on this flank, the transport corridor project is most likely already ready.

We will put an end to this today, and in the next material we will definitely talk about how exactly the Americans, the French and the British are trying to provoke a big war in Africa. [My Emphasis]

Again, the number of questions raised by the article greatly outnumbers those answered. Russia’s Africa policy seemed to concentrate on the Islamic belt prior to the Christian belt, but when we look at the maps below of religious distribution across Africa, we see it’s more complex with pagan African religions remaining strong in many nation. Of course, Divide and Rule means setting one religion against the other which we’ve seen happen over the several decades and is precisely what the West’s Terrorist Foreign Legion aims to foment. As with Palestine, the presence of people is a hindrance to Plundering nations.

Russia’s been very keen to establish friendly relations with the vast majority of African nations. Given the paucity of news from the continent, it would be hard to fault anyone in the West for not knowing of its existence. RT has a section of its news dedicated to Africa as does Sputnik International, although IMO RT provides better African-centric coverage. Here’s an example of news being generated within Africa, its root in Western Colonialism, and the troubles still being fomented by that Colonialism:

African state warns France over territorial dispute: Algeria has claimed Paris’ decision to recognize an autonomy plan for Western Sahara “within Moroccan sovereignty” will worsen a decades-long conflict.

And that isn’t the only one as there are far too many. Marat doesn’t mention China’s efforts in Africa, but they are just as important as Russia’s and share the same goals. There are even Russia-based platforms like the Valdai Club active in Africa. Here’s a teaser with more at the link:

Moscow is ready to share its agricultural expertise with Tanzania and increase its investment in the East African country, Russian envoy Andrey Avetisyan has said. The diplomat was speaking on the sidelines of the second Russian-African conference of the Valdai International Discussion Club, held in Dar es Salaam. 

Russia already supplies a significant amount of fertilizer to Tanzania as well as agricultural machinery and equipment, according to the ambassador.  

Avetisyan noted that Russia and Tanzania have maintained close political relations since the African nation gained independence in the early 1960s, although trade and economic relations have lagged behind.

As the article suggests, much more can be done; indeed, the possibilities seem endless. One of the reasons why Russia and Chinese involvement are sought is not just because they come politics-free, but because they’re far less expensive than what the West has to offer along with its political demands. The great dearth of transport arteries plagues Africa’s development as there’s very little in the way of intra-African commerce compared to the overall potential, and the fastest way for Africa to develop is to trade with its continental neighbors.

In the Gym’s archives are many other Africa related articles, particularly the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit that generated three separate articles back when the number of subscribers was 3/4s less than today. That series began with this article, Vladimir Putin: "Russia and Africa: Joining Forces for Peace, Progress and a Prosperous Future." At the end of one of my earliest African articles I provided the link to the UNESCO History of Africa series so those interested could freely download them. Here it is again. I also note the same series can also be accessed and downloaded from The Archive beginning here for volume one, a process that might be faster that the first link. There’re currently eight volumes with three more in production.

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