Interview by Andrew Smith
Disclaimer: All interviews reflect the individual views of our guests. This interview has been edited for readability and clarity of speech
Ulf Laessing is the Director of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German think tank. Based in Bamako, Mali, he currently spends his time across Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauretania. Previously working as a journalist, Ulf built a vast network in Africa and the MENA region, covering everything from wars and politics to energy and banks for 23 years at Reuters.
Ulf is also the author of 'Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi', available here: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Libya-Since-Gaddafi-Laessing/dp/1849048886
Before we dive into the current state of the Sahel, could you please walk us through your career as a whole and talk about how you got to where you are now, perhaps sharing your current situation with our audience?
I studied History, Economics and Islamic Arabic studies in Germany and Kuwait and then initially trained as a journalist and worked for 23 years for Reuters. The first ten years were spent in Germany and then the focus was on the Middle East and Africa. I worked primarily in conflict points such as Libya, Nigeria and Sudan.
Currently, I work for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It's a political foundation similar to what you have in the US with the National Democratic Institute. It's linked to the Christian Democratic Union of Germany party (CDU). We promote democracy through think tank work, so it's not as fast-paced as journalism anymore, especially wire journalism. It's more about thinking things through and trying to promote democracy. But it's not very easy in a region where military governments are springing up.
I currently live in Mali, and it's interesting. When I came here in late 2021, there was still everything: the relationship between the Sahara countries in Mali was still here, the French were here, the German army, Americans, etc. - there were no problems in Niger. And then it really went step by step with Russia taking over this region and Westerners leaving. I'm one of the few who are still here. Some European embassies are even closing here. But we've decided to stay indefintely so as not to leave a whole region to the Russians.
I think the Russian presence is overhyped. If you look at the figures, you will see that there are around 1000 mercenaries in Mali. The French had, in the whole region, more than 5000 soldiers, yet struggled to make a difference, so the Russians will fail as others have. It's just what makes it dangerous is their very sophisticated disinformation campaign, using troll factories in Russia or even local influencers to claim all sorts of things which many people unfortunately believe.
You are currently based in Bamako, Mali, during the nation’s increasingly violent fight against rebels in its North. What has it been like living in the country during this tense time?
I used to work as a foreign correspondent for Reuters covering various conflict zones in Arabic or African countries, but Mali is a bit different. My movements are limited because of the security situation. Bamako, the capital of Mali, is fine, and you can partially travel into the southern part of the country, but the north is off-limits. I went there three times but always on an organised trip with the United Nations or the German army to the centre. So it feels strange being limited to the capital or parts of the country. I feel like I don't live here, or at least I can't travel as much as I would like to, but that's unfortunately the situation.
Jumping into your long career at Reuters, what was your personal experience as a journalist during and immediately after the Libyan Revolution? How did it shape or reshape your worldview generally, if it did?
In Libya, there was a lot of hope. I was there in 2011, on the day that Gaddafi fell. I lived there as one of the few foreign journalists from 2013 to 15 and then was based in Tunisia, also covering Libya from 2017 to 2019.
The case of Libya was interesting. Of course, Gaddafi was a villain; everybody wanted him gone. He was this crazy autocrat. But his fall has had an extreme ripple effect on the Sahel region where I'm working now. In Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, there was love here for Gaddafi because he invested a lot in these nations and communities. He wanted to become a kind of leader or king of African leaders. So, he spent a lot of Libya's oil wealth on African countries. That's why Gaddafi is perceived very differently among different groups.
When he fell, all these Tuareg fighters from northern Mali who used to work for Gaddafi went back to create havoc. They seized northern Mali, triggering the Western military invention and an Islamic jihad. For Western people or, for the people of Libya, toppling Gaddafi was a moment of joy, yet for many people here in the Sahel, it was a catastrophe.
The video of Hillary Clinton celebrating immediately after Gaddafi’s death was circulated a lot in the West, so perhaps the nuances of his fall weren’t immediately grasped in the West.
