NASR: If this coup in Niger works out, all governments in Africa should be worried about their military. So it's a very important moment because otherwise, if nothing is done, well, maybe Western powers should leave the region, actually, because there's no point in staying there if you are not willing to at least accept that the rules of the games are changing and adapt to them.
PERALTA: What do you mean by the rules of the game are changing?
NASR: Well, actually, the Russians are playing dirty. They are sending mercenaries who are committing human rights abuses. They are backing coups. They are - you know, it's the Cold War play, you see? So if Western powers think that only by development and seminars and only by thinking war on terror things will work out by themselves, I don't think it's going to work out.
PERALTA: So, I mean, what you're describing is just a region full of instability. And it's - look. This is already a region that has been battered by violence. What's the humanitarian outlook here?
NASR: It's a disaster - Wagner's involvement that I got to work on very seriously in Mali for a year. There's a blood train behind their involvement and zero results against jihadis, you see, because they are killing innocent people in villages in Mali and Burkina Faso, which is fueling the recruitment of jihadi groups, actually, and without getting any actual military results on the ground. So the civilians are paying the highest price.
Not easy to solve the problems with the Jihadists/Islamists when Algeria has this background:
Al-Qa’ida got badly burned in Algeria in the 1990s, where their local jihadist affiliate, the Armed Islamic Group or GIA, wound up deeply penetrated by Algeria’s clever and nasty military intelligence service (they, too, were trained by the KGB), which seeded terrorist ranks with agents provocateurs. These moles blew operations, caused lethal infighting, perpetrated atrocities to discredit the jihadists, and gradually ran GIA into the ground. By early 1997, Al-Qa’ida cut all ties with GIA, realizing it was a murderous disaster that was functionally under the control of Algerian intelligence. Their penchant for killing Algerian civilians by the hundreds for no particular reason caused consternation and embarrassment among terrorist higher-ups, who realized it was damaging their jihadist brand. Yes, you really can be too crazy to be in Al-Qa’ida.
https://observer.com/2016/06/how-to-defeat-the-islamic-state/
and Daesh/ISIS was manipulated/run by Syria.
In 2103: The U.S. has been unable to secure thousands of potentially dangerous shoulder-fired missiles known as “MANPADS” that were leftover from the Qaddafi regime in Libya. The U.S. has been unable to secure thousands of potentially dangerous shoulder-fired missiles known as “MANPADS” that were leftover from the Qaddafi regime in Libya, CBS News has learned.
MANPADS stands for “Man-portable air-defense systems.” According to a well-placed source, hundreds of the missiles have been tracked as having gone to Al Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algeria-based Sunni Muslim terrorist group fighting for control in Mali.
“I would imagine they’re trying to get their hands on as many weapons such as MANPADS as they can,” says CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate. “It’s a danger both to the military conflict underway in Mali and a real threat to civilian aircraft if, in fact, terrorists have their hands on these MANPADS.”
Before his overthrow and death in the fall of 2011, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was believed to have purchased 15,000-20,000 Soviet MANPADS. Concern over the whereabouts of the missiles - and the possibility that terrorists could buy them on the black market and even use them to shoot down American passenger jets - drove a U.S. effort to recover as many as possible. But only about 2,000 were accounted for prior to the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on Benghazi, Libya, according to the source. He describes those working to locate the missiles as “beside themselves” and “frustrated.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-libyan-missiles-from-qaddafi-era-missing-in-action/
Once Russia has lost its war in Ukraine, Africa will also be a calmer place.