Vox Omits US Military Role in African Instability

BRYCE GREENE

One way you should not understand recent coups in Africa, Vox (2/5/22) suggests, is as a consequence of the US training coup-leading military figures.

Vox (2/5/22) recently published a piece titled “How to Understand the Recent Coups in Africa,” interviewing Joseph Sany from the Africa Center at the US Institute of Peace, a US government research center. The article had much to say about the potential causes of African conflict and instability, but pointedly left out any reference to the role of US training programs in constantly generating coup leaders.

Writing for the Intercept (1/26/22), Nick Turse showed that US military training operations in the region were associated with the growing instability and antidemocratic tendencies. “Since 2008,” Turse wrote,

US-trained officers have attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries, including Burkina Faso (three times), Guinea, Mali (three times), Mauritania and the Gambia.

The Vox piece specifically mentioned the coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, where US-trained officers accounted for a total of six coups. In its initial form,* the Vox article even cited a later Intercept piece (2/4/22) piece by Turse:

In Mali and Burkina Faso, Sany notes, the governments were dealing with violent extremism from ISIS and Al Qaeda affiliates in the Sahel, where between 2020 and 2021, the Intercept’s Nick Turse reports, citing statistics in a recent report by Siegle and his team, attacks by militant Islamist organizations increased 70 percent, from 1,180 to 2,005.

So while he is evidently familiar with Turse’s work, Sany failed to include the role of the US military operations that Turse had reported on in his analysis…...More Here

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