I’ve posted about West Africa before, and will, no doubt, have to post about it again and again. The various minority peoples of Saharan Africa are, in varying degrees, involved in some very dubious practices but, on this occasion, they may have a point. This article is three months old (h/t Rai Soulong) and is from Algeria-Watch.
Niger People’s Movement for Justice, MNJ (Mouvement des Nigériens pour la justice, MNJ), leading the Tuareg insurrection in Niger, has announced that there is no contact or cooperation linking it to Al Qaeda Branch in North Africa.
The movement said the information reported by some French news papers concerning a relationship between the aforementioned movement and Al Qaeda in North Africa, is wrong, adding that a fire fight has broken out between its fighters and the GSPC terrorists (see what you can make of this article) as well as the fighters under the umbrella of Al Qaeda in North Africa, while [it was] standing up against the smugglers and drug traffickers.
Speaking to journalists yesterday, the Chairman of MNJ political wing in Europe, has announced that no contacts linking the movement with the terrorist organizations in the Sahara region, and the African Sahel, denying that the movement’s insurrection against the Niger’s Government is at the aim of controlling the paths traffickers take.
In this regard, this MNJ official has condemned a plot by France, in coordination with the Government of Niger, seeking involving its movement in terrorism acts, while France will be rewarded with a license enabling its companies exploiting the uranium mines.
According to the same speaker, the main reason pushing the Tuareg of Niger, to insurrection against the Government, is its failing in honouring the Algiers convention, which stated incorporating 4 thousand fighters in the public sector companies, as well as its default in constructing hospitals and schools.
The waters are just so muddied here that one cannot know what is actually going on. That France is deeply involved is obvious. Well over half of all the electric power in France is produced from its Uranium fuelled nuclear reactors. It is essential that France has secure and copious supplies of this fuel. France is the former colonial power in Niger.
[...] threatened by the insurgency, uranium mining, which accounts for 16 percent of Niger's GDP and 72 percent of national export proceeds, is at the very center of the conflict.
In October 2006, Tuareg leader Boutali Tchiwerin issued a statement condemning the ecological impact and lack of jobs from the Arlit based mining industry. The MNJ has echoed these statements repeatedly, and attacked the power station for a mining facility near Arlit in April 2007. In June 2007, land mines were laid on the main route the uranium ore from Arlit takes to the ports of Benin. All of Arlit's ore is processed and transported by a French company Areva NC, a holding of the Areva group, itself a state owned operation of the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The system of French nuclear power generation, as well as the French nuclear weapons program, is dependent on uranium mined at Arlit
In June and July 2007, the head of Areva's Niger operations Dominique Pin and his security chief Gilles Denamur (who is a retired colonel in the French Army and former military attache to the French embassy in Niger) came into the spotlight. Pin admitted the April attacks had caused them to cease operations for a month, and his security chief has said that mines prevented ore shipments. The MNJ, on the other hand, has said that the government has been laying Chinese made landmines throughout the region.
That is broadly accurate as far as I can find out.
It seems to me that France is, as usual, persuing its own interests and that the rest of us, and the rights of the Tuareg minority in Niger, can go hang. SinoU is also partly financed, alledgedly, by the French Government and has, so I’m told, raised some capital in Paris.
This Times article, from last November, explains just why it isn’t wise to trust the French:
President Sarkozy helped to clinch the world’s largest commercial nuclear power contract yesterday, winning an agreement to sell French-designed reactors and atomic fuel worth nearly $12 billion to China.
The deal with Areva, the state-owned French nuclear energy giant, forms part of an ambitious Chinese drive to satisfy the country’s growing hunger for energy.
Areva said that the $11.86 billion (£5.7 billion) contract to build two European pressurised water reactors (EPRs) and to supply more than a decade’s worth of fuel was a global record for the industry.
The EPR is the world’s most powerful nuclear reactor design. Each unit is capable of generating 1,700 megawatts of electricity. After Finland and France, China will be home to only the third and fourth EPRs to have been built.
So, what’s my point here? Simply put, it’s this. France and, indirectly, China are both relying on France keeping control of the situation in Niger, a former French possession, in order to keep the yellow-cake flowing and their nuclear reactors powered. Manifestly, neither France nor the Nigerien government are in complete control of the Northern provinces where the MNJ obviously exert much influence. Currently, the MNJ are not a pawn of Al-Qaeda and have been, historically, against many of the criminal activities which the North African branch of that movement have been indulging in, in recent years.
Similar to the Berbers, the Tuareg are a matrilineal society (but not matriarchal) where the men are veiled but the women are not. Although nominally Muslim and reverencing the Koran they are noted realists with their own traditions and Saints and their own take on Islam and Faith. Much ancient animism and other beliefs inform their culture of religion and their Islam is syncretistic and deeply influenced by Jewish practises and long contact with Christianity.
The Tuareg are warriors, and now very well armed (courtesy of Israel, or so it is alleged), and well aware of their own identity. It will be extremely difficult for France to keep control of its uranium mines in Northern Niger if she cannot bring the Tuareg onside. Without these mines the entire French nuclear industry will be in grave jeopardy; and the French will be unable to fulfil their agreement with China.
I think that we can expect to see a worsening situation in Niger as France struggles to retain control. Military intervention, by proxy at the moment, is already happening, but within a year or so French forces will have to be committed in order to protect the mines against increasing Tuareg unrest – and when their own interests are at stake the French are no respecters of Human Rights!
The China National Petroleum Company is also exploiting Niger’s large oil reserves
and works in tandem with various French Société anonyme. This is going to be
another flashpoint since the native peoples are being marginalised by the Chinese and the French and there is much unrest because of this.
Basically, France and China have both failed to understand the Tuareg and also failed to understand the role of the local version of Islam in Nigerien society – albeit, a different form of Islam, and, some would argue, a corrupt form, than that which we struggle against. Simply bribing corrupt officials in Niamey is a policy which can no longer work – especially given that Saudi money is bigger and more important and more plentiful, and that Niger is now a Saudi target state.
The ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys’ will, or so it looks at the moment, get their
come-uppance in West Africa.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer people!
English monarchs are, or were (until you perfidious French dug them up), buried.
What! No!
Well, you’re on your own. Why should I, or mine, care when you treat our past like
that? Why should the Tuareg care when you’ll sell them out to the first profitable
contract which comes along? And why, just why, do the Italians feel that you’ve been trying to set us all up all along?
Ah, now I get it: France first, France last, anything left over then France again! And the Devil take the hindmost.
You can find France, if you really want to but I don’t see why you should,
using this map.
Agincourt! Crecy! For Heaven’s sake, they had to use cannon at Castillon in order to win (just). They never did fight fair!
But that’s just a loyal Englishman’s viewpoint.
They’ve always been the weak point of Europe and they always will be! And you’ll see it in Niger over the next few years as they sell us out and push the Tuareg straight into the arms of our enemies!
Fortunately, the UK gets its yellow-cake from Australia.
