A “certainty is certain”, the end of Operation Barkhane (French) in Mali/Sahel last November, brought about the advancement of two new realities, in the logic of the non-existence of empty spaces in politics. Where some leave, others enter. The French left and the Russians (Wagner) came in, as did the jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI) and the Islamic State (IS). Strictly speaking, these jihadists did not enter because they were already there, but expanded their range of action in light of the void left by the French. This degradation of the French presence, which became more visible from 2013 (Operation Serval) and 2014 (Operation Barkhane), surprisingly subsided after the coup d’état of the group of the Military Academy of Kati, which installed Assimi Goita as a deputy (class), in August 2020.
This date marks the expansion of Russian tentacles to the entire region, namely to Burkina Faso, which is undergoing a similar military coup in January 2022. Why and how? Because the Russian propaganda machine exploited the anti-French sentiment of the local, Malian and Burkinabé population, mixing anti-colonial revenge with criticism of the method of the “barkhanes”, aimed at hunting terrorists and not defending and supporting the most isolated and vulnerable populations, who suffered retaliation after French actions, confused by the jihadists as collaborators of these foreigners in pursuit of the “virtuous Islam”. Faced with the “between the sword and the wall” scenario, these populations chose the sword and joined the jihadists who began to offer them the protection that the foreign element in their daily lives, the French, neglected. The number of Russian flags present at the demonstrations in Mali in 2020 and in Burkina in 2021 proved local support for the alternative that was emerging. There are no kiosks in Bamako and Ouagadougou selling local souvenirs and Russian or other flags for tourists to buy. It was the people who, on their own initiative, mobilized their meager resources to buy fabrics, threads and needles, sew the Russian tricolor and wave it at every planned demonstration. The aggressive Russian propaganda machine, based on the “social media mobile phone” in every anonymous pocket, had fully worked and was practically free.
Source: DN
