France has proved incapable of vanquishing the jahatis, despite having the resources of a great western army. That impotence looks suspicious and bred theories that former colonizer may actually be using militants to stbilize this ahel. Qte is the first anti french sovereigntis movement in the region. But pan africanism is an intellectual movement so it stayed confined within some kind of intellectual circles.
Featuring Rahmane Idrissa on Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The region has been beset by jihadist insurgencies and, in the case of Mali and Burkina Faso, recent military coups. This is a comprehensive interview that puts the present conflict—which has drawn in French military and then Russian mercenary intervention—into deep historical and political-economic context from struggles over the slave trade, through French colonialism, to the neocolonial imposition of neoliberalism.
Idrissa’s work:
newleftreview.org/issues/ii132/articles/rahmane-idrissa-the-sahel-a-cognitive-mapping
newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/kabores-defeat
nybooks.com/daily/2022/05/25/potent-policies-of-empire
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/rahmane-idrissa/coup-contrecouplrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n23/rahmane-idrissa/countries-without-currency
Special outro music from Ali Farka Touré.
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Check out Inside the Second Wave of Feminism: haymarketbooks.org/books/1887-inside-the-second-wave-of-feminism