Firstly, the French troops were invited by Mali’s government to help it put down its jihadist insurgents. The Russian ones were invited, in turn, for the same reason, after a media-propaganda campaign by Russia that played on historic animosity dating from the colonial period. A propaganda campaign filled with angry rhetoric and sounding much like your rant.
Meanwhile, Mali is still a semi-failed state with a jihadi problem which was caused by neither France nor Russia. And on top of that it now has brutal boorish Russian mercenaries instead of generally well-behaved French regular soldiers. Mali got a terrible deal and it was their own fault.
You know why I’m not embarrassed to say that? Precisely because I’m not a colonialist. I believe that Mali is not a child, it’s an adult. It has agency, it’s not a colony of anyone, it’s a sovereign country that can make choices for itself. If anyone’s views here are colonialist, it’s yours.
JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Firstly, the French troops were invited by Mali’s government to help it put down its jihadist insurgents. The Russian ones were invited, in turn, for the same reason, after a media-propaganda campaign by Russia that played on historic animosity dating from the colonial period. A propaganda campaign filled with angry rhetoric and sounding much like your rant.
Meanwhile, Mali is still a semi-failed state with a jihadi problem which was caused by neither France nor Russia. And on top of that it now has brutal boorish Russian mercenaries instead of generally well-behaved French regular soldiers. Mali got a terrible deal and it was their own fault.
You know why I’m not embarrassed to say that? Precisely because I’m not a colonialist. I believe that Mali is not a child, it’s an adult. It has agency, it’s not a colony of anyone, it’s a sovereign country that can make choices for itself. If anyone’s views here are colonialist, it’s yours.