\nHow Many More Governments Will American-Trained Soldiers Overthrow?
For decades, U.S.-trained officers \u2014from Haiti\u2019s Philippe Biamby and Romeo Vasquez of Honduras to Egypt\u2019s Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan\u2014 have overthrown U.S.-allied governments all over the world. Rarely, however, have so many coups been so concentrated in a region over such a short period of time.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Last fall, after returning from a trip, alongside other top State Department and Pentagon officials to the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, Ambassador Victoria Nuland was upbeat. \u201cWe went to the region in force. We were looking, in particular, at how the U.S. strategy towards the Sahel is working. This is a strategy that we put in place about a year ago to try to bring more coherence to our efforts to support increased security,\u201d she said during an October conference call with reporters.
After Rolling Stone pointed out that U.S.-trained military officers had conducted seven coups in these same countries\u2014Burkina Faso, three times; Mali, three times; and Mauritania, one time\u2014since 2008, Nuland was less sanguine. \u201cNick, that was a pretty loaded comment that you made,\u201d she replied. \u201cSome folks involved in these coups have received some U.S. training, but far from all of them.\u201d
Isn’t that Francafrique, anyway?
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