Niger coup: Britain cuts aid and neighbours ‘may use force’ to restore president

[Edge Guerrero]

Ecowas bloc issues one-week ultimatum, warning it will take ‘all measures necessary” to restore order

The British government has announced it will be halting “long-term development assistance” to Niger in the wake of the coup that deposed the president last week.

A powerful bloc of west African states has suspended ties with Niger after the coup and authorised the possible use of force if the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, is not released and reinstated within a week.

The ultimatum was delivered by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) as France warned that any attacks on French citizens or its interests in Niger – a former colony – would provoke an “immediate and stringent” reaction. France’s embassy in Niamey, Niger’s capital, was targeted during pro-junta and pro-Russia protests on Sunday.

In a statement issued following the Ecowas decision, the UK Foreign Office said Britain “condemns in the strongest possible terms attempts to undermine democracy, peace and stability in Niger”. It said Ecowas had set out a “strong and clear response to this infringement of the democratic rights of the people of Niger”.

“We continue to stand by Ecowas and their efforts to ensure a return to democracy in Niger.”

The Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said: “The UK wholly supports the immediate political and economic measures announced today by Ecowas and will suspend long-term development assistance to Niger. We will however continue to provide critical humanitarian assistance to the people of Niger.

“The UK is a committed partner of Niger’s democratically elected government and calls for President Bazoum to be immediately reinstated to restore constitutional order.”

Thousands of protesters have marched through the streets of Niamey waving Russian flags, chanting the name of Vladimir Putin and forcefully denouncing France. According to a witness at the French embassy and videos seen by the Associated Press, a crowd congregated outside the building and a door was set on fire.

Reports suggested French flags were burned at the embassy, leading police to fire teargas at protesters. Images seen by Reuters showed the embassy walls on fire and people with bloodied legs being loaded into ambulances.

Black smoke rose across the city as the Nigerien army broke up the crowd of demonstrators.

Ecowas, which met in Nigeria on Sunday to discuss the crisis, also threatened to suspend all commercial and financial transactions between Niger and the organisation’s 15 member states, and to freeze the country’s assets in the bloc’s central banks.

Ecowas and the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union are focused on finding ways to restore Bazoum, who was deposed by Gen Abdourahamane Tchiani, the head of Niger’s presidential guard. Tchiani, who led the coup on Wednesday, was declared head of state two days later.

Last year, Ecowas agreed to create a regional security force to intervene against jihadists and prevent military coups, but details of the proposal remain unclear.

The bloc said: “In the event the authorities’ demands are not met within one week, [we will] take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order in the republic of Niger. Such measures may include the use of force. To this effect, the chiefs of defence staff of Ecowas are to meet immediately.”

Niger’s new military junta has said it is prepared to respond to any possible military intervention.

Col Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for the junta, said in a statement read out on state TV on Saturday night: “The objective of the [Ecowas] meeting is to approve a plan of aggression against Niger through an imminent military intervention in Niamey in collaboration with other African countries that are non-members of Ecowas and certain western countries. We want to once more remind Ecowas, or any other adventurer, of our firm determination to defend our homeland.”

The junta issued a second statement on Saturday night urging citizens in the capital to take to the streets from 7am local time to protest against Ecowas and show support for the new military leaders.

Mahamat Idriss Déby, the president of Chad, volunteered to travel to Niger to speak to the coup leaders and report back to the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, who is the chair of Ecowas, the Reuters news agency reported, citing two sources in the Nigerian presidency.

The coup in Niger has been widely condemned by neighbouring countries and international partners, which have refused to recognise the new leadership and demanded that Bazoum be restored to power.

Bazoum has not been heard from since early on Thursday, when he was confined within the presidential palace, although the EU, France and others have said they still recognise him as the legitimate president, and he has been able to speak to some international leaders.

The mutineers said they overthrew Bazoum, who was elected two years ago in Niger’s first peaceful, democratic transfer of power since independence from France, because he was unable to protect the nation from growing jihadist violence. But some analysts and Nigeriens say the claim has served as a pretext for a takeover that is more about internal power struggles than securing the nation.

Amad Hassane Boubacar, a professor at Abdou Moumouni University of Niamey, said: “Everybody is wondering: why this coup? That’s because no one was expecting it. We couldn’t expect a coup in Niger because there’s no social, political or security situation that would justify that the military take the power.”

While Niger’s security situation is dire, it is not as precarious as that of neighbouring Burkina Faso or Mali, which have also been battling an insurgency linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State. Last year, Niger was the only one of the three in which violence declined, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Until now, Niger had been seen as the last remaining reliable partner for the west in efforts to battle jihadists in the Sahel region of Africa, where Russia and western countries have vied for influence in the fight against extremism. France has 1,500 soldiers in the country who conduct joint operations with the Nigeriens, while the US and other European countries have helped train the nation’s troops.

Although the Russian mercenary group Wagner is operating in Mali, and Putin would like to expand Russia’s influence in the region, it remains unclear whether the junta leaders are planning to move towards Moscow or stick with Niger’s western partners.

Conflict experts say Niger is the regional power with the most to lose if it turns away from the west and the millions of dollars of military assistance the international community has provided. On Saturday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the continued security and economic arrangements that Niger had with the US hinged on the release of Bazoum and “the immediate restoration of the democratic order in Niger”.

On Saturday, France suspended all development aid and other financial assistance for Niger and called for an immediate return to constitutional order.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/30/niger-coup-west-african-states-reinstatement-president-mohamed-bazoum

[theraskal]

That Confirms the Putin/Africa connection in the article I shared to support the OPPENHEIMER PsyOp Hypothesis

[theraskal]

Africa certainly has potential Power-Grab possibilities for "The Powers that Be"

[Edge Guerrero]

That Confirms the Putin/Africa connection in the article I shared to support the OPPENHEIMER PsyOp Hypothesis

- Wagner is close too.


How Russia may seek to exploit crisis-hit Niger
If Wagner does throw in its services to Niger's military plotters, the Kremlin has the cover of distance from the group, while securing a foothold into the politics of yet another African state.

Diana Magnay

The spectacle of Russian flags waved by coup-supporters at Sunday's rally in Niamey, Niger, shows just how much Russia's effort to pitch itself as an anti-colonial flag bearer resonates.

The reality though is that it is utterly disingenuous.

Russia's war in Ukraine is a blatantly imperialist undertaking, however Putin tries to sell it to African leaders who have, by and large, stayed neutral on the invasion.

Wagner's activities across many African nations, especially in Mali, Sudan and the Central African Republic, bear all sorts of similarities with the very worst of colonial excesses - mineral extraction, mass atrocities and security for politically unsavoury regimes at the expense of their populations.

There is no direct evidence that Wagner had a hand in the Niger situation.

Yevgeny Prigozhin's comments in relation to the coup seem deliberately ambiguous.

"Thousands of Wagner fighters are capable of bringing order, of destroying terrorists and of not allowing them to harm the local populations of these states," he said in a voice message on Telegram, while hobnobbing with African leaders in St Petersburg.

That suggests Wagner would be more than willing to help, but isn't necessarily now.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has condemned the coup as unconstitutional.

The Kremlin is understandably not at all keen on the idea of democratically elected leaders being overthrown either by their people or their militaries.

But if Wagner does throw in its services to Niger's military plotters, the Kremlin has the cover of distance from the group - which Putin rather bafflingly declared did not even exist a few weeks ago - while securing a foothold into the politics of yet another African state.

One of Prigozhin's array of services across the continent has been in the information field, manipulating public discourse, especially around elections.

Think a Russian version of Cambridge Analytica.

Those flags in Niamey testify to just how successful Wagner has been in crafting an impression of Russia - and of the Kremlin's intentions for Africa - which is a very long way from the truth.

https://news.sky.com/story/how-wagner-is-providing-cover-for-putin-in-crisis-hit-niger-12931118

[Edge Guerrero]

Some of Niger's neighbors defend the coup there, even hinting at war. It's a warning for Africa
Not everyone is hostile to last week's coup in Niger

By CARA ANNA Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Not everyone is hostile to the coups in Niger and other African nations in the past few years that have worried the West. In the “family photo” for last week’s Russia-Africa Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood next to Ibrahim Traore, the young military officer who seized power in Burkina Faso in September.

It was an uncomfortable moment for many leaders elsewhere in Africa. “The normalization and dignifying of military takeovers must trouble our great continent,” Kenya’s principal secretary for foreign affairs wrote while sharing the photo this week.

Now Burkina Faso and another military junta-led country friendly with Russia, Mali, have taken the unusual step of declaring that foreign military intervention in neighboring Niger after last week's coup would be considered a declaration of war against them, too.

