The real reason why U.S. and French troops have been in Niger for Years

Guest post by Leo Hohmann at Leo Hohmann Substack

Uranium mine in Niger

In case there was any confusion over what NATO really stands for, the military alliance’s general secretary cleared things up with a bold tweet.

The U.S. military will pull all of its troops and assets out of Niger by mid-September, the Pentagon has announced, after days of talks with the country’s military junta finalized a timeline.

The Hill reports that a group of military leaders executed a coup in Niger last year, forming a military junta government that has geopolitically aligned with Russia. Talks of leaving Niger have lasted several weeks, with the timeline “finalized Sunday after four days of high-intensity negotiations,” according to The Hill, which adds:

“About 1,000 U.S. troops have been stationed in the country, for the purpose of counterterrorism operations against ISIS and al Qaeda-affiliated groups.”

That’s a big fat lie put out there by The Hill, a corporate media outlet based in Washington, D.C. But to be fair, the outlet did add this to its story:

“The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns,” Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine told The Washington Post last week. “It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us.”

But even this leaves a distorted view of the reality of why Americans and French are in Niger. The full story would be too harsh for the American masses to process but I’m going to give it to you because I know my audience can handle it.

The CIA, in cooperation with other Western intelligence assets, created al-Qaeda and ISIS and the real reason it built a $100 billion base in Niger has nothing to do with eliminating Islamic terrorism. The real reason that base is there, and why the French have been there for even longer, is because Niger is rich in Uranium and has vast untapped oil reserves, gold-mining operations, coal mining and other resources that the West has been exploiting for decades. And when I say “exploiting,” I mean in the worst way.

Here’s the dirty little secret I found hiding in plain sight on the website World Atlas, among other places on the Internet:

“Niger’s mineral sector faces several challenges such as the employment of children in the mines and fluctuating prices of minerals in the international market. A report by the US government estimated that more than 40% of children younger than 14 were working in mines. About 5% of the children were involved in hazardous activities. The government of Niger has made several efforts to eliminate child labor from the country’s mines. The efforts have been relatively unsuccessful, and in 2014 the US government reported that children were still working in Nigerien mines.”

Niger’s Uranium has been mined mostly by the French dating back to the 1950s when it was discovered there in large quantities. The country is currently the third or fourth-largest producer of Uranium in the world, depending on what source you believe. According to Mining-Technology the country’s Imouraren mine is the largest single Uranium deposit in Africa and the world’s second-largest Uranium deposit.

Gold mining causes lead poisoning in chidren. Uranium mining is even more horrific.

And, yet, with all this wealth of natural resources, the United Nations ranked Niger as the second least-developed country in the world in 2016 with serious problems of “food insecurity.”

A French company, Orano, to this day boasts about its ability to strip-mine Uranium in the northwest desert region of Niger.

Russia apparently offered the new government in Niger a better deal for its resources and so now it’s flipped sides. This is reportedly happening in more than a few countries in Africa. Chad is the next to potentially flip.

While staying silent about the West’s history of stripping Niger of its resource wealth and focusing instead on the “terrorism” angle, The Hill reports that “the U.S. withdrawal plan from Niger is for most equipment to be airlifted from the country before September, with everything out by midway through the month. Military infrastructure and some items too large to transport will be left to the Nigerien military… Niger ordered France to withdraw troops before negotiating with the U.S. on a withdrawal agreement. The coming withdrawal is another setback for the U.S. in the African Sahel region, which has experienced multiple coups in the past few years that have ultimately benefited Russia.”

Let’s face it. A big part, maybe the biggest part, of the post-World War II liberal rules based order has been about protecting the world’s resources for Western commercial interests. This has led to cheap electronics and other goods for America, Canada, Europe, etc. As that world order gets upended and shifts to a more bipolar arrangement, I anticipate the American standard of living will further decline and eventually collapse. The dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency has also allowed the U.S. to run up an insane amount of debt, and that is getting ready to come to an end as well.

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