How West Africa Became a Major Belt of Instability

Niger became the fourth of the Sahel Five countries where the military seized power. How the region turned out to be the main zone of instability in Africa and what it threatens, RBC figured out Niamey, Niger

How West Africa became a region of upheaval

Niger has become the fourth country in the Sahel region to face an attempted coup since 2020. The result of the actions of the presidential guard is not yet finally known - on July 26, President Mohamed Bazum was detained, the next day the rebels announced his overthrow, but influential African and Western countries are calling on them to restore the previous system. But the history of the coups in Burkina Faso and Mali shows that this is unlikely to happen.

Political instability is a distinctive feature of African countries. Of the 17 coups d'état that have taken place in the world since 2017, only one took place not in Africa, but in Asia - in Myanmar, the BBC calculated. In the past three years, the West African countries belonging to the Sahel region and included in the ECOWAS economic association have become the center of instability. During this period, seven attempts at a coup d'état were made here.

Mali and Burkina Faso each had two coups, Niger had an unsuccessful attempt in 2021, Chadian authorities reported a coup attempt in early 2023. The political situation has become more complicated in recent months in relatively stable Senegal.

“It can be said that the fragile civil peace that had been in the region for decades, until the 2000s, was the result of opaque inter-elite agreements that restrained, but did not solve, systematically accumulated problems, but now this consensus seems to be completely destroyed,” the Africanist describes the situation. , the author of the TELEGRAM channel Zangaro Today Alexey Tselunov.

What is the Sahel

Geographically, it is a tropical savannah region in Africa, transitional from the Sahara desert in the north to more fertile land in the south, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

Politically, the Sahel Five includes Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad. With the exception of Mauritania and Chad, all of these countries are members of the Economic Community of West African Countries (ECOWAS). In total, it has 15 members - Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Historically, these are mainly colonies of France, the majority are members of the International Organization of Francophonie - Organization internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).

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Tselunov notes that these countries have very similar political systems and cultures, which are characterized by rather high opacity, widespread nepotism and corruption, a generational gap between a predominantly elderly political class and a mostly young electorate. The region is also characterized by a high level of inequality, which is also reproduced at the ethno-regional level: there is a developed agricultural south with a capital region and a chronically neglected desert periphery, in fact, excluded from the political process and the distribution of financial flows, the expert continues. Another element of the mosaic is the location of countries in a climate-volatile zone that is prone to droughts and other negative effects of climate change, Tselunov points out.

The influence of France as a former metropolis on recent events, according to the expert, should not be overestimated: despite its deep involvement in the affairs of the Sahel, it is neither the cause, nor the instigator, nor the instigator of crisis processes, which have a deeper structural level and were the result of accumulated development imbalances .

Under what scenarios did events unfold?

The coup in Niger came at the RUSSIA -Africa summit in St. Petersburg  , which was attended by two leaders who bear the title of "presidents in transition" - Burkina Faso's Ibrahim Traore and Mali's Assimi Goita. Both warmly thanked Russia for their support.

34-year-old Traore is a participant in two coups. In January 2022, he helped bring the Patriotic Defense and Restoration Movement to power, which ousted President-elect Roque Kabore. The government of Burkina Faso was headed by Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. But his reign was short-lived, and on September 30, 2022, Traore took part in the second coup, as a result of which he became the HEAD of the country. According to plans, on July 24, 2024, presidential elections will be held in Burkina Faso.

Assimi Goita, 40, has been in power longer. He first led Mali for months after the 2020 coup that ousted President-elect Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. In September 2020, power was transferred to Ba Ndau, and Goita became vice president, but in May 2021, Goita announced the removal of Ba Ndau and again led the country. According to the adopted plan for the transition to civilian rule, a constitutional referendum was held in June 2023, and presidential elections will be held in 2024.

Another summit participant who thanked Russia for its support was the President of the Central African Republic (CAR), Faustin-Archange Touadéra. His country does not formally belong to the Sahel, but the ongoing processes there are important for the region. He came to power in 2016 through elections and was re-elected in 2020. At the summit, he noted that Russia, "without fear of any geopolitical problems," is providing assistance to the country in the fight against terrorist attacks.

The leader of the Niger rebels was a representative of the older generation - Omar Chiani (also uses the name Abdurakhman), who is over 60. He spoke on the third day after the capture of the president, explaining the actions of the military with a desire to fight corruption and nepotism.

In Chad, in 2021, Mahamat Idris Debi, the son of President Idris Debi, who died in battle with the rebels, seized power. After the death of the elected head of state, the military and Mahamat Debi did not hold elections, declaring a transitional period that has not yet ended.

The situation in the region in terms of security is so complicated that instability can spread to countries located on the Atlantic coast, experts and UN structures warn.

On August 31, protests again took place in Senegal. They were a reaction to the decision of the authorities to dissolve one of the country's three main opposition parties, the Patriots of Senegal for Labour, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF), which is headed by the previously arrested politician and mayor of the city of Ziguinchor Ousmane Sonko. The decision to disband the party was made public by the Interior Ministry hours after Sonko was indicted by the COURT on seven counts, including incitement to sedition, a conspiracy involving a terrorist group, an attack on the security of the state, and a conspiracy against legitimate authorities. The country has suspended the operation of the mobile Internet due to concerns about possible unrest. In Ziguinchor, two people were killed in the protests that followed.

