In February 2024, Traoré ordered the suspension of the issuance of export permits for small-scale private gold production, a move aimed at tackling illegal trade. According to the World Gold Council’s 2023 figures, Burkina Faso is the 13th-largest gold producer in the world, producing about 100 tonnes, equivalent to about US$6 billion in value, each year.
He disclosed that Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who was deposed in 2022, had spearheaded the “military aspect of this conspiracy”. Damiba had seized power in a coup in January 2022, ousting elected president Roch Marc Christian Kabore.
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Sana also disclosed that several individuals, including Ahmed Kinda, a formerleader of the country’s special forces, had been detained in connection with the plot.
Damiba was trained by the U.S. military. Burkina Faso needs to kick out the United States.They also fired their Ambassador to Ghana, Sini Pierre Sanou for his alleged involvement.
Burkina Faso’s Security Minister Mahamadou Sana said on national television Monday night that “individuals residing in Cote d’Ivoire have been involved in subversive activities against.” Burkina
The minister accused namely 14 people of plotting the destabilization attempt. Among them junta opponents, the leader of the Jan. 2022 coup, two former ministers, two journalists. Unidentified conspirators included Western intelligence officials.
Authorities say an elaborate three-phased plot was devised by some Burkinabé civilians and servicemen living abroad who paid and trained armed groups to conduct attacks.
Economic operators and leaders of the civil society were allegedly involved in destabilization efforts.
“We have Army soldiers right now in Niger who aren’t getting their troop rotations, who aren’t getting their medicine, who aren’t getting their supplies, who aren’t getting their mail and the two senior people in the United States Army are sitting before me and it’s like ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,’” said Gaetz.
He [Col Amadou Abdramane] also alleged that the US delegation had accused Niger of making a secret deal to supply uranium to Iran. Col Abdramane described the accusation as “cynical” and “reminiscent of the second Iraq war”.
“The US presence on the territory of the Republic of Niger is illegal and violates all the constitutional and democratic rules which would require the sovereign people… to be consulted on the installation of a foreign army on its territory,” Niger’s military spokesperson Col Amadou Abdramane said in a damning statement on national television.
He also alleged that the US delegation had accused Niger of making a secret deal to supply uranium to Iran. Col Abdramane described the accusation as “cynical” and “reminiscent of the second Iraq war”.
And finally, he suggested that the US had raised objections about the allies that Niger had chosen. “The government of Niger therefore strongly denounces the condescending attitude combined with the threat of reprisals by the head of the American delegation against the government and the people of Niger,” Col Abdramane said.
NAIROBI—The U.S. is seeking to base military drones along the West African coast in an urgent effort to stop the spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State in the region, according to American and African officials
Let us travel back in time to April 9, 1999. It was the middle of hot season in the West African country of Niger and 120 degrees in the shade. Jocelyn, one of the authors, was a newly minted Peace Corps volunteer and had recently arrived in a rural community 60 miles south of Niamey, the capital, where she would spend the next two years. That day, President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara and five other people were shot dead at the airport, a mutiny by his presidential guard. But there was no international outcry, no evacuation of Americans and Europeans. Jocelyn was told to stay put in the small community where she was living. Life went on as usual.
Turse explained in a recent article that in 2002 and 2003, the first years of US counterterrorism assistance to Niger, the State Department counted just nine terrorist attacks in all of Africa.
“Last year, the number of violent events in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger alone reached 2,737, according to a report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution. This represents a jump of more than 30,000 percent since the US began its counterterrorism efforts,” Turse wrote.
Let’s continue to follow the post-coup situation in Niger. We had Victoria Nuland travel to Niger, presumably to help organize the overthrow of the government since 1- that’s usually what a visit from Nuland portends and 2 – a “rebel movement” called the Council of Resistance for the Republic under the leadership of someone named Rhissa Ag Boula started just after her visit. If there is going to be a Western war over this coup, it is likely that Nigeria – the giant country in West Africa with 224M people, much bigger than all other countries in the region combined – will be a part of the intervention, as would France and presumably the US. Other countries of the region are lining up on one or the other side, with Burkina Faso, Mali, and Algeria all lining up with the post-coup Niger government, so we are in a scary situation.
One human rights campaigner said the military’s failure to provide a timely response to Democratic lawmakers’ questions “does not bode well for the U.S. government’s expressed commitment to transparency and accountability.”
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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