U.S.-Trained Officers Have Led Numerous Coups in Africa

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

Politics, Unknown, Daily News, History, News

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

U.S.-trained officers have led seven coups and coup attempts in Africa over the last year and a half. This week on Intercepted: Investigative reporter Nick Turse details the U.S. involvement on the African continent. U.S.-trained officers have attempted coups in five West African countries alone: three times in Burkina Faso, three times in Mali, and once each in Guinea, Mauritania, and Gambia. Turse offers the stories behind the coups, details about clandestine training efforts, and a look at the sordid history of the U.S. military’s involvement on the continent. He examines why most Americans have no idea what their tax dollars have wrought in Africa and the broader implications of failed U.S. counterterrorism policies being implemented repeatedly, in country after country. join.theintercept.com/donate/now

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The People of Burkina Faso
0:10.0	The People of Burkina Faso
0:12.0	The People of Burkina Faso
0:16.0	The People of Burkina Faso
0:19.0	Fourteen men sit or stand behind the television anchor's desk.
0:23.0	One young officer, really allowed in French, begins to tell the country of Burkina Faso
0:28.0	that the Constitution is suspended.
0:31.0	Borders have been closed and the entire government has been dissolved.
0:35.0	A coup is taken place.
0:47.0	Another man to his right wearing a red beret sat proudly, looking straight at the camera.
0:53.0	The young officer introduced him.
0:59.0	Lieutenant Colonel Paul Henri Zendalgo, Dami Ba, Burkina Faso's new leader.
1:07.0	Dami Ba took power on January 24th after deposing the democratically elected president.
1:13.0	He was sworn in as the new president just last week.
1:19.0	Burkina Faso was all too familiar with coups.
1:22.0	Since his independence from France in 1960, coups and coup attempts have taken place again and again.
1:29.0	While many watched these events unfold in West Africa, few actually recognize where some of these coup leaders come from.
1:37.0	Many, it turns out, are trained by the U.S. government.
1:52.0	This is intercepted.
2:22.0	I'm Nick Terce, an investigative journalist, author and contributing writer at the intercept.
2:34.0	For 11 years, I've been reporting on Africa.
2:38.0	From the U.S. drone war in Somalia to civil war in Libya, conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an ethnic cleansing in South Sudan.
	...

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