Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
In this episode of One Decision In Brief, hosts Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's MI6, unpack President Donald Trump's recent comments on possible military intervention in Nigeria. They examine the political crises taking hold in the Sahel region, including the alleged genocide of Nigerian Christians and militant insurgencies from groups like Boko Haram and ISIS. Plus, they discuss the broader role the United States plays in dissolving other national conflicts in African countries like Sudan and Mali.
Episode produced by Situation Room Studios. Original music composed and produced by Leo Sidran
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Raffini: Hello and welcome to One Decision In Brief. I'm Christina Raffini, joined of course by our co-host, Sir Richard Dearlove. We want to talk about a couple of different subjects today, but we want to focus on Africa. We've got these comments from the president about possibly taking action to protect Christians in Nigeria. The Nigerian government pushing back saying this isn't something that's happening. We've got what's going on in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan. So so, Richard, where do you wanna start?
NIGERIA
Dearlove: Well, maybe Nigeria because it's such a bizarre comment for Trump to have made completely out of the blue. And there is a real problem of lawlessness in the northern parts of Nigeria, particularly with regard to Islamist insurgents. And there is no question that there is or has been a religious element to some of the violence, but there seems to be a sort of fundamental misunderstanding, which I told probably derives from Trump's reading of, you know, far right Christian websites, if that's the correct description of them. But a lot of these problems are actually tribal and also to do with the difference ethnically between pastoralists and, you know, tribes that are strictly nomadic on the edge of on the southern edges of the Sahara. So I think it's just an extraordinary comment to have been made completely out of the blue when it doesn't really take account of the reality on the ground. And, you know, are they really gonna fly in, you know, US paratroopers to Northern Nigeria?
Raffini: I don't think so. So, yeah, for those just catching up, on Saturday, he said he would, as he'd asked the DOD to prepare for possible fast military action in Nigeria if the African nation fails to crack down on the killings of Christians, specifically. He said he would go in guns ablazing to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities, he wrote. The thing about this is the Nigerian government has said many times, we welcome your help. They've had a really hard time combating these terrorist groups, combating Al Qaeda, combating Boko Haram, other Islamic terrorist organizations, because they don't control, as you mentioned, parts of the country. It's a decentralized area in a lot of the places, especially near the border. And, you know, you've seen a withdrawal of US forces, of French forces, of multinational organizations from the areas around this, Mali, including other countries where coups have basically forced, you know, US military, French military out of there, and that had also helped keep tabs on these militant groups. So the Nigerian government has said, we would be happy to collaborate with you. We could use the US help. We could use your air power. We could use your intelligence, but we are a sovereign nation. You can't just come in and drop bombs. Like, you have to come and work with us. You can't just bomb things because you saw it on the Internet, which seems to be a theme. What's your reaction in the UK been to any of this?
MALI AND THE SAHEL
Dearlove: Well, I mean, the UK has been involved, but not recently. I mean, we were helping the French. The UK militarily were helping with the French, in the areas of French influence like in Mali, where before the French withdrew, and we were providing some of the logistical support, the air support, not offensive air support, but logistical air support. So there was quite considerable numbers of British military in the region, but that came to an end really quite a long time ago. I mean, I can't put a specific date on it, but I think most of our listeners will be aware that the French have pulled the military out since, I mean, at the request supposedly of the military regimes in these countries, but what's happened in Mali is the government's completely lost control and it looks as though we might be on the point of an ISIS takeover of strategic parts of the country, which if that's the case, is actually pretty serious because it will mean that ISIS has a new area, let's call it ungoverned space, out of which they can operate and meet and mount, you know, offensive terrorist operations not only in other parts of Africa but maybe beyond in Southern Europe or into Mainland Europe. So it's a pretty worrying development.
Raffini: The other interesting issue about Mali in particular, so I was friends with somebody who was one of the last military officers in that US embassy as it was kind of collapsing and falling. And one of the things he was constantly talking about was this not only the influx of ISIS and militant groups in this area, but at the time of the influx of Russian paramilitaries and Wagner Group operatives as well who are helping destabilize these regimes and flip the governments to more repressive, more autocratic leaders. And then sometimes that arrangement hasn't worked out either because sometimes they then turn on the Russians and kick them out as well. It's a really dangerous time, and the US has scaled back its footprint in the area. I mean, the US withdrew a thousand troops from Niger last year. The biggest military base right now is in East Africa. It's in Djibouti. That's a base that often comes into play when the US has needed to evacuate other embassies in the region, especially during heightened terror organizations. That's about 5,000 troops there, and it's used kinda for the whole area. But we don't have a lot of coverage. Zone coverage is lacking. But, I mean, the problem with these areas, you look at them geographically,
Dearlove: is the vastness of them and the ability of these extremist groups to sort of escape into the desert. And they're very well adapted being local, you know, to survival, whereas it's a very hostile environment for foreign troops who are not necessarily trained or adapted to be active there. And, I mean, what you mentioned about the French being displaced by the Wagner Group and Russian influence groups, you're right. I mean, that hasn't really worked successfully. So there hasn't been a restoration of law and order with stronger regimes that had Russian backing. So you've got this increasing area of lawlessness, and I think it's very worrying because it's a way, it'll be the new focus for potential terrorist movement as Afghanistan was for a significant period of time.