How coups are linked to the threat of jihadism

The rebels of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger cited the inability to cope with the jihadists as one of the main reasons for the overthrow of the constitutional government. Experts, politicians and the UN warn about the growth of the terrorist threat in the region. The impetus for the emergence and spread of the corresponding sentiments was given by the civil war, and then by the international intervention in Libya, neighboring Niger and Chad. After the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the country's plunge into chaos, the region was literally flooded with cheap weapons and ammunition, explains Tselunov.

There are several main active groups in the Sahel. All of them are recognized as terrorist and banned in Russia.

The "Islamic State in the Greater Sahara" (IGBS, recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia) in May 2015 swore allegiance to the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia), which the UN also calls "al-Qaeda" ” (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia) in Iraq. The leader of the movement is Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi. According to the UN, since 2018, this organization has enlisted the support of the population of northern Mali and is helping to escalate the Salafi-Jihadist insurgency in Burkina Faso. ISIS has carried out numerous attacks: in May 2019, the group attacked Nigerian military personnel in the village of Tongo-Tongo in the western part of the Tillabéri region near the border with Mali; 28 people died.

Mali also has a coalition of four Islamist movements, Jamaa Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (Islam and Muslim Support Group, JNIM, recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia). It was established on March 2, 2017, as announced by its leader, Iyad Ag Ghali; this group calls itself the official branch of al-Qaeda in Mali.

The situation is complicated by the activation of the Nigerian group "Boko Haram" (possible translation - "Western education is a sin", recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in Russia), operating not only in Nigeria, but also in neighboring countries. She appeared in the north-west of the country in 2002, by 2009 the government conducted a series of successful operations against her, and the group practically went underground, but in 2011 it again declared itself, and in 2015 swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda and continues massive attacks.

Experts from the analytical Soufan Center, which specializes in terrorism, draw attention to the increasing number of incidents involving jihadists in Ghana and Benin related to the intention of terrorists to build a corridor from the ocean deep into the continent.

What gave the intervention of the West and the UN

The international community responded to these threats by sending a MINUSMA peacekeeping mission to Mali. It was established on April 25, 2013. Soon the authorities of Mali demanded the withdrawal of peacekeepers from the country. By a unanimous decision of the UN Security Council, by the end of this year, military and police contingents should be withdrawn. The operation in Mali was the most dangerous of all UN peacekeeping operations, with 309 peacekeepers killed in the line of duty in ten years, the UN said. The mission was also one of the largest, now the staff of MINUSMA has a total of 15 thousand people.

Successes are not obvious: according to the report of the UN Secretary General, in June, hostilities against jihadists continued, and ISIS expanded its territory under its control. In central Mali, JNIM-affiliated groups continued to pose a significant threat, as evidenced by the compound attacks on Sevare on 22 April, although the number of civilian casualties has declined in the past year. From July 1, 2022 to May 22, 2023, armed conflict, improvised explosive device incidents and criminal acts resulted in a total of 1,002 civilian deaths and 445 injuries, according to data collected by the mission, indicating some success compared to with 1,556 civilians killed and 530 injured between July 1, 2021 and June 30, 2022.

A MINUSCA mission with a total number of 18.5 thousand people has been working in the CAR since 2014. Its task is to contribute to the stabilization of the internal situation against the backdrop of civil conflict. As of January 9, 2023, there were 314 security breaches of the Political Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation, down from 431 breaches in the previous reporting period.

After leaving Mali, the French military made Niger their main base. Up to 1,500 troops, aircraft and drones have been deployed in the country, supporting the Niger army in its operations in the border areas.

The United States has two military bases in Niger, the number of their personnel is about 1.1 thousand people, and the goal is also the fight against terrorists. About 300 troops were stationed in Niger by Italy .

Why it became possible to strengthen Russia

The first country to call on Russia for help was the Central African Republic. In March 2018, it became known that Russia sent five military and 170 civilian instructors, as well as a batch of small arms and ammunition there to train the army. In the same year, Western and Russian media began to report the presence of Russian mercenaries from Wagner PMC in the CAR. In September 2021, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed that the Mali authorities had asked for help from a Russian military company, without naming it.

In Niger, Russian flags were seen at rallies in support of the coup, and a recording appeared on the Internet in which, presumably, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, says that what is happening in the country is “a fight against the colonialists” and “in fact, gaining independence and getting rid of colonizers."

But regional and pan-African organizations do not support the unconstitutional change of power; “zero tolerance” has been declared for such events. The resolution of the emergency ECOWAS summit held on July 30 stated that the organization condemns the support of the incident by foreign governments and private military companies. Sanctions were imposed on Niger, as previously on Mali and Burkina Faso: borders with other members of the organization were closed, and a ban on flights over the country for commercial aircraft was introduced.

Part of the military governments of Mali and Burkina Faso sincerely share anti-Western beliefs and skillfully play on the mood of the streets, so a change of course, a reorientation towards cooperation with Russia is largely natural, says Tselunov. But the volume of accumulated problems is such that it can only be resolved by some global "Marshall Plan", but by no means by replacing the French military with Russian PMCs.