Mali’s leadership tried to sell the French exit as an anti-colonial victory, but it was anything but. As one empire left, another quickly moved in. Russian mercenaries replaced French soldiers, announcing to the world Mali’s intention to move into Russia’s orbit.

Americans watched with worry, and eventually started to use the “counterterrorism” angle to try and befriend a regime they loudly condemned and sanctioned just a few years ago.

For the Malian people, the country’s transfer to team Russia brought no real positives. Sure, the humiliation of France at the heart of Francophone Africa was rejoiced over by some, but the Russians brought with them nothing but more aggression, corruption and chaos.

As the Russians enjoy their newfound influence, Americans appear to be looking for a way back in. They are now courting the regime under the guise of addressing “terror” but clearly with the sole intent of weakening the Russian hand.

Europe and America’s support for many “friendly” dictators across Africa, such as Uganda’s Museveni, and Washington’s ongoing attempts to befriend Mali’s junta despite its insults to democracy, clearly show Africans have no true ally in this proxy war being waged on their lands.

Well, dude, if Africans are going to permit themselves to be led by dictators, I doubt that you’re going to find that there’s going to be an absolute wall built against dealing with them. The US most-likely isn’t going to come in, forcibly eject your leadership, and impose elections, and I suspect that there are people in Mali who wouldn’t like it if they did.

You’ll probably get more support for a democratic government, but there’s going to be a limit as to how much by way of national interest that will be sacrificed for that, true enough.

As to wanting agency — Africans have agency. If the population of Mali collectively told the leadership of Mali that they weren’t going to be running Mali, said leadership wouldn’t be running Mali.

Stability in leadership and independence matters a great deal wherever on the dictatorial to democratic scale. France should have left all its former colonies to govern themselves without coercion but Charles de Gaulle was racist imperialist bastard so he set the tone to keep trying to reassert French colonial power. The US should have let France drown out in Vietnam like it did Britain in Suez but the US had to continue being bastards too

Regardless stability provides space for people to build communities generationally. Afghanistan pretty much lost that in the 1800s when the British arrived. Afghanistan was not an out of the ordinary place in terms of stability and violence like people make it out to be. They were par the course for the ~1700/1800s. Durrani Empire.

I bring them up to bring them up in comparison to Iran. Iran had periods of outside domination but were large enough and maintained a national identity that stretched thousands of years so for how regressive they are relative to the colonial powers, compared to countries like Afghanistan or Libya or Syria which have not had the ability to stave off foreign aggression, Iran is well developed. Large college educated population. Fairly developed industrial base. All that while sanctioned to hell

India and Pakistan have been at times sanctioned to hell and back by the former colonial powers, they’ve both managed something far better than the countries that get invaded all the time. Vietnam under siege for a century and then sanctioned to hell for overthrowing Pol Pot. China fits there too. They all had long periods in modern times of not being under siege and self determination. All progressing well in spite out sanctions, debt traps from former colonial nations, and threats of violence from our nations

Latin American countries are glimpsing an emergence from European and American violence. Brazil has potential to someday make what the US is doing with Venezuela too risky

Here we are 24 years since Afghanistan was invaded and 4 years since the Taliban returned to power. They’re bastards but I bet if they weren’t toppled in 2001, Afghanistan would be a lot better developed and progressing towards what people in our colonialist countries would prefer. We mostly all live in countries that were the evils of the world for centuries

So to Africa that’s the present of numerous proxy wars between the western aligned nations and Russia. France, Russia, the US are walking themselves into another southeast Asia where millions will be slaughtered and people out here will scoff at these countries because they’re so regressive and backwards regardless over the centuries of violence we bring them.

Someday there will be a nation in Africa that can keep Europeans and Americans from treating it like a video game. It may be authoritarian or it may be democratic. Either is better than letting Americans and Europeans play war games in their homes and make movies about how sad they are. I write all this because even in this hyper leftist Lemmy world, you really get that white savior sour grapes nonsense from probably European/American/Australian/New _Zealand/… users that I am certain would be great at building a road to hell paved with good intentions. The people are ignorant and self-righteous. The leaders are usually just evil overtly or benignly