Raffini: The other thing that I wonder, you know, and it's debated how much it comes into play here, but the US has also killed USAID. Right? And that was, for better or worse, American footprints in a lot of these countries, if nothing else, keeping eyes on what was going on, liaisons with the governments, providing at least open source information, if not, you know, cover for other people to do other things. I'm not saying that that's how that was used, but it is easier to conduct intelligence in countries when there are other Americans in the country. Right? If you're the only American in the country and USAID isn't there anymore, people are gonna question you immediately. Whereas if there's a big aid group, you can say, oh, our group is doing something like this. You know, doesn't that make it slightly easier for you to have folks on the ground? I'm wondering what the withdrawal of USAID from all these spaces is likely to do from an intelligence gathering point and just from a humanitarian point. You know, when people don't have food, when people don't have money, when people can't feed their families, they turn to extremism in a lot of places. We've seen it over and over again. That's a deterioration of the situation.
Dearlove: Definitely. But, actually, I think more significant than US departure. All of this was, you know, France's backyard and the French military presence, the French governmental presence was quite significant. And, I mean, I know from my continued friends in France, particularly in the French military, that they're really fed up with Macron because of his complete loss of interest and loss of engagement in these areas, which France, I wouldn't say controlled, but had a very, very heavy and significant influence and managed to maintain a certain degree of political stability. And what's happened? The French have gone. USAID has gone. The UK's involvement was very superficial. There are no other European powers that take an interest in the region or have any historical knowledge of it. So you've got a void which is being filled by very, very undesirable and violent developments.
CRITICAL MINERALS
Raffini: One of the things we've been talking about nonstop lately is critical minerals. I mean, Africa has a ton of them. We've also seen Chinese interests trying to make inroads and, in some cases, literally paving roads as part of their Belt and Road Initiative to get to some of these resources. I don't know how you fix this because the governments aren't strong enough, and the ones that are are not willing to engage.
Dearlove: No. It would require a serious intervention, and you're quite right. There's significant mineral wealth, most of which is being mined illegally and exported illegally, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if, you know, there's Chinese involvement in a lot of that illegal extraction. I mean, the one country which is reasonably stable and has this, you know, capability and wealth, mineral wealth, is Mauritania, which hasn't yet sort of fallen foul of the system. Of course, the other thing about Mauritania is the recent discovery of enormous gas reserves off the shore of Mauritania. So maybe that will become a new focus for stability and a strategic base for the West, but we're not really at that point yet.
SUDAN
Raffini: The other issue we wanna talk about, of course, is a long standing conflict, but that just seems to be getting worse, and that's what's happening in Sudan. I mean, there's video online of militants sieging a town and just massacring civilians, and at one point that you can actually see it from satellites. I mean, you could see the satellite view of, like, the scorched earth where they're just they're just decimating these civilian epicenters and towns.
Dearlove: It's the Rapid Support Forces taking the last large town in the area that in the Eastern part of Sudan that they failed to control. They now control pretty much the whole area. And I think when you compare this war to almost any other conflict in the world, it is the one with the highest human cost, particularly to the local population. And you've still got various Arab countries backing the Rapid Support Forces, whereas you've got other supporters for what is the legitimate Sudanese government, and the war is being sustained by proxies who are prepared to supply both sides of the argument. So the Turks are involved, the Turkish armaments industry is involved, and, similarly, other nations, you know, like the Russians are backing the Sudanese government. So it's a very, very complex, very bloody, very lethal war, which has no apparent outcome at the moment.
Raffini: The irony there is I went to Sudan with Pompeo in 2020. We were the first people to ever fly directly from Tel Aviv to Khartoum because they, at the time, you know, didn't have relations with the state of Israel. And part of that visit was part of the Abraham Accords trying to get Sudan to normalize relations as part of that. Pompeo talked about removing them from the terrorist list. There was this thing where one of the Middle Eastern Gulf nations, probably UAE, paid off this lawsuit for Sudan from a terror attack. It's very complicated web of trying to get everybody happy, but it was a back and forth and back and forth as to whether or not he would meet with the general first or the prime minister first. Because to your point, even at that time, a time of somewhat normalized relations, it wasn't quite clear who was in charge of the government. And it wasn't quite clear whether you meet with the people who kinetically on the force control the government or the people you want aspirationally to control the government. It was a very, very tense situation, but it was at the point in 2020, what, five years ago, where a secretary of state could visit there. You know, at this point, it just goes to show how quickly these things can devolve once again into a conflict that, you know, there's not a political solution, it doesn't seem, at this point.
Dearlove: Well, I think people will recall there was a sort of democratic uprising in Khartoum, which almost, well, it did oust the previous military government.
Raffini: That's it. The woman in the white dress, she's iconic. Yeah.
Dearlove: But then, you know, a new military group reasserted control on the promise of democratic government, which was then never implemented. And then you get this split between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, and it's a power struggle for control of the whole country, which has just split it in half, and you effectively, you've got two regimes fighting it out, both armed by proxies, and probably the biggest suffering of any civilian population in the world at the moment with massive problems of refugees going over the border and to Chad in particular, and Chad being a very poor country, completely unable to cope with the invasion. If Trump wants to be the real leader for the Nobel Peace Prize, if he can solve the civil war in Sudan, then he'll be a shoo in next time around.
SIGN OFF
Raffini: Alright. So, Richard, I think we're gonna have to leave it there for this week. That's it for this week's episode of One Decision In Brief. Of course, we'll have our regular episode dropping this Thursday. It's really interesting. It's on nuclear proliferation with a great expert on that, and we're gonna talk about those Trump nuclear testing comments. So we welcome your comments, questions, any feedback you have. Give us a follow, leave a comment, and if you want more, go to onedecision.com for a whole bunch more content as well as on our YouTube page. I'm Christina Raffini. Thanks for listening.
