By The People’s Forum\Media Digest
Photos: People’s Dispatch\ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Mali
Last weekend, the heads of state of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, met for their first summit solidifying their new confederation known as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
The strengthened unity emerges from their shared long-term frustrations with what many refer to as a “neocolonial” relationship with the French (each of their nation’s former colonizer).
The AES leaders agreed that there would be no attempts to rejoin ECOWAS, an economic formation of west African states which they characterized to be compromised by western influence and “betraying its founding principles.”
On the military front, Niger has continued to break their ties with the west by recently expelling one thousand US military personnel from Niger’s Air Base 101.
At the conference, each of the three heads of state’s reaffirmed their collective commitment to economic cooperation and regional security in the face of relentless western imperialism.
