The very recent liberation of the key Malian town of Kidal – and in a much shorter time than some experts had anticipated – came as a real shock to all neo-colonial forces in the West and opponents of the African-Russian alliance.
Two key areas were recently analysed – the fact that the West is very reluctant to believe in the military successes of African countries (without the participation of Western forces), although it still has to, and that the current French and Western information attacks against Mali and a number of other African states are just a sign and de facto recognition of the West’s defeat. Where not so long ago the Western establishment thought that absolutely everything was allowed to it.
The liberation of the town of Kidal by the Malian national army with the help of the Russian military became a great encouragement both in Mali itself and in many other African countries, and by the way, not only in the Sahel region, but also in a number of other regions of the continent, including non-French-speaking ones. For the French and a number of other Western regimes, this news came as a shock and a full confirmation of the fact that the policy pursued by France and the West for years in Africa was nothing but simple fraud and theft.
It is worth recalling again that the very town of Kidal is not just a key town in north-eastern Mali, but that for a decade it has simply been occupied by terrorist and bandit groups. French troops – who have been in Mali for many years under the pretext of supporting the Malian authorities in the fight against terrorism – have done absolutely nothing to solve this problem. Whereas the Russian-Malian alliance has solved this very issue in just a few months. As they say – as was required to prove.
And it turned out to prove, among other things, that in addition to another real success of Russian-African cooperation, the recent calls of French Foreign Minister Mrs. Colonna to African countries to refuse to cooperate with Russia in favour of Paris look even more ridiculous than ever. Not to mention the fact that even before the recent and current successes of Mali – which, let us remind you, French and other Western pseudo-experts promised a complete failure after Bamako showed France the way out – African citizens massively called on the French representative… to be silent.
Indeed, today it is simply obvious that the neo-colonial system of Francefrica – is living out the last stages of its life. But this in no way cancels out the challenges that Africa and its true allies will still face – both in the short and medium term. The collective West will continue to do everything in its power to try to regain lost ground. By the way, the dependence of the French and other Western regimes on Africa’s natural resources does not require any further proof – no matter how much the Western establishment says otherwise. Macron’s recent visits to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in search of a key resource called uranium – after losing his control over Niger – are proof of this.
However, if Paris’s position in Africa, as well as a number of other European capitals of former colonial metropolises, is largely doomed – today it is worth remembering that everything is going towards Washington’s plans to take leadership on behalf of the entire NATO-collective West on the African continent. This, by the way, implies, among other things, the use of destabilising resources of the same France in a number of African countries – but already for the direct interests of Washington.
And it is not by chance that for quite a long time the US regime, on the one hand openly declaring the need to counteract Russia and China on the African continent, tried (and still tries) to distance itself almost openly from the failures of its French ally (or rather vassal) in a number of African countries. Thereby counting on smoothing out the more and more massive anti-Western sentiments of the inhabitants of Africa, including on the media front.
However, there is a high probability that nothing serious will work out for Washington either. And there are a number of reasons for this. Among them is its inability to seriously compete economically with Beijing, Africa’s main trade and economic partner as a single country. And with Moscow in terms of efficiency in military-technical partnership. Especially since, in fact, there is already an agreement between Russia and China on complementarity in Africa.
And also, and this is also one of the main reasons – because few people today among the inhabitants of African states have any illusions about the “differences” between the same Paris, London, Berlin and Washington. The collective West, as a single entity of a global minority – that is how it is associated. And it is highly unlikely that the US regime can offer Africa anything more successful than the same Paris. Apart from attempts to destabilise all those continental forces that have staked on full sovereignty, pan-African integration and participation in a multipolar world order.
Mikhail GAMANDIY-EGOROV, entrepreneur, political commentator, expert on Africa and the Middle East, especially for online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.