A West African bloc has given Niger’s military junta until Sunday to step down or face a possible military intervention. If such an operation were to happen, NatSec Daily has been told to expect one of two general outcomes.
The first is the “shit show” scenario, as described by former NSC director for African affairs CAMERON HUDSON. He argues that military moves by the Economic Community of West African States would lead to a conflict between inexperienced and relatively weak forces.
“ECOWAS has no recent experience undertaking this kind of operation. It’s not something they even train for,” Hudson added, noting that a country like Nigeria is still struggling to defeat the Boko Haram terrorist group inside its borders. There’s also the possibility of Mali and Burkina Faso intervening to help — not combat — the coup’s perpetrators. “An intervention now has all the makings of a regional war,” Hudson said.
The second scenario is still bad, but not as dire. J. PETER PHAM, a former top U.S. diplomat for the Sahel now at the Atlantic Council, contends the junta-aligned countries have militaries that would struggle even getting to Niger. Burkina Faso’s forces have seen nearly two-thirds of the nation’s territory taken over by insurgents, while Mali’s military only has one transport plane, he said.
Both those nations, per Pham, “will have trouble fighting their way out of the bag that they’re in.”
What he suspects instead is ECOWAS aims to pressure Niger’s military to root out the junta. After all, the coup leaders and their followers are a fraction of the Nigerien forces, meaning that the rest of the military would outnumber and overpower those holding ousted president MOHAMED BAZOUM — although doing so without endangering his life and family is another matter.
“The best armed and trained units are the special force battalions the U.S. has trained and the French have trained,” said Pham, adding many of them aren’t in the capital, Niamey, because they’re out in the countryside fighting insurgents and terrorist groups.
KEN OPALO, a Georgetown University professor of African politics, said ECOWAS should prioritize non-military options. “They’d be much better off working on a face-saving off ramp through an African Union process,” he said, such as defining a fixed timeline for the return of civilian rule. “It’s a terrible situation and there are simply no good options on the table.”
The Biden administration is signaling it doesn’t want to see an uptick in fighting, though it considers any questions about a future intervention as a hypothetical scenario. “Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt, and certainly we don’t want to see any resolution of this that would result in violence of any kind,” NSC spokesperson JOHN KIRBY told reporters Thursday.
There are growing worries about what’s to come. Paris announced today that it has evacuated more than 1,000 French and other nationals from Niger. On Wednesday, the U.S issued an ordered departure for much of its embassy personnel in Niamey, with the State Department saying the mission had “suspended routine services.”
The Biden administration has yet to call the military takeover a coup, claiming there’s still room for diplomacy to put Bazoum back in charge. Just today, on Niger’s independence day no less, President JOE BIDEN said “the Nigerien people have the right to choose their leaders…I call for President Bazoum and his family to be immediately released, and for the preservation of Niger’s hard-earned democracy.”
Bazoum’s been on the phone with many foreign officials, including several calls with Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN. Still, the Biden administration hasn’t announced any such call by the president.
Politico
