Image by Pawel Czerwinski.

At the core of most demands for the US empire, we’re asking for kindergarten ethics– is that a stretch? It’s what the climate movement teaches about our relationship with the Earth: not to take and take and extract and extract because we have a reciprocal relationship. For most of its history, the US has ignored this, and that continues to be the case when it comes to the string of accusations leveled against the current president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré. And if all of us– the climate movement, peace lovers, people with basic compassion–want to save the planet, we need to stand against the attempts of the US and NATO/Western powers in trying to intervene in the Sahel’s process of sovereignty.

Several weeks ago, Michael Langley, the head of US Africa Command (or AFRICOM), testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and stated that Ibrahim Traore, the current president of Burkina Faso, “is using the country’s gold reserves for personal protection rather than for the benefit of its people,” an absurd claim, considering that the US Department of Defense, which Langley works for, has stolen $1 trillion from US taxpayers in this year’s budget alone. What’s more, AFRICOM itself has a deadly, well-documented history of plundering the African continent, often in coordination with NATO.

Take a guess why Langley might want to delegitimize Traoré’s governance and the larger project of the Alliance of Sahel States/AES (made up of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, all of which have recently allied under a confederation after recent seizures of power). Any takers? Hint: the answer is natural resources and military presence. Traoré has nationalized Burkina Faso’s foreign-owned gold mines in an attempt to actually use the land’s resources to benefit its people. Similarly, upon taking power in Niger, the current president Abdourahamane Tchiani........

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