Senegal President Basirou Diomaye Faye. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Senegal’s President Basirou Diomaye Faye, Africa’s youngest, is suddenly faced with a huge challenge of reuniting the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a weakened regional bloc that is older than him.

The 44-year-old Faye was tasked on July 7 with getting the military junta-ruled Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso back to ECOWAS at the bloc’s summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.

The three nations left ECOWAS and formed an alliance after the military takeovers fractured their relations with West African neighbours.

As a peace envoy supported by Togolese President Faure Essozimna Gnassingbe, Mr. Faye is seen as possibly the best among heads of state for a mission to try to woo the three nations back to the fold of regional cooperation.

Beyond the appeal of security and economic collaboration, ECOWAS’s goodwill has waned in recent years, said Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, a research analyst with the West Africa-focused Centre for Democracy and Development. But the new role offers Mr. Faye an opportunity to possibly seek reforms for “a more sustainable and self-reliant” ECOWAS, Mr. Adekaiyaoja said.

Mr. Faye also represents the opposite of what the three military leaders claim they are against.

He had not been elected when ECOWAS, founded in 1975, imposed the severe sanctions on Niger following a coup last July. Niger cited the sanctions as one of the reasons for leaving the bloc. Also, Mr. Faye’s victory in an April election that was certified as credible stood in contrast to rigged polls in the region.

At home, Mr. Faye is reviewing the old ties that the junta leaders claim have stifled West Africa’s development, though Senegal remains a key ally for the West.

Under Mr. Faye’s leadership, Senegalese officials are renegotiating contracts with foreign operators in the country and, according to Finance Minister Abdourahmane Sarr, are “aiming to free ourselves from the ties of dependency in our public policies.”

It is exactly what the junta wants to hear, analysts say. Since ousting the democratic governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the generals have severed military and economic ties with Western partners such as the U.S. and France, saying they had not benefited their countries. The shift has opened the window for Russia to expand its footprint in the region.

“Like the other heads of state, he (Faye) claims sovereignty and a break with the old order,” said Seidik Abba, a Sahel specialist and president of the International Center for Reflection for Studies.

Age is an “asset” for Faye

Age is also not just a number in the case of Mr. Faye, a former tax inspector. Even as the youngest president in Africa, he is still older than three of the four current military leaders in the region.

At Sunday’s ECOWAS meeting in Nigeria, Mr. Faye was still among the youngest.

When he visited Nigeria in May, the Senegalese leader touted his age as an “asset” that can help open a window for dialogue with the neighbours.

Mr. Faye’s task to dialogue with the three countries would still not be easy, according to Mr. Abba, the Sahel specialist. He said the three have wider concerns about the operations of ECOWAS, which they say faces interference from foreign countries like France, their former colonial ruler.

There is also a question of how much freedom Mr. Faye and the Togolese president would have in their role as envoys under an ECOWAS that has just re-elected Nigerian President Bola Tinubu as its chairman.

Their success would depend on “how best the different leaders can coordinate and agree” on the issues, Mr. Adekaiyaoja said.

The U.S. military has hundreds of troops stationed at a major airbase in northern Niger that deploys flights over the vast Sahel region where jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group operate. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The United States scrambled on March 17 to assess the future of its counterterrorism operations in the Sahel after Niger’s junta said it was ending its years-long military cooperation with Washington following a visit by top U.S. officials.

The U.S. military has hundreds of troops stationed at a major airbase in northern Niger that deploys flights over the vast Sahel region — south of the Sahara Desert — where jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group operate.

Also read: Explained | What led to the coup in Niger? Does it follow a wider pattern in the Sahel?

Top U.S. envoy Molly Phee returned to the capital, Niamey, this week to meet with senior government officials, accompanied by Marine Gen. Michael Langley, head of the U.S. military’s African Command. She had visited in December while acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland travelled to the country in August.

The U.S. State Department said on March 17 in a post on X that talks were frank and that it was in touch with the junta. It wasn’t clear whether the U.S. has any leeway left to negotiate a deal to stay in the country.

Niger had been seen as one of the last nations in the restive region that Western nations could partner with to beat back growing jihadi insurgencies.

