Following the horrific 9/11 attack that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States, US President George W Bush declared a global ‘War on T*rror,’ which began with the first bombardments on this day, 7 October 2001, in Afghanistan.
Consequently, African countries that had no issues with t*rrorism in 2001, saw a surge in armed violence over the past 24 years, that can be traced back to decades of US and NATO intervention, exacerbated in 2007 when the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) was formed.
For example, t*rrorist activities ravaged Africa’s arid Sahel region since NATO’s 2011 invasion of Libya, spurning violent rebels to k*ll former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Then, Sahel-region t*rrorists accessed the fallen Libyan government’s weapons stash and distributed them in Mali, seizing control of large swaths of land in the country’s north, spilling into its neighboring countries, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Not to mention Somalia, where through a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was crushed, leading to the rise of the violent t*rrorist group, Al-Shabaab. The ICU consisted of various clan-based courts that governed the East African country following the 1991 civil war, became a federation in 2004 and had no Al-Qaeda affiliations.
Nonetheless, after years of a well documented history of fabricating narratives for political and economic interests to make way for invasion, the US appears to be losing the strong foot-hold it once had. Many are now seeing the nation for what it truly is; an imperialist state that neither cares for human rights nor to combat terrorism.
The formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger on 16 March 2023, for instance, offers a glimmer of possibility towards African sovereignty.
Upon formation, the AES broke ties with AFRICOM, choosing to instead form a confederation for shared defense, economic and foreign policy. Over a year later, the three Sahelian states in West Africa continue to advance the work of decolonisation by breaking ties with neo-colonial institutions and reclaiming bit by bit, their sovereignty over their lands.
Are we currently witnessing the crumbling of an empire?
2 Comments
I can see the passion behind this post, great job!
Evil will not go with us into the future.
It must evolve to light or it will perish regardless of where it is.
Jesus is coming back😇