:surprised-pika:
It all started so positively. Where have things gone wrong? Why does France now appear so unpopular in Africa?
Was it ever popular?
He [Emmanuel Macron] has kept French troops in the Sahel to fight the jihadist militants that kill so many local civilians, police and soldiers and supported the regional bloc Ecowas as it tries to defend electoral politics against military takeovers.
Maybe keeping troops around is not well received by the locals, I dunno, how would it feel if Mali sent troops to "secure an airbase" near Lyon? Are they fighting the Jihadists or are they also occupying land?
This year he [Emmanuel Macron] flew to Rwanda to publicly acknowledge French failures during the 1994 genocide.
Now we are getting somewhere...
After 13 French troops died in a helicopter crash in Mali in November 2019 he [Emmanuel Macron] demanded that West African leaders fly to France for an emergency summit, an outburst perceived as neo-colonial arrogance, particularly as Mali and Niger had suffered far heavier recent military losses.
Maybe because it is a neo-colonial relationship between the countries...
And as always: :france-cool:
Pretty much zero (minus a handful of expats, I would imagine). But Mahathir is especially infamous for using the usual tropes about Jewish manipulation of international finance, media and politics to frame things like the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. I guess having a mysterious foreign boogeyman is just expected rhetoric for his brand of conservative Muslim politics, like all right-wing populist movements.
But in a weird way, his outright skepticism of the West and "the Jews" may have led to his administration making some relatively good long-term economic decisions (pegging the Malaysian currency at RM3.80 to the US dollar and refusing IMF loans during the 1997 financial crisis).
In conclusion, Mahathir is a land of contrasts.