The U.S. and France had more than 2,500 military personnel in the region until recently, and together with other European countries had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance and training.

But that changed in July when mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president and months later asked French forces to leave.

Deteriorating relationships in Sahel

The U.S. military still had some 650 personnel working in Niger in December, according to a White House report to Congress. The Niger base is used for both manned and unmanned surveillance operations.

In the Sahel, the U.S. also supports ground troops, including accompanying them on missions. However, such accompanied missions have been scaled back since U.S. troops were killed in a joint operation in Niger in 2017.

It’s unclear what prompted the junta’s decision to suspend military ties. On Saturday, the junta’s spokesperson, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, said U.S. flights over Niger’s territory in recent weeks were illegal. Meanwhile, Insa Garba Saidou, a local activist who assists Niger’s military rulers with their communications, criticized U.S. efforts to force the junta to pick between strategic partners.

“The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer,” he told The Associated Press.

After her trip in December, Ms. Phee, the top U.S. envoy, told reporters she had “good discussions” with junta leaders and called on them to set a timeline for elections in return for restoring military and aid ties. But she also said the U.S. had warned Niamey against forging closer ties with Russia.

Neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which have experienced two coups each since 2020, have turned to Moscow for security support. After the coup in Niger, the military also turned to the Russian mercenary group Wagner for help.

Cameron Hudson, who served with the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department in Africa, said the incident shows the diminution of U.S. leverage in the region and that Niger was angered by Washington’s attempt to pressure the junta to steer clear of Russia. “This is ironic since one mantra of the Biden Administration has been that Africans are free to choose their partners,” he said.

The U.S. delegation visit coincided with the start of Ramadan, a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting and intense prayer for Muslims. Niger’s junta leader, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, refused to meet them. A U.S. press conference at the embassy in Niger was canceled.

The junta spokesperson, speaking on state television, said junta leaders met the U.S. delegation only out of courtesy and described their tone as condescending.

Aneliese Bernard, a former U.S. State Department official who specialized in African affairs and director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors, a risk advisory group, said the recent visit had failed and the U.S. needs to take a critical look at how it’s doing diplomacy not just in Niger but in the whole region.

“What’s going on in Niger and the Sahel cannot be looked at continuously in a vacuum as we always do,” she said. “The United States government tends to operate with blinders on. We can’t deny that our deteriorating relationships in other parts of the world: the Gulf, Israel and others, all have an influential impact on our bilateral relations in countries in West Africa.”

Paris:

President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday announced that France would withdraw its ambassador from Niger, followed by the French military contingent in the coming months, a move welcomed by Niger’s military leaders as a “step towards sovereignty”.

Macron’s announcement comes two months after a coup in the west African country that ousted the pro-Paris president.

“France has decided to withdraw its ambassador. In the next hours our ambassador and several diplomats will return to France,” Macron told French television in an interview, without giving details over how this would be organised.

Macron added that military cooperation was “over” and French troops would withdraw in “the months and weeks to come” with a full pullout “by the end of the year”.

Niger’s military rulers responded swiftly in a statement read out on national television,

“This Sunday, we celebrate a new step towards the sovereignty of Niger,” said the statement from the military rulers, who seized power by overthrowing President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26.

“This is a historic moment, which speaks to the determination and will of the Nigerien people,” the Niger statement added.

– Ban on French aircraft –

Earlier Sunday the Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) said on its website that the military rulers had banned “French aircraft” from flying over the country’s airspace.

It was not clear if this would affect the ambassador being flown out.

In his comments, Macron said that “In the weeks and months to come, we will consult with the putschists, because we want this to be done peacefully,” he added.

France keeps about 1,500 soldiers in Niger as part of an anti-jihadist deployment in the Sahel region. Macron said the post-coup authorities “no longer wanted to fight against terrorism”.

Niger’s military leaders had told French ambassador Sylvain Itte to leave the country after they overthrew Bazoum in July.

But a 48-hour ultimatum for him to leave, issued in August, passed with him still in place as the French government refused to comply, or to recognise the military regime as legitimate.

