Foreign Digest: West Africa, Iraq and Syria

West Africa: There was a military coup recently in Guinea-Bissau after a closely contested presidential election. The military takeover in the coup-plagued former Portuguese colony was just the latest in the last few years in West Africa, after a wave of military coups in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2021. As I had posted, the coups in Mali and Niger overthrew pro-Western elected governments in the former French colonies that the United States and its Western allies, especially France, were helping against Islamist terrorists. The coup leaders in Mali and Niger, in addition to having anti-colonial views toward the French, were dissatisfied with the governments’ actions against the Islamists and turned away from the West and toward Kremlin-backed Russian mercenaries. Terrorist attacks have increased, however. One encouraging development was that a military coup was thwarted in the region in Benin by the elected government. The Economic Community of West African States, which has condemned all the coups and called for returns to elective representative government, is supporting Benin. Iraq and Syria: The United States had conducted joint raids against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria with the Iraq and Syrian Governments. After an attack last week by IS against American forces that killed two U.S. servicemen and a American translator in Syria, the U.S. and Jordan struck several dozen IS targets in Syria. The Syrian Government’s cooperation with the U.S. against IS is a significant change in Syrian policy from the Baathist Assad tyranny that ruled the Arab State for five decades until last December. The U.S. recently lifted sanctions against Syria. The IS broke away from al-Qaeda, the Sunni Islamist terrorist organization responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack ever, the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks on America that killed 3,000 people. The new Syrian Government is led by former Islamist guerillas wthat had been affiliated with al-Qaeda, but, backed by Turkey, brought down the Assad regime, despite support for it from Iran, Hezbollah (the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization backed by Iran) and the Russian Federation, after a 14-year multi-lateral Civil War. But the Syrian leadership, which had ruled a Syrian Province during the Civil War, has renounced terrorism and opposes Syria being used as a base by terrorists to threaten other States, is implementing a policy of tolerance for religious and ethnic minorities, and is transitioning to a constitutional parliamentary republic, as I have posted, and wants peace with its neighbors, including even Israel. AsI have also posted, Syria is also destroying the production infrastructure for captagon, the synthetic narcotic that had been causing addiction problems for for the people residing in neighboring Arab States. The overthrow of the two Baathist regimes of Iraq in 2003 and Syria last year have been critical victories for the U.S. and its allies in the War on Terrorism, launched after September 11, that continue to help counter the threat from Islamist terrorism. The U.S. maintains a small troop presence in Iraq and Syria against al-Qaeda and IS, and has continued to fight the al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia.