To Intervene or Not to Intervene in Niger?

Since the coup on 26 July 2023, Niger’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, has been held prisoner in his presidential palace in Niamey under the accusation of ‘treason’. Presidential guard commander-general, Abdourahamane Tchiani, has since become the self-proclaimed leader of Niger’s military junta. In a strongly worded statement, ECOWAS Commission president, Omar Alieu Touray, said the community should ‘take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger.’ ECOWAS’ ambassador, Abdel-Fatau Musah, also said that ‘by all means available, constitutional order will be restored in the country’. Several meetings have taken place so far between both West African defence chiefs and ECOWAS’ delegations, and Niger’s junta leader without clear results. On 21 August, ECOWAS rejected the junta’s proposal for a ‘transition period’ of three years. ECOWAS leaders are considering taking steps for a military intervention, for which their stand-by forces are said to be ready. On one hand, that such intervention is within the scope of the ECOWAS’ policy purposes is fairly questionable. On the other hand, the current operational space in Niger has left room for exploitation by jihadi groups, which is not only an increasing risk and issue for Niger but also for the region encompassing Mali, northern Nigeria and Burkina Faso, as political and governing instability in the whole Sahel seems to become more fragile day by day.

One could argue that military intervention in one of the member states aligns with ECOWAS’ aims of promoting cooperation and integration amongst its member states. ECOWAS could certainly claim that such intervention would safeguard subjacent greater goals such as the ‘maintenance of regional peace’ and the ‘promotion and consolidation of a democratic system of governance’ as envisaged by the Declaration of Political Principles adopted in Abuja on 6 July 1991. Those looking at a military intervention by ECOWAS through such a lens will notice that intervening in Niger would not be the first time the regional leadership has adopted military intervention in one of the member states. In fact, the bloc has been militarily active in several member states on seven occasions already, all on different grounds. ECOWAS intervened in Liberia in 1990, in Sierra Leone in 1997, in Guinea Bissau in 1999, in Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia in 2003, in Mali in 2013 and in the Gambia in 2017. All these interventions have taken place in a post-1990 timeframe, as ECOWAS formed its military department, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), in 1990. The last of these interventions was in the Gambia in 2017 under the codename ‘Operation Restore Democracy’. An international group of 7,000 troops from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal entered the Gambia to command the transfer of power from long-time president Yahya Jammeh to Adama Barrow, the democratically elected leader. In the Gambia, ECOMOG did not need to apply any force to reach the mission’s goal. In a similar vein, the current demand from ECOWAS has been to restore a Nigerien government with the elected president, to avoid military intervention. The bloc has put an American-backed label on the possibility of the intervention. The bloc has also claimed to be ready for an intervention on ‘D-Day’ (whenever that may be) while warning of its unwillingness to go into ‘endless dialogue’.

What makes the current situation in Niger so different and above all more fragile than the former interventions is the nexus of actors and interest groups in the Sahel. Currently, three of the 15 ECOWAS member states—Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea—are suspended due to their own ‘transitions of power’ in recent years. All three countries are former French colonies in which—nuancedly put—Western, and primarily French involvement is not appreciated. In former military interventions, ECOMOG has partly worked together with Western and French troops. Besides that, the presence and effort of the Wagner group, a private military force which is backed by the Russian state, to exacerbate Western fears of operational expansion in the region is not lowering the temperature of the situation. The military junta in Niger has also threatened to kill former president Bazoum if ECOWAS initiates a military intervention.