They are defying the West African regional body known as ECOWAS, which said on Sunday it could use force if Niger’s coup leaders don’t reinstate the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, within a week. Another coup-affected nation, Guinea, in a separate statement supported Niger’s junta and urged ECOWAS to “come to its senses.”

Their defense of the events in Niger complicates the world's response as the resolve of partners is tested. It also reflects what a United Nations study warned last month after surveying thousands of citizens of African countries that recently went through coups or other undemocratic changes of government.

“A possible regional-level scenario might see the military juntas in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso team up" to challenge the region's traditional response to coups, the report said. It warned they could defy sanctions and stand for elections, with help from “new international alliances.”

The report said that “paradoxically,” popular support for the recent military coups in Africa is “symptomatic of a new wave of democratic aspiration that is expanding across the continent” as overwhelmingly young populations grow frustrated with existing economic and political systems and press for change more rapid than what elections can deliver.

Many just want to feel secure as Islamic extremists expand their range in the Sahel, the arid region south of the Sahara Desert. “I think that a military power in Niger will better coordinate its military actions with Mali and Burkina Faso to fight terrorism,” Harber Cisse, a Malian citizen living in Guinea, told The Associated Press. He believes Niger's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, had been “turning a blind eye” and allowing extremists to cross into Mali.

Those with memories of past coups in the region are not necessarily shocked by the hastily assembled military announcements and unrest in the streets. The U.N. survey found optimism and excitement along with anxiety for the future, plus an impatience that has led to multiple coups within months in more than one country. The four coups in Africa in 2021 were the most in a single year in two decades.

Many people said they believed the army should take over when a civilian government is incompetent. “These findings highlight the risk of a return to an era of close military involvement in African politics,” the U.N. report said.

Certain international responses to coups can be seen as an insult, especially if some foreign partners were seen as prioritizing security instead of African governments’ accountability for alleged misconduct. “In some scenarios, these geopolitically driven interventions have compounded the very factors that heighten coup risk,” the U.N. report said.

Niger had been seen by the United States and allies as the last major counterterrorism partner in the immediate region after Mali and Burkina Faso kicked out French troops and Mali ordered a 15,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission to leave, claiming it had failed in its mission.

Post-coup economic sanctions and cuts in assistance programs threaten to worsen the living situation for many in some of the world’s poorest countries, while well-off foreigners board evacuation flights to more comfortable places.

To help counter the “epidemic of coups,” international partners shouldn’t downplay people's grievances against national authorities, and their engagement should extend beyond the security sector and “national elites,” the director of the Amani Africa think tank, Solomon Dersso, wrote Monday.

“There's a small number of people profiting from the riches of Niger,” one coup supporter, Seydou Moussa, said in the capital, Niamey. “Nigeriens cannot live like that. It's time that change comes. And change has come."

Part of the frustration in Niger and its neighbors over government weaknesses in addressing corruption and the threat from Islamic extremism has been aimed at France, the former colonizer of present-day Mali, Guinea, Niger, Burkina Faso and others in west and central Africa. The French embassy was attacked in Niger shortly after the coup, and the one in Burkina Faso was attacked last year.

Some in West Africa have been upset by France’s warning shortly after the coup in Niger against those threatening “French interests” in the country, seeing it as an example of the alleged priorities that have long driven outsiders’ involvement, notably natural resources.

Russia has played into such sentiments by framing itself to African nations as a country that never colonized the continent, winning support in Mali and other vulnerable nations for Moscow and the Russian mercenary group Wagner.

The Russian flag has been seen in the streets of Niger’s capital in the days after the coup, even as the Kremlin called for Niger “to restore constitutional order as soon as possible.”

Moscow also has emphasized its role as the top arms supplier to Africa, which Burkina Faso’s military leader embraced during the Russia-Africa Summit.

“Thank God, Russia is a country that refuses nothing,” Traore said in an interview with the Russian media outlet Sputnik, asserting that Moscow imposes no restrictions on weapons purchases and even is ready to deliver some for free to help the fight against extremism. “In fact, everything we want to buy, Russia agrees to sell to us. This is not the case with other countries.”

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nigers-neighbors-defend-coup-hinting-war-warning-africa-101938646

[Luigi]

If I remember right Niger had a population of 2 million a few decades ago and now has a population over 20 million. Its basically a giant desert where every woman has 8 kids. Not surprised its an unstable region.