The Cost of Africa's Latest Coup

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On July 26, a military junta deposed and imprisoned Niger’s duly elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. You are probably saying three things—perhaps all at the same time:

Where the hell is Niger? Who is Bazoum? Why the fuck would I care?

That’s what this episode is all about. We answer those three questions and fill you in on the context around the event as well as the region where it happened, the Sahel, which is where Saharan Africa meets sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a place that’s at the mercy of natural disasters like severe drought and extreme flooding, and human disasters like mismanagement of the land and laws, jihadists, and just plain bandits.

Aneliese Bernard joins us and knows what she’s talking about to a simply frightening degree. When not slumming on podcasts like ours, Bernard is director at Strategic Stabilization Advisors and Director of Research and Programs at Elva Community Engagement, and formerly worked in the Sahel with the U.S. State Department.

She’s not a spy. She said so herself.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this in the show description to support now. Hey there, angry planet listeners, this is Matthew Galt.
0:15.0	If this is your first time, I do various things at Vice.
0:18.0	I'm joined by Jason Fields, the opinion editor at Newsweek.
0:22.7	And also this week, we were talking about Niger, which I was.
0:28.1	Niger. Niger, yes, I know.
0:30.1	What did you say?
0:30.5	He said it was very British of me, I think.
0:33.0	Yes. The Niger Delta reference runs strong for English speakers.
0:39.0	I'm going to be mispronouncing a lot of words today. We are joined by Annalese Bernard. Can you give us your background?
0:49.2	Sure. Thanks for having me, first of all. So I am the director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors.
0:56.2	We are a risk-based advisory group based in Washington, D.C. but we focus mostly on West Africa, although we are expanding at the moment also to look into the Southern
1:05.6	Caucasus. Previously before I set up SSA, as we call ourselves, I was with the State Department. I was covered West Africa for quite a few years with the Department of State, but more recently from 2017 to 2019, I was the US government stabilization advisor
1:25.8	to the US embassy in Myanmar, Mezher,
1:29.5	where we were working mostly on counterterrorism work
1:31.6	and I can get into that later on.
1:33.0	So you were a spy.
1:35.0	Let's be real.
1:37.0	That's what my family things.
1:38.0	When you're from Los Angeles and the only representation of US government abroad is really bad CIA movies and TV shows no offense Jack Ryan I definitely watch that show, but it is trash.
1:54.0	Then everyone thinks you're a spy, especially when you don't have a really great response to a question.
2:02.0	Now, the State Department does exist and they do do some things other than visas.
2:08.0	So that was what I was working on, but I was co-deployed with U.S. Special Forces for quite a bit of the time I was there.
	...

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