AFRICA ( Commonwealth Union) _ During the colonial era, France had an understanding of what Sudan represented in the struggle between the Arabs and the West for control of Africa.
In order to distance itself from unwholesome conflict, it designated sub-Saharan Africa, including Western Sudan, Mauritania, Mali, and Burkina Faso, as well as Niger and Chad. Although the British intervened, it succeeded in taking them while leaving the main Sudan, which borders Egypt near the Mackreck and not the Maghreb, for the Arabs. Even the first sultan of Sokoto knew to halt in Sudan and go the other way after receiving an intelligence tip about his contingent’s intention to travel to Makkah. Check out Green Toby 2020.
The point I’m trying to make here is that although Arabs arrived in Africa before the West did, they treated Africans harder than the West did, which caused some wise Africans to halt their travels to Makkah in Sudan. The Bade, Bole, and Duwai people of Nigeria, including the ancestors of the country’s current Senate President and his Machina opponent for the seat, have historically witnessed the harsher treatment of Arabs that Tunisia recently instituted as it began deporting Africans.
This deportation and the current incursion of Russian mercenaries—the Wagner group specifically—are all a part of operational and tactical moves to thwart France’s failed strategy of forging close ties with Africans in order to better control the “arsenal-loaded” resources found in Africa, including the Great Lakes region mismanaged by conglomerates of the “Frenches” of France, Switzerland, and Belgium.
It is an African issue that needs to be resolved swiftly to avoid reaching conflagration levels. And it serves as a warning to Nigeria to maintain its resolve and comprehend that Ghadaffi’s proposal to divide Nigeria into the north and south is a ruse by the Janjaweeds to further infringe on African territory. And as I have consistently argued, cooperation with France or a broader NATO is still a better option than choosing Russia and China for a lasting peace in Africa.
Not necessarily because France and NATO are good allies, but rather to adopt the mentality that the “devil you know is better than the angel you don’t know,” and, furthermore, to approach it the Japanese way by admitting that the person who caused your downfall and who had amassed enormous wealth from it, could be more sympathetic to your being restored to what insurers refer to as the “state you are in before the damage” than someone who had never participated in the damage, done initially. However, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre were torn apart by an existentialist discussion; Camus emerged victorious, a lesson that France has failed to heed.
