There has been an increasingly obvious alignment with Russia undertaken by the military juntas that have taken power since 2020 in the French-speaking countries of the Sahel region, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. This has generally been analyzed in terms of the weakening of the West, the acquisition of diplomatic and military influence, and economic plundering for Moscow's benefit. Yet there's another dimension to this story that deserves close attention. By sponsoring the new strongmen of West Africa, Vladimir Putin's Russia has acquired a new kind of hold on Western Europe: emigration.
In this respect, the landmark event which was the abrupt eviction of about a thousand American soldiers based in Agadez, Niger, ordered by General Abdourahamane Tiani's junta in Niger on Saturday, March 16, cannot go unnoticed. The significance of the snub inflicted on the US by the country's new ruler, in power since July 2023, by refusing to receive two senior officials from the Biden administration, was clear. Prior to the putsch that led to the departure of the French soldiers in December, Niger appeared to be the last country in the region willing to host Western troops. It was also one of the rare countries to collaborate with the European Union (EU) on controlling migratory flows. Niger is now one of Russia's avowed allies.
Of course, young African people struggling with extreme poverty and a total lack of prospects don't need the "hand of Moscow" to take to the road and head north by sea, as evidenced by the surge in arrivals in 2023 via Spain, Italy or Greece. Nor did Niger's new authorities wait until the January announcement of the "intensification" of their military cooperation with Russia, to repeal in November 2023 the 2015 law penalizing the illegal trafficking of migrants, which had been adopted under pressure from the EU Since then, the oasis of Agadez, the Tuareg capital and a crossroads of migration routes, has regained its status as the center of profitable transactions linked to migratory crossings, which it had ceased to be since the 2015 law was passed. While this policy of reopening migration has reflected the new authorities' desire to satisfy those Tuareg who are at odds with the junta, it also represents a challenge to the EU.
New proxy
With Niger's overthrow, Putin now has a new proxy in an emigration-source country, in addition to the Central African Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso, not to mention the areas of eastern Libya controlled by his ally Khalifa Haftar. What's more, Niger is a pivotal state on certain migrant departure routes.
You have 53.86% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.