Joseph McCarthy

When soldiers seized power in Bamako in 2020, Ouagadougou in 2022, and Niamey in 2023, they offered a familiar promise: civilian governments had failed, foreign partnerships had grown corrupt, and only military rule could restore sovereignty, security, and national dignity. Across the Sahel, millions exhausted by years of insecurity and perceived foreign condescension believed them.

For decades, Africa's summits with external powers have followed a familiar script. African leaders fly to Paris, Brussels, Washington, Beijing, Moscow or New Delhi; their hosts roll out the red carpet, deliver speeches about partnership, announce ambitious initiatives and pose for the customary family photograph. Communiqués are issued, declarations adopted, and everyone returns home—yet little changes. Investment gaps stay wide, trade stays lopsided, industrialisation crawls, and Africa keeps exporting raw materials while importing finished goods.

For years, the word disinformation conjured a familiar picture: troll farms, fake accounts and automated bots flooding the internet with crude propaganda. Those methods still exist, but influence operations have matured. The most effective messenger today is rarely an anonymous account. It is a real person, with a real name, a credible public profile and convictions he appears to hold sincerely.

At dawn on 18 June 2026, fighters stormed Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey, the most heavily guarded site in Niger's capital. It is not merely an airport. The complex houses the air force, most of the country's drones, the headquarters of the Alliance of Sahel States' joint force, the Russian personnel meant to help crush the insurgency, and even uranium stocks the state hopes to sell. JNIM claimed the assault, which killed eleven soldiers and two civilians. It was the second strike on that complex this year; the Islamic State's Sahel Province claimed a January raid. Both of the region's jihadist franchises have now breached the defences of a capital. This was not just another attack. It was a strategic signal.

Washington's common interest community laws are undergoing their most significant overhaul in decades.

When soldiers seized power across the Sahel between 2020 and 2023, they offered strikingly similar justifications .

Alliance Of Sahel States Map Facebook X Pinterest WhatsApp

By Joseph McCarthy Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger's withdrawal from ECOWAS, and their construction of a rival security framework under the

General Abdourahamane Tiani seized power in 2023 on a familiar Sahelian promise: that soldiers, not politicians, would protect civilians from jihadist violence. The attempted coup against him on the night of 28-29 August 2026, staged by a mutinous faction calling itself the Armed Forces for the Restoration of the Fatherland, turned that promise on its head. The guns pointed at Tiani's rule in Niamey did not belong to jihadists. They belonged to his own soldiers, and that is the greater danger this episode exposes.

On May 12, 2026, Maryland enacted significant amendments to the Maryland Franchise Registration and Disclosure Law.