THIRD UPDATE ON NIGER CRISIS : MILITARY CHIEFS OF ECOWAS STATES ENDORSE INTERVENTION

I was in the middle of writing a detailed assessment of the successful 2023 Russia-Africa Summit, when some fresh information compelled me to take a break and write another update on the highly fluid situation in Niger Republic.

For the benefit of those who are new readers, I will start with a preamble...

I. PREAMBLE:

In many ways, the standoff between ECOWAS and Niger Republic recalls Gambia’s Constitutional Crisis (1 December 2016 - 21 January 2017), which set the Gambian military regime of Yahaya Jammeh against ECOWAS.

Using ECOWAS, Nigeria issued an ultimatum to Jammeh military regime to stand down from power. The Jammeh regime ignored the ultimatum and issued its own defiant threats to defend its authority and sovereignty. ECOWAS initiated a peace dialogue, which went absolutely nowhere. Some domestic opposition to military intervention in Gambia built up in some countries in ECOWAS.

The year 2016 ended with Jammeh regime still in power in Gambia and ECOWAS looking silly with its frequent threats to intervene being ignored again and again. Then one month and two weeks after the crisis began, ECOWAS troops finally intervened and restored constitutional order to Gambia.

ECOWAS troops securing the surrender of Gambian soldiers in 2017

What makes the Niger crisis more complicated is the geopolitical manoeuvrings of powers external to the continent (read France, EU and USA), which makes it easy for certain observers to reduce what we are seeing in that poor arid country into a simplistic contest between heroic Niger junta leaders and these external powers (France plus USA) with ECOWAS being French/American puppet that has no agency whatsoever. Of course, this characterization is absurd for anybody who knows the history of ECOWAS and its frequent interventions—both peaceful and military—in troubled member-states going all the way back to 1990 as I explained at length in the previous article posted below:

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ECOWAS is reflexively hostile to military coups as it has been recognized as one of the sources of political instability on the African continent. African history is filled with coup leaders who turned out to be worse than the civilian leadership that they overthrew. Moreover, coups have triggered civil wars.

The January 1966 military coup in Nigeria was performed by young idealistic officers who wanted to end corruption in Nigeria. Unfortunately, that coup d'état set off a chain of events that resulted in the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War (1967-1970) that killed almost three million people. The Liberian coup d'état of April 1980 set the stage for two civil wars (1989-1997 and 1999-2003). The January 1971 military coup in Uganda led directly to racially-driven expulsions of 1972 and the Uganda-Tanzania War (1978-1979). That coup also set the stage for the Ugandan Bush War (1980-1986).

The Ugandan, Nigerian and Liberian examples are just three out of so many similar stories on the continent of Africa. I will also hasten to add that in all three examples mentioned above, the coup leaders were initially celebrated by the local populace until events moved in a horrifying direction.

The jury is still out on the current military regimes running Burkina Faso and Mali. So far, I think both regimes have done the right thing by getting rid of suffocating quasi-colonial French influence on their nations and allowing Wagner troops to tackle security matters, but I am yet to see any economic programmes that these regimes are running to help their impoverished citizenry.

In the case of Burkina Faso, where the national state has full control of just 60% of its territory, there have been three successive governments in the space of eight months due to military coup d'états.

Contrary to what has been reported in some quarters, the elected President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, who was overthrown on 24 January 2022, was no sock puppet of France. In fact, he had a rocky relationship with French Emmanuel Macron, which reached its peak in November 2017 when Kabore walked out in the middle of the French President’s speech to university students in Burkina Faso. A surprised Macron laughed nervously and cracked a jokes about Kabore walking out to go fix the room’s air-conditioning system, which was not working.

Watch video below:

The elected Kabore government was replaced by the virulently anti-French military regime of Lieutenant-Colonel Henri-Paul Damiba, which was itself overthrown within months by another virulently anti-French military regime led by Captain Ibrahim Traore.

That, of course, begs the question— why one anti-French military regime is overthrowing another anti-French military regime? Are these coups really about “restoration of sovereignty” and “anti-imperialism” or about seeking power for its own sake? Well, time will tell. For now, this author will maintain an open mind on the Burkina Faso situation.