In 2020, you published a book entitled 'Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi' - in it, you offer a rare insider’s look at post-revolution Libya. Can you walk us through the main ideas presented in this book? What, if anything, have you felt has changed since 2020 when it was published?
Unfortunately, Libya didn't turn into the vibrant democracy people hoped for. Instead, it's now basically a mafia rogue state. The former rebels came from very diverse backgrounds, from Islamists to former army police officers to regular civilians, and so they could never work out who should rule Libya. This division has prevented a government from forming, basically leaving the country hostage to these rebels. Libya now has a government in Tripoli which is internationally recognized but also very weak, then in the east of Libya, there's a government which has a lot of military power with support from Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. But overall, it's a very fragmented country.
Libya is somehow held together because there's so much oil wealth which should be spent to develop the country, but instead, it is used to pay off these various government forces so they don't fight each other. When I was last there in 2019, that was in the middle of a civil war. The eastern government tried to topple the western government. Now it's quieter, it appears to be more peaceful however, peace is far from really existing. At the moment, the militias or the government forces who run the country are happy to take the state for all its worth, including all its oil wealth.
With growing isolationist sentiment in the West, anti-intervention advocates criticise NATO’s intervention against Gaddafi. Whether this criticism stems from isolationist sentiment or ideological alignment with Gaddafi, he has become a quasi-martyr for those critical of interventionism in the West.
Looking back over the 13 years of violent conflict in post-Gaddafi Libya, do you think Western intervention was a mistake? Should the West have left this to be a Libyan internal issue and allowed Gaddafi to stay in power for the sake of stability?
I think it was the right decision from the NATO countries to intervene. The consequences were, unfortunately, unforeseen and disastrous. I think the decision made by some NATO countries like France and the United States, as well as some Arab nations like Qatar, to launch airstrikes when Gaddafi's army was about to take over Benghazi made sense, as there was a realistic fear that there could be a massacre of civilians.
What happened later, what wasn't planned, was for the NATO countries to aid the rebels topple Gaddafi. I think they had hoped the rebels could finish the jobs themselves. Then, when there was a kind of stalemate, NATO countries and Qatar helped the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi just to finish the war. With hindsight, it's ironic: it wouldn't have made a difference whether NATO had intervened or not. The result would probably be the same: fragmentation and looming chaos. It seems that Gaddafi was holding the country together with an iron fist.
Many Libyans don't want him back. I don't know anyone who wants him back except some in the East because there are a lot of former Gaddafi officers who are now there. Generally, though, Libyans don't want him back. It is, however, understandable that they miss a more orderly state. There was a sense of security under Gaddafi: services and electricity were available, there weren’t shortages of banknotes. They feel that all of these crises we’ve seen post-Gaddafi shouldn't be occurring in Libya, given all of that country’s oil wealth.
Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, the world’s youngest leader, came to power in 2022 during his country’s fight against Islamic insurgency. Traoré has spoken out against French influence in Africa, drawing comparisons to Thomas Sankara, and often invokes revolutionary slogans. Given his ideological stance, what do you make of his leadership, and does his rise signal a broader resistance to neo-colonialism in Africa? Why do you think this is happening now?
Burkina Faso is in the worst crisis in the Sahel. Its security situation is much worse than in Mali. The government controls maybe half of the territory, whereas the rest is under the direct control of jihadists. To provide context on when this coup happened: there was an elected government that first neglected security and was unable to withstand the jihadist voice, and there was another putschist who came who promised to clamp down on Islamists. Then, after seven months, Traoré removed that officer to take charge himself.
He is on a mission to rescue Burkina Faso, but he doesn't have the means to do so. The situation is so dire that even a Western country with all its military might would have difficulty restoring security. So, to shore up support and also divert attention from the fact that the government is unable to restore security, Traoré has, from day one, played the Pan-Africanist card. He's framed himself as a new Thomas Sankara, against “Western imperialism”. Interestingly, even during the night of the first putsch, Russian flags could be seen, so clearly this has always been part of his political identity. He frames himself as the leader of this new pan-Africanist sovereignist movement, which we see in many parts of Africa, especially in the Sahel.
