Ultimatum expires
Plan for military action in Niger
8/5/2023 5:42 am
The ultimatum of the West African community of states ECOWAS to Niger expires on Sunday. At present there is nothing to suggest that the junta will be impressed. A plan for a possible intervention is now on the table.
After the military coup in Niger, the situation remained tense. According to the French broadcaster RFI, the military chiefs of the West African community of states ECOWAS have drafted a plan for a possible military intervention in response to the coup d’état. The recommendation contains “all the elements of a possible intervention, including the resources needed, but also how and when we will deploy the force,” ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security Abdel-Fatau Musah said at the end of a three-day meeting of the military chiefs in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.
The ECOWAS heads of state want to use the recommendation to decide how to proceed in Niger. According to media reports, a few hours earlier Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, had asked his country’s Senate for approval of military intervention in Niger. Tinubu, who also heads the West African community of states ECOWAS, had pleaded for “military rearmament and the use of personnel for military interventions” if the new rulers in Niger did not get involved in negotiations, it said. Last Sunday, ECOWAS gave the military rulers a seven-day ultimatum and called on the new junta to reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum. Otherwise, the international community will take measures that could also include violence, it said.
It would be the first mission without an invitation
ECOWAS has set up military intervention troops several times in the past. In the 1990s, for example, they intervened in civil wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau. When the Ivory Coast was destabilized by a military coup in 2002, ECOWAS put together an intervention force. However, military ECOWAS operations have so far always been carried out at the invitation of the government concerned. A military operation in Niger would be the first operation decided by the international community against the will of a government – or in this case the new military rulers.
In Niger, officers of the Presidential Guard arrested the democratically elected Bazoum on July 26 and declared him ousted. The commander of the elite unit, General Abdourahamane Tiani, subsequently proclaimed himself the new ruler. Shortly after Tiani came to power, the putschists suspended the constitution and dissolved all constitutional institutions. An ECOWAS mediator mission has already left Niger’s capital Niamey without meeting Tiani.
The Federal Foreign Office assumes that all Germans willing to leave the country had the opportunity to leave the West African country. Accordingly, 60 citizens would have used the evacuation flights offered primarily by France. At the same time, those in power in Niger announced an end to military cooperation with the former colonial power France. This has stationed more than 1000 soldiers in Niger. The cooperation should end within a month, the junta said in a statement on national television.