As expected, ECOWAS expressed its concerns with these successive coups in Burkina Faso and suspended the country’s membership as it has done to military-ruled Guinea and Mali. No ECOWAS intervention was attempted in Guinea because the coup leaders there made false promises to restore constitutional order, which never happened. As for Mali and Burkina Faso, I explained in a previous article why ECOWAS did not intervene there when the coup leaders seized power from elected governments. The military regimes in both Francophone states have since consolidated power and invited Wagner mercenaries to help them stave off jihadists insurgents boosted when Libya’s statehood was destroyed by NATO.

Nigerian-created ECOWAS is not the only organization on the continent hostile to coups, the South African-dominated SADC is also against them and intervened in the small landlocked Kingdom of Lesotho in September 1998 and September 2014 to ensure that mutinous soldiers do not seize control of the country. African Union itself is also opposed to coups, even if some of its member-states now oppose military intervention in Niger.

Yes, there is no doubt that France, EU and USA are now deeply interested in ECOWAS legal mechanisms, which allows for military interventions in a way that they had not been before. I don't recall USA or France showing more than a passing interest before and after ECOWAS troops intervened in Portuguese-speaking Guinea-Bissau in February 2022 for the third time in two decades.

It is without any doubt that Macron, Blinken, Nuland and Sullivan desperately want ECOWAS to intervene and are lobbying day and night for it. But it is wrong to pretend that they are the main driving force for it. If Nuland, Blinken or Macron were calling the shots, the intervention would have already started a long time ago.

But the main driving force for intervention are within the West African subregion itself. The following are the main driving forces:

• The governments of the smaller ECOWAS member-states pushing for the organization to follows its set rules and regulations, which allows for military intervention in troubled member-states. The refusal of the Niger coup leaders to meet ECOWAS representatives and their plan to charge Bazoum with “treason” has hardened the stance of these smaller member-states.

• Security services and military establishment of Nigeria are pushing hard for President Tinubu to intervene in Niger Republic. The Nigerian military chiefs are also mobilizing the military institutions of other ECOWAS states to support their position and apply the necessary pressure to their own governments.

• President Tinubu himself would love to intervene as ECOWAS rules does permit him to do this, but strident opposition from his Northern Nigerian voting base is causing him to think twice. When President Tinubu unnecessarily asked permission from the Federal Senate to authorize military intervention, it was the Northern Senators, mainly from his own political party, who got the upper chamber of the Nigerian legislature to block it. Senate approval is only necessary for scenarios that involve declaration of war not military interventions in troubled ECOWAS countries, which are categorized as “limited police actions to restore constitutional order.” President Tinubu, a wily political operator, used the Senate vote to successfully measure the level of resistance to intervention within his own party. Once, the Federal Senate had blocked intervention, other anti-interventionist voices in the wider Nigerian society began to emerge. Then traditional leaders of Northern Nigeria added their own voices. Like I have previously said, most of the anti-intervention debate within Nigeria is not about “anti-imperialism”, but a possible refugee crisis should the intervention go ahead. Those few Nigerians talking about “anti-imperialism” are mostly on the margins of the internal debate, but get an outsized role in foreign alternative media outlets, which are unfamiliar with the political culture of the West African subregion and are struggling to understand what is really going on there.

II. JIHADI ATTACKS NEAR THE NIGER-MALI BORDER

One of the negative consequences of the coup in Niger and the subsequent ECOWAS reaction is that the coup leaders withdrew a large number of troops meant to fight jihadists from certain areas of the country and brought them to the capital city of Niamey in case of any military intervention led by Nigeria’s armed forces.

Force Commander of the MNJTF, Nigerian Major-General Ibrahim Sallau Ali, shaking hands with a Chadian Army officer. Chad is a Central African State and so not a member of ECOWAS, but it shares a border with Nigeria. For that reason, it is a member of two Nigerian-led organizations, the MNTJF and Lake Chad Basin Commission

Niger coup leaders also reduced their participation in the Nigerian-run Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) combating jihadists operating in the vicinity of Nigeria’s northern borders with Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin Republic. The jihadists in question are homegrown Nigerian terrorists belonging to Boko Haram and its splinter organizations, the al-Qaeda-aligned Ansaru Movement and the ISIS-aligned Islamic State—West Africa Province (ISWAP). The MNJTF had successfully beaten back these terror groups and confined them to the northernmost periphery of Nigeria, the desert and barely inhabited areas of the country, remote from well-populated rural and urban areas.

