ECOWAS advises on Niger
Niger’s ousted president should not get any food
08/10/2023 10:36 am
Tension surrounding the military coup in Niger remains high. The international community ECOWAS advises how to proceed after an ultimatum has expired. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Guterres is worried about the imprisoned ex-President Bazoum. He complains about total isolation.
Two weeks after the military took power in Niger, the West African community of states ECOWAS is discussing how to proceed against the putschists this Thursday. Under the chairmanship of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, ECOWAS had threatened further action, including military intervention, if the junta did not restore constitutional order and reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum, who had been held at his residence in the capital Niamey for two weeks. However, a seven-day deadline set by ECOWAS expired on Sunday.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed concern at the poor conditions in which ousted Nigerien leader Mohamed Bazoum is being held and called for his immediate release. Guterres on Wednesday denounced the “deplorable conditions” under which the president and his family are living in captivity, a UN statement said. CNN previously reported that Bazoum is being held in complete isolation by the military who overthrew him two weeks ago. He is also forced to eat dry rice and noodles.
In several text messages Bazoum sent to a friend, it said he was “deprived of all human contact as of Friday” and that no one was providing him with food or medicine, CNN reported. Guterres “reiterates his concern for the health and safety of the President and his family and calls again for his immediate and unconditional release and reinstatement as head of state,” his spokesman said.
The US government had previously expressed concern about Bazoum’s health. “We are extremely concerned for his health and his safety and the safety of his family,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday after Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Bazoum.
A coup in a crucial region
Until the coup, Niger was a strategically important ally of the US and European countries, as well as the last democracy in the Sahel region on the edge of the Sahara. France and the USA have important bases there, each with more than 1,000 soldiers, and the Bundeswehr operates a logistics hub in the country. After coups in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which then turned to Russia, Niger was considered the last partner for democratic states in a region that has been plagued by growing Islamist terror for more than a decade and has become a center of jihad. A central migration route via Libya to Europe also runs through the Niger.
The country of 26 million people with the highest birth rate in the world is three and a half times the size of Germany. Despite mineral resources such as gold and uranium, more than 40 percent of the population live in extreme poverty. President Bazoum has ruled since 2021 – in the course of the first democratic change of power since Niger gained independence from colonial power France in 1960. There were four military coups before he took office, most recently in 2010.
“One coup too many” – Why the neighboring countries are threatening to use the military
On July 26, Niger’s Presidential Guard under General Abdourahamane Tiani detained the president in his residence because observers said he wanted to replace Tiani at the head of the elite unit. After initial speculation of an internal power struggle, the other branches of the armed forces also joined the coup, proclaiming “the end of the regime” and dissolving all constitutional institutions. Tiani took power.
For ECOWAS it was “one coup too many,” said Senegalese Foreign Minister Aïssata Tall Sall. After Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, Niger is the fourth of 15 ECOWAS member countries where the military has seized power since 2020 – all four are now suspended. On July 30, ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Niger and demanded the reinstatement of Bazoum and the restoration of the constitution within a week – otherwise violence would also be considered.
Experts see Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu as the main person behind the threat. Less than four weeks earlier, the new president of Africa’s most populous country, when he took over the ECOWAS presidency, swore to defend democracy against the coup wave. “I think it was a conscious decision to counter the accusation that ECOWAS would once again just stand by and see the military take power,” said the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s Nigerian office manager, Marija Peran. Senegal, Ivory Coast and Benin would join a possible intervention.
According to a report by French broadcaster RFI, a plan adopted by ECOWAS military chiefs envisages a task force of 25,000 soldiers from the four countries, most of them from Nigeria, which has around 230,000 soldiers, one of the largest armies in Africa and a powerful air force. ECOWAS has carried out several successful missions in the region with Nigerian participation – most recently in Gambia in 2017. However, it always acted at the invitation of the respective state.
There are many arguments against a military intervention
The suspended ECOWAS members Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, on the other hand, sided with the coup governments. Mali and Burkina Faso declared that any intervention would also be regarded as a “declaration of war”. The military junta in Niger closed the airspace and is gearing up for defense. A delegation from Mali demonstratively visited Tiani for talks on military cooperation, while a top US diplomat and ECOWAS negotiating delegations did not see him.
“A military strike can very quickly become a conflagration. In practice, I can’t imagine that,” said Sahel regional director Ulf Laessing from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Africa analyst Ben Hunter of the British consulting firm Verisk Maplecroft warned: “It would no longer be a crackdown on rebels, but an interstate war and one of the largest wars West Africa has ever seen. It would have catastrophic consequences for the entire Sahel. It would be a gigantic risk for ECOWAS.” After initially heated words, the tone of voice also cooled down a bit on the part of Nigeria. Not only Germany, the USA and Russia recently emphasized again how important a diplomatic solution is, Nigerian President Tinubu was also quoted as saying so on Tuesday.
Even in Nigeria itself, the prospect of an intervention in Niger, which would have to cross the 1,600-kilometer border between the two countries, is extremely unpopular. The security situation in the country with around 220 million inhabitants is catastrophic, especially along this border. In addition to terrorism and gang violence in the north, there are bloody land conflicts in the center and separatist violence in the south-east. “The Nigerian military is already so understaffed that they cannot cope with the problems,” Peran pointed out. The Senate refused to approve the deployment of troops.
Niger’s military has also been heavily built up by the West
An intervention force from other ECOWAS states could also be defeated in a confrontation, say military experts. In recent years, European states had placed great hopes in Niger, which was to be developed as an “anchor” for stability in the Sahel region. Niger itself announced in 2020 that it would double the number of its soldiers from 25,000 to 50,000 by 2025.
Around 500 Nigerien soldiers were trained with the German special forces mission “Gazelle” alone. In western Niger, Germany built an entire barracks for the country’s 41st Special Forces Battalion. Equipment and uniforms, vehicles, assault rifles and machine guns, and communications equipment were procured for the special forces. Other of the 12 special forces battalions in Niger were supported by other “Western Partner Nations” – USA, Canada, Italy, Belgium and partly also France. This does not mean that the Nigerien army has the situation under control. Within the military, assessments of the situation were often skeptical. In October, the Defense Ministry told the Bundestag that the “situation in the operational areas” in some regions, such as along the Malian-Burkinabe border and parts of the border with Nigeria, was “largely uncontrollable”. The Nigerien forces are unable to act against jihadists without support. This is another reason why there is hope in Berlin that the putschists or parts of the armed forces will correct their course.