In the city’s bars nigerian feel intelligence services, and jihadists, the military of several countries, traffickers and employers
The Sahel, an area out of control
sometimes there is that move to the margins to hear what is happening in the center of the hurricane. The favorite place for espiarse between nazis and the allies in the Second World War was not Paris or Berlin or London. It was the capital of a neutral country and outside the focus of warfare: the Lisbon. Until there came, in an airplane, and every day, the German press and the british, in addition to ‘The New York Times’ from the other side of the pond. All the contenders had embassy and spies on the payroll who were engaged not only to read the newspaper of the enemy, but to see what things interested him the enemy of their own newspapers.
in Addition, the two secret services filtered messages in key in the ads and had to locate which ones were real and which instructions of collaborators behind enemy lines. In restaurants such as Martinho da Arcada or brazilian agents on both sides spied on knowingly while they all had breakfast with a wad of newspapers on the table.
In today’s world, there are a few places that could rival that of the Lisbon of the Second World War, where information is power. One of them is Niamey, Niger, a capital at the margin of sightseeing tours or business trips but where you play several conflicts at the same time, some of great importance: trafficking in people, drugs, weapons, and jihadism, natural resources and development aid. Every evening, the sun has set and dissipate something heat that paralyzes the life of the Sahel in the central hours of the day, the tables de la Terrasse, Cote Jardin, or the Grand Hotel du Niger are filled with expats and locals with the smell of liquid mosquito.
With views of the river Niger that traverses the capital of the second poorest country in the world, intelligence agents from all over the world exchange information or try to get it, while the military of several countries is having fun outside of their bases and traffickers of people, almost all ethnic tuareg, try to find out about new immigration measures of the politicians of the European Union and how they will affect their lucrative business, which has the almost obligatory stop at the north, in Agadez.
in Addition, in the postal orange sunset nigerien, when gardeners take advantage of to water with the hope that the heat does not evaporate the water within a few minutes, the colombian traffickers, who use the desert to send his cocaine from Guinea Bissau to north africa using the ancient routes of the camels, the same that is used by gangs of trafficking in women for the nigerian transported like cattle to Libya or Morocco or the sellers of weapons, but this time in the opposite direction: from Libya to the Sahel. There is a lot of money at stake pending the decisions that are made thousands of miles away, but whose application is dependent on people sitting in those cafés and restaurants.
Much more discreet, the members of the jihadi groups, some of them affiliated to the Islamic State in the Sahel (which ended up with the lives of four U.S. military in October of 2017) move in these circles with aspect westernized and always watching who may or may not kidnap or about where they can organize the next attack for it to have the impact that your terrorism needs.
These salafists can sit down to eat pizza together lawyers london negotiators for ransom or to a group of U.S. military pilots, drones, French or any of the 50 German soldiers or the 40 that Canada has deployed in the country with the blue helmet of the UN. There is no shortage of workers-known NGOS, which work to dignify the lives of millions of people subject to endemic hunger.
Although if you talk about money, nobody is better that the chinese ambassador and their entrepreneurs, competing with the French companies (advantages of the former metropolis) to get contracts for the exploitation of natural resources such as gold, iron, tin, phosphates, oil and, above all, the precious uranium conglomerate Areva extracted from the huge mine of Arlit and which serves to feed the nuclear power plants in france. These mines are of such importance that even the current president of the country was its director of operations before being passed to the policy.
Several countries that previously were alien to these deserts now open new embassies in their colonial part of the city between the boulevards and the large roundabouts, a match where luxury cars with camels.
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