Niger coup: sorting facts from propaganda | Global Dispatch

Plus: celebrating Muslim fashion with Hijarbie Global Dispatch | The Guardian

Editor's note There was a line that caught my eye in the article written for us by the Nigerien author and journalist Garé Amadou in Naimey, the capital of the country currently experiencing the upheaval of the recent military coup. He said that people were expecting the worst and stockpiling food as best they could amid that sense of fear that comes to ordinary people too often around the world as they wait for the spats of political elites to play out. Some hailed the coup as a welcome reaction against the control of the neocolonialist French, whose armed forces are in Niger and who use the country’s uranium to fuel their nuclear power stations, keeping France’s lights on while seemingly complacent about political stability in the poverty-ridden country. In Niger, less than 20% of the population has access to electricity and the country languishes close to the bottom of the UN human development index – 189th out of 191. People face growing insecurity from violent jihadist bandits on their borders with Mali and Burkina Faso. Nigeriens live in fear of that lawlessness but they are also terrified that their own jobless young men will see their only future in joining these marauding gangs with their vague political ideologies and loose links to religion. Some believe the Russian mercenary group Wagner – which has a presence in Mali – might help with the fight against terrorism. Sadly, last month’s coup was a simpler story, staged by a group of Nigerien generals fearing they were about to lose their jobs under the incumbent president and thereby ending up with a less financially cushioned retirement than they had hoped for. These elites learned all they know from their colonisers; they might try to drum up support from civil society groups with anti-French feeling, but ultimately it is the same old story: a group of very greedy men caring nothing for their people. 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