There is a genuine problem in former French colonies: France has stayed too long in her former colonies. While they did grant independence to Mali, Burkina Faso and their other colonies, the French kept a backdoor in Africa; they left troops there or interfered regularly in domestic politics, and now a readjustment is needed from the perspective of people in West Africa and former French colonies. These people say that France has been here too long, they don't want to deal with them, they want something new, they want full liberation. So that's the idea of this pan-African movement.
Part of this rhetoric also comes from military failures. The military governments of Burkina Faso and Mali have not been very successful in fighting jihadists so they tend to overplay anti-French feelings to save face, diverting blame from themselves. So, while there is a genuine desire in many African former French colonies to break away from France and the West and try something new in an African way like Thomas Sankara has tried, it is also a convenient narrative to use as a scapegoat at times.
The three Sahel nations of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso are similar in that they’ve recently experienced an anti-French coup, welcomed Russian mercenaries, are former members of ECOWAS, and are rife with Islamist insurgency. In September 2023, they formed the Alliance of Sahel States, which technically has the stated end goal of merging into a single state.
A large part of the anti-French sentiment amongst the ruling juntas is that they oppose the expropriation of resources to France and the West. Do you think we are witnessing a revival of pan-African sentiment, ideologically reminiscent of Sankara, Lumumba, and perhaps even Gaddafi across the region?
This Alliance of Sahel States essentially started as an anti-defence pact. There was a coup in Niger in July last year, and ECOWAS threatened with the help of France to intervene militarily to restore the ousted elected president. Then Mali and Burkina Faso, who were already close to Russia and had their own military coups, came to the rescue of Niger, stating that “if there's an attack against you, we'll stand with you.”
So the Niger putsches, working closely with Burkina, Mali and with Russia, have engaged less with Western countries. They asked American troops just to leave the city of Agadez, where there was a US military base, and they also ended European training and military assistance. So, in a way, this new Alliance of Sahel States frames themselves as pan-Africanists, as Sovereignists tapping into the feelings of the citizens of these three countries where people have a deeply personal opposition to Western states.
There is a lot of Russian disinformation that fosters this sentiment. It’s often exaggerated. There are all sorts of crazy claims made, such as France supporting jihadists. So people unfortunately lacking mainstream media, like in the US or Europe, believe these types of rumours and accept anti-western sentiment. This Alliance of Sahel States is kind of a response to it. These states are some of the three poorest countries and they're all battling jihadists, they are not very successful, they have little to offer to their people. So they created this alliance as a way of showing they’ve at least done something, and they have by creating a new alternative to ECOWAS.
A few months after Niger’s August 2024 coup, the junta reached out to Russia for military assistance in its fight against Islamist insurgents. Soon thereafter, French and American forces were asked to leave the country, with Russian troops entering the American base after the decision was made by the Nigerien junta.
A similar story has played out in Mali and Burkina Faso, which also work closely with Russia and the Wagner Group. How do you interpret the general pivot toward Russia in the Sahel, and do you think this choice will bring about any security benefits or improvements to these nations?
I think Russia has two goals. Firstly, the Russian economy is suffering to some extent from Western financial sanctions due to the invasion of Ukraine. Selling weapons and mercenary services is a way to raise additional funds. There are rumours that they also want to get their hands on raw materials such as gold like they already have in the Central African Republic, so there's a business logic to it. More importantly, Russia sees it as a new Cold War front, Europe is very vulnerable here, and because the Sahel is very poor and the gateway between north and Sub-Saharan Africa, with the main migration route south up north to the Mediterranean coast going through Niger, it is a very geopolitically important region.