Further away from the relatively better secured Niger-Nigeria border, there is the tri-border area shared by Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, which effectively functions as a safe haven for a different set of cross-border terrorists since Burkina Faso and Mali barely patrol their own sides of the border.

Niger’s southwest region of Tillaberi lies in the tri-border area. Having noticed the decision of the coup leaders to move some Niger troops to Niamey city, some cross-border terrorists operating close to the Niger-Mali sector of the tri-border area decided it was time to strike.

On Tuesday 15 August 2023, terrorists on motorcycles struck at Koutougou, a town within the Tillaberi region, which is close to the frontier with Mali. The jihadists killed 31 citizens of Niger Republic including seventeen soldiers. Twenty soldiers were injured, of which six are quite serious.

Jihadi terrorists operating in desert areas of the Sahel Belt use motorcycles to get around

ECOWAS issued a short statement expressing sorrow about the death of Niger citizens at the hands of terrorists and called once again for the restoration of the elected Bazoum government to office. The brief official statement can be found on the website of ECOWAS.

III. AFRICAN UNION DIVIDED ON INTERVENTION:

African Union remains united in condemning the coup in Niger Republic. However, there are disagreements on the subject of ECOWAS military intervention with the Southern African countries (led by South Africa) and North African states (led by Algeria) voicing opposition to any forcible removal of the Niger coup leaders. Conversely, West African states were mostly in favour of armed intervention.

As a result of this division, African Union Peace and Security Council did not issue an official communiqué on its attitude to ECOWAS plan to intervene in Niger Republic. All media claims that African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC) officially rejected ECOWAS intervention are false.

Meanwhile, the African Union Commission continues to stand by its previous statement agreeing that ECOWAS has a right to intervene in Niger as I previously mentioned.

This kind of division is not without precedent. A good example is the controversial decision of certain African states to intervene in the crisis afflicting one of the three island provinces that constitute the Union of The Comoros in 2008. This decision was stridently opposed by South Africa, which is the powerhouse and hegemon of the Southern African subregion. The troubled island country of Comoros is a member-state of the SADC organization, which is dominated by South Africa.

Despite vociferous opposition from South Africa, the military invasion of the rebellious island province of Anjouan was carried out on 25 March 2008 by Tanzanian, Sudanese, Senegalese and Comorian troops with logistic support provided by Gadaffi’s Libya. France, which had been accused of supporting the rebellion in Anjouan Province, denied any involvement and tried to prove its innocence by providing some logistic support to the African countries conducting the military invasion.

The decision on whether or not military intervention would occur in Niger totally rests with the Nigerian-controlled ECOWAS and not the divided African Union. And again, it is false that Algeria said it would intervene to stop Nigerian-led intervention in Niger. The North African state is stridently against intervention in Niger, but won’t interfere, if it eventually happens.

IV. ECOWAS MILITARY CHIEFS ENDORSE MILITARY INTERVENTION:

Military chiefs of ECOWAS member-states met in Accra city, Ghana. Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Gwabin Musa, told his counterparts from other member-states that constitutional order must be restored in Niger Republic

As would be expected, the terrorist incident in southwestern Niger have got Nigerian top military brass worried and may have played a role in getting the military chiefs of all ECOWAS member states (except Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea) to declare their support for an armed intervention in Niger Republic, throwing the ball back into the court of President Tinubu who is facing opposition from Nigerian civil society, particularly in the North.

See video below:

Would Tinubu succumb to pressure from his military chiefs, the hardline stance of smaller ECOWAS member-states, and the dubious exhortations of lobbying American officials such as Tony Blinken who says democracy is at stake if ECOWAS fails to act? Only time will tell.

V. POSTSCRIPT

To give the readers a feel of the hardline stance of smaller member-states of ECOWAS, I give Mr. Abdel Fatau Musa, a diplomat from Ghana, who lived in the USSR from 1986 to 1992 and studied for a Masters Degree in Journalism and a PhD in International Historical Relations at M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University.

In his capacity as the ECOWAS Commissioner For Politics, Peace & Security, the Ghanaian diplomat declared that constitutional order will be restored to Niger Republic and essentially signalled that the time for talking was over and time for action is nigh . He spoke at Burma Camp, a large area in the Ghanaian city of Accra, which contains several schools, a museum, buildings of the Ghanaian Ministry of Defence and the headquarters of the Ghanaian Armed Forces.

Watch the video of Mr. Fatau below:

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