In the last few years, there has been a spate of military coups in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan and Guinea. Military rule, long dormant in African politics, is back.
Coup leaders have suppressed protest, gagged the media and spilled much civilian blood in the name of public safety. They claim to be protecting their people from enemies both internal and external – some invented to justify their takeovers and others very real (while military regimes have arguably made violent extremism worse, they did not create it).
The generals fight with one another as much as with their enemies, leading to duelling coups in Burkina Faso and a full-on civil war in Sudan.
