The Sahel coup belt
Six thousand kilometres separate the two shores of Africa with the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. It is the widest part of the continent, the Sahel belt, which is now a territory where not only a large part of the future of Africa but also of Europe may be decided. All the countries that make up this belt have suffered coups d'état that have altered the fragile status quo that emerged from decolonisation.
If we start in the east, near the Red Sea, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Malli, Burkina Faso and Guinea, already on the shores of the Atlantic, have all suffered in recent years the overthrow of their respective governments by military uprisings, in some cases twice, such as Mali and Burkina Faso. Gabon, so far the last African country to have experienced a coup d'état, is not located in this belt, on the edge of the Tropic of Cancer, but on the equator. All of them except Sudan have the common denominator of having been French colonies, and also of having maintained such a close relationship with the metropolis after independence that France has been not only the main trading partner but also the guarantor of their assets, through a currency minted in Paris and backed by the Bank of France, the CFA franc. And, of course, by maintaining military bases, whose troops have been responsible for protecting its interests, as well as frequently helping to maintain law and order and, in recent years, dealing with terrorist offensives of all kinds.
The exploitation of these countries' vast natural resources, ranging from oil to uranium, iron, manganese and even rare earths, has therefore been in the hands of French corporations, sometimes in fierce competition with the US.
The stability of many of these countries has been based on personalities who have become veritable warlords, often tempted both to remain in power for ever and to make it a hereditary enterprise. The case of the Bongo family in Gabon is one of the most significant, as the country has known no other president in sixty years than Omar, who died in 2009, and his son Ali, who had revalidated his mandate in the August elections, with the same high results as always, this time not recognised by his main rival, Albert Ondo Ossa.
The Bongo brothers in Gabon, like Mohamed Bazoum in Niger, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in Burkina Faso or Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Mali, have always acted as the big and well-paid foremen of their respective countries, which have in practice become the estates of French multinationals. Paris has always taken great care to firmly manage the affairs of its former colonies. President François Mitterrand, who was considered a true "republican king", set up a cell at the Elysée Palace devoted exclusively to African affairs, which reported only to him.
The aggressive irruption of Russia and China on the continent, in addition to the Islamic terrorism of the organisations affiliated with Al Qaeda and Daesh, has finally shaken up the geopolitical chessboard of the Sahel and neighbouring countries, with the prospect of breaking it for good. The military that have seized power through successive coups d'état have attracted the support of the population on the basis of a simple argument: the country does not obtain the benefits that it would be entitled to from the raw materials exploited by the former colonisers. Manichean reasoning that translates into open hostility to France, and by extension to the European Union and the West.
Differences also emerged within the military rebels. Some are as bloody as those being waged in Sudan by General Abdel Fatah al Burhan and his former subordinate, General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. With very rare exceptions, all have been trained in the practical education of the law of the strongest, that it is better to be feared than pitied.
The Sahel strip is also a complex crossroads, where borders drawn with a compass and a bevel are impossible to keep in the vastness of the Sahara desert. It is there that the hundreds of thousands of odysseys and tragedies of the ever-increasing number of migrants who leave their small savings, their skin and often their lives to reach the Europe that human traffickers portray as paradise on earth are aired.