Earlier this month, Macron said the ambassador and his staff were “literally being held hostage” in the mission eating military rations with no food deliveries taking place.

In Sunday’s interview, Macron in the interview reaffirmed France’s position that Bazoum was being held “hostage” and remained the “sole legitimate authority” in the country.

“He was targeted by this coup d’etat because he was carrying out courageous reforms and because there was a largely ethnic settling of scores and a lot of political cowardice,” he argued.

– ‘Very worried about region’ –

The coup against Bazoum was the third such putsch in the region in as many years, following similar actions in Mali and Burkina Faso in 2021 and 2022 that also forced the pullouts of French troops.

But the Niger coup is particularly bruising for Macron after he sought to make a special ally of Niamey, and a hub for France’s presence in the region following the Mali coup. The US also has over 1,000 troops in the country.

Macron regularly speaks by phone to Bazoum who remains under house arrest in the presidential residence.

The French president has repeatedly spoken of making a historic change to France’s post-colonial imprint in Africa but analysts say Paris is losing influence across the continent especially in the face of a growing Chinese, Turkish and Russian presence.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threatened military action to restore Bazoum but so far its threats, which were strongly supported by France, have not transferred into action.

“We are not here to be hostages of the putschists,” said Macron. “The putschists are the allies of disorder,” he added.

Macron said that jihadist attacks were causing “dozens of deaths every day in Mali” after its coup and that now such assaults had resumed in Niger.

“I am very worried about this region,” he said.

“France, sometimes alone, has taken all its responsibilities and I am proud of our military. But we are not responsible for the political life of these countries and we draw all the consequences.”
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Niamey:

Niger’s military rulers have banned “French aircraft” from flying over the country’s airspace, according to the Agency for the Safety of Air Navigation in Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA) website. 

Niger’s airspace is “open to all national and international commercial flights except for French aircraft or aircraft chartered by France including those of the airline Air France,” it said in the statement dated late Saturday. 

The air space would remain closed for “all military, operational and other special flights”, unless receiving prior authorisation, the message said. 

Air France told AFP simply that it was “not flying over Niger airspace”. 

Niger had reopened its airspace on September 4 for commercial flights after having been closed for nearly a month. 

The West African nation then announced on August 6 it was closing its airspace due to the “threat of intervention from neighbouring countries”, as the Economic Community of West African States threatened military action to restore the elected President Mohamed Bazoum who had been overthrown in a coup on July 26. 

France has repeatedly supported the West African bloc, and relations between Paris and Niamey have been at an all-time low since the coup. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A supporter holds a t-shirt reading “France Must Go” as supporters of Niger’s National Council of Safeguard of the Homeland protest outside the Niger and French airbase in Niamey on September 02, 2023 to demand the departure of the French army from Niger.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Thousands rallied Saturday in the Niger capital Niamey to demand that former colonial ruler France withdraw its troops as sought by a junta which seized power in June.

The protesters gathered near a base housing French soldiers following a call by several civic organisations hostile to the French military presence in the West African country.

They help up banners proclaiming “French army leave our country”.

Niger’s military regime had fired a new verbal broadside at France on Friday, accusing Paris of “blatant interference” by backing the country’s ousted president, as protestors held a similar protest near a French base outside Niamey.

President Mohamed Bazoum, a French ally whose election in 2021 had stoked hopes of stability in the troubled country, was detained on July 26 by members of his guard.

Relations with France, the country’s former colonial power and ally in its fight against jihadism, went swiftly downhill after Paris stood by Bazoum.

On August 3, the regime announced the scrapping of military agreements with France, which has some 1,500 soldiers stationed in the country to help fight jihadism in the region — a move that Paris has ignored on the grounds of legitimacy.

The agreements cover different timeframes, although one of them dating from 2012 was set to expire within a month, according to military leaders.

The military rulers have also announced the immediate “expulsion” of the French ambassador Sylvain Itte and announced it was withdrawing his diplomatic immunity. They said his presence was a threat to public order.

But French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday hailed Itte’s work in Niger and said he was in the country despite being given a 48-hour deadline to leave Niger last Friday.