One of America’s Favorite Generals Leads the Niger Coup
NAIROBI—American military commanders were dismayed last month when a clique of top army officers seized power in Niger, the U.S.’s main ally in the fight against Islamist militants in West Africa. What stung perhaps most sharply were televised images of one particular man, Brig. Gen.
Moussa Salaou Barmou, among the coup plotters. Barmou is a guy the U.S. military has courted for almost 30 years.
He is a guy the U.S. sent to Washington, D.C.,’s prestigious National Defense University. He is a guy who has invited American officers to his home for dinner.
He is a guy in charge of elite forces crucial to stemming the flood of al Qaeda and Islamic State fighters across western Africa. “Brig. Gen.
Barmou," a U.S. defense official said just a few months ago, “is the guy." He may still be. In the two weeks since Niger’s coup, Barmou has emerged as the main diplomatic channel between the U.S.
and the junta. American officers and diplomats have his number in their cellphones and think he’s their best chance of restoring democracy and preventing a messy regional war that would plunge one of the poorest parts of the world deeper into crisis. Barmou sat down in Niamey, Niger’s capital, for two hours on Monday with Victoria Nuland, the acting U.S.
deputy secretary of state. The talks have so far proved frustrating. But Nuland, knowing Barmou’s long affinity for the U.S., urged him to broker a deal that would allow Niger and its longtime Western allies to get back to fighting al Qaeda, Islamic State and Boko Haram militants and stop the country from becoming another African outpost for Russia and its paramilitary Wagner Group.
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