You're invited
Please join the coming weekend's discussions with journalist Philip Obaji and US Ambassador Robert Holley. 📌‼️ Plus: a short ME201 reading list.
We have two guests coming to join us for two separate conversations this weekend. Philip Obaji will be discussing Russia's clandestine activities in Africa with us on Saturday, and Ambassador Robert Holley will be joining our ME201 class on Sunday. All subscribers are welcome to both events.
Philip Obaji
Russia’s clandestine activities in Africa (and what they mean for Europe).
Readers know Philip already because last July, I invited him on our podcast to discuss the work he’s been doing to track the Wagner Group’s atrocities in Africa. As I wrote in the podcast notes,
… The investigative journalist Philip Obaji has been following the activities of the Wagner group in Africa for years. He recently spent months investigating human rights abuses by Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic, where he was abducted and tortured, only narrowly escaping alive.
His reports of the way Russian mercenaries are behaving in Africa won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been studying their behavior in Ukraine. Or Syria, for that matter, or Chechnya. It appears the Russians have gone full Mr. Kurtz, mass-murdering and raping everyone in their path with impunity, hauling off the gold and diamonds from the mines, and selling them on the black market. This is how Russia manages to sustain itself despite the West’s sanctions. Their motto, writes The Sentry, is “leave no trace”—in other words, kill everyone, including women and children.
It will be a timely discussion, because with all the focus on Ukraine, we might be at risk of forgetting that our new ally is not just a threat to Europe, but a global menace. Since it’s now our policy to encourage rather than contain Russian imperialism, it will be interesting to learn more about what we now support.
We’ll be meeting this coming Saturday, February 22, at 1830 Paris time.
Note that this is two hours later (and the day earlier) than our usual ME201 meeting time. 1830 (6:30 p.m.) Paris time is 1230 New York time, 1830 Abuja time, 1730 London time, 1900 Kyiv time, and 2230 Delhi time.
⏱️ If you’re in none of those cities, here’s an international meeting planner.
Russia’s disinformation campaign, Philip tells me, is growing across Africa. Moscow is deliberately fostering instability in the Sahel to encourage migrants to flee northward. The cynicism is measureless—to gin up support for its European puppets, like Germany’s AfD, Russia deliberately destabilizes whole societies and regions in Africa.1 When migrants flee the chaos that Russia itself is causing, it boosts the fortunes of the European far-right parties it controls. Russia aims to take control of Europe this way without firing a shot—except for those fired at terrifiedAfrican civilians. The Western media is not especially interested in those civilians, unfortunately, which means that many don’t grasp that the migrant crisis and the politicians who insist that only they can solve it are both Russian tools.
The last time I spoke to Philip, we discussed shrinking budgets for news and the reluctance of newspapers to pay foreign correspondents to do this kind of complex, dangerous, and time-consuming work. I encouraged him to raise money to cover his expenses on GoFundMe, instead, and publish his work on Substack. The Dutch investigative journalist Yarno Ritzen agreed with me, it seems, and started a GoFundMe campaign to support him:
… A brave journalist and an unparalleled champion of the protection of uprooted and ordinary people in conflict areas, Philip Obaji—in the last seven years—has documented up to 100 [locations] of human rights abuses and exploitation by Russian paramilitaries deployed in West and Central Africa.
He has investigated and reported gut-wrenching massacres, rape, torture and oppression of vulnerable villagers by mercenaries from the Wagner Group and its successor, the Africa Corps, in the Central African Republic (CAR) and in parts of West Africa, despite threats in this incredibly risky context, including being held hostage by CAR rebels and detained by CAR soldiers who tortured him on the orders of Russian paramilitaries. Obaji, whose investigative work has been published by some of the world’s most authoritative media outlets, has also spent the last decade uncovering the trafficking of refugees in West and Central Africa, rightly portraying it as an overlooked consequence of war.
Obaji changed the way the world understood the Wagner Group. He has been the voice for the oppressed and the source of hope for some of the world’s most abused people. As a journalist, he has built a career that is focused on the fearless pursuit and expression of truth.
I also suggested that Philip look to see if perhaps USAID had a grant program for journalists doing work like his. It’s the kind of project the agency used to fund. That option, unfortunately, has been closed.
You can read more of Philip’s work here:
And follow him on social media, here:
The Zoom link is at the bottom of this newsletter, after the paywall.
If you know people who might have a special interest in this discussion, send me a note and I’ll send them an invitation.
Robert Holley
But that’s not all! On Sunday, February 23, at 1630 (4:30 pm) Paris time (our usual time, in other words), former US Ambassador Robert Holley will be joining our Middle East 201 class to discuss his experiences as the American ambassador to Morocco and later, as the executive director of the Moroccan American Center for Policy.
From his bio:
Robert M. Holley has been intimately involved in international affairs his entire career. After Vietnam-era service as an Army helicopter pilot, Mr. Holley joined the US Foreign Service, where he devoted 21 years to a variety of assignments in Washington, Europe, Latin America, and North Africa. He retired from the State Department in 2002.
Mr. Holley is well-versed on North Africa and the Maghreb. He is particularly knowledgeable about Morocco and the Western Sahara conflict, having served as the principal US Government interlocutor between the Moroccan Government and the Polisario from 1998 to 2001.
Mr. Holley is the recipient of an impressive variety of military and civilian awards for his service to his country with the United States Army and the Department of State, to include the Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award and the Silver Star.
Our readers already know Bob from the article he published here in November, Fracturing the Security Map, warning that Trump’s return and Ukraine’ defeat would spark a stampede toward nuclear proliferation. We discussed that article in this podcast, and it’s worth listening to now if you haven’t already, because unfortunately, we’re another step closer to the world he and I both fear.
Many steps closer, actually.
All subscribers are welcome to join, even if you haven’t been keeping up with the reading about Morocco, but priority in the discussion is reserved for our regular students.
For ME201 students, here are some of Bob’s articles to prepare you for the discussion. Some of them address questions you asked in last Sunday's class:
This article by his colleague, former US Ambassador to Morocco Edward Gabriel, also makes for a good introduction to recent Moroccan history: 20 Years of Development in Morocco.
See you this weekend!
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