By coming close to these military governments, Russia also hopes, in my personal opinion, to stimulate a bit of poverty-driven migration to Europe. They know Europe is very weak here, the southern flank of Europe. That's why they have a very sophisticated disinformation campaign: to undermine European and Western interests and frame Russia as a new alternative, supposedly without any colonial past. Which is wrong, but that’s their claim.
So, for Russia, it's business and it's politics. They see that it's a new Cold War front here, and they also realise that Western or European countries don't pay much attention to it. They all focus on Ukraine. So, this has provided a means to strike European or Western interests here in the Sahel.
In August 2024, Ukrainian soldiers backed Tuareg rebels in Northern Mali that had long fought the central government, which, for its part, had employed the Russian mercenary outfit, the Wagner Group. The Ukrainian intervention was decried by the Alliance of Sahel States. Niger and Mali even severed diplomatic relations with Ukraine as a result. What do you make of the Ukraine throwing its support behind the Tuareg insurgency?
Is it simply a one-off occurrence, or do you see it as indicative of a larger proxy showdown between Russia and Ukraine, or perhaps Russia and the West, in Africa, bearing in mind that a similar proxy conflict between Ukraine and Russia has emerged in Sudan?
There was apparently some training of Tuareg rebels in Ukraine, but that's the only sign of support that was there. I'm not sure what Ukraine could have done to help the rebels in northern Mali; it's their own territory, and they know their way around the landscape. I think Ukraine saw it as part of the information battle with Russia, especially for European or American audiences - it shows that they are also trying to hit Russian interests on different continents. But with hindsight, I think it was a bad move because Ukraine is at the same time trying to counter this disinformation campaign from Russia, which frames itself as a victim of NATO aggression. And many people unfortunately believe it here.
The claim that Ukraine helped train some Tuareg rebels, gave Russia an opening to state that Ukraine is really helping terrorists. Ukraine had just started to open embassies here in the region, first with Mauritania and then another in Senegal. Furthermore, the Ukrainian foreign minister visited several African nations earlier this year. So I think that it was totally the wrong move. It may have shown the West that they are active in hitting Russia wherever they are, but it actively harmed Ukrainian interests in Africa.
You have made multiple references to Russian disinformation campaigns in the region and with this alleged collaboration between Ukraine and Tuareg rebels you once more claim that it plays into a Russian disinformation narrative. Could you give some examples of active Russian disinformation campaigns that are happening in the Sahel?
Russia has two influencers; they’ve created a new news agency called the Africa Initiative that has two correspondents here in Mali and also in other countries in the region. At a first glance, this looks like a professional news agency, but it always has this twist against the West that furthers pro-Russian narratives. They have also opened cultural institutes called “Russian houses”. The other day, they had an event here where they invited people from central Mali who had been victims of jihadist violence to have a video conference with students in Belgorod, a city in Russia. They were trying to frame the shelling of military targets in Belgorod in Russia by Ukraine as the same as jihadist terrorism. People, unfortunately, believe it.
They also opened a journalism school here that furthers their soft power influence, an influence which the West has cut down on. They have professional influencers on X, Instagram and Facebook who work with locals from the ground, and they push certain agendas. No matter whether a topic is against Israel, France or other European states, it always features a pro-Russia angle. And they have these troll factories. They are so very, very sophisticated.
It should be noted that America is still engaged in the region. America has a really important role to play here. Europe, in a way, is paralyzed. France is the main player here, and other European countries like Germany and Italy are reluctant to challenge the French. The French political establishment is very much focused on making a comeback in Western Africa. Primarily with its former colonies, which I don't think is going to be successful because there's just too much anti-French sentiment. The US, however, still has a chance to maintain strong influence. I hope they will stay engaged here because the US doesn't have a colonial history that negatively influences relations, and so it can be seen as a neutral player. So, I hope that the current US administration or the next administration keeps engaging with the Sahel.
Commentaires