ECOWAS defence chiefs set ‘D-Day’ for Niger invasion
Defence Chiefs of West African States have agreed on a day to invade the Niger Republic and flush out the military junta which had ousted the civilian president, Mohammed Bazoum, last July 26.
According to the defence chiefs rising from their two-day meeting in Accra, Ghana, the military option will be taken when all other alternatives, including diplomatic and political means fail to convince the junta to reinstate President Bazoum.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) disclosed this, Friday at the end of a two-day meeting of member-states’ army chiefs in, where they have been hashing out the logistics and strategy for a possible use of force in Niger that ECOWAS has said would be a last resort.
“We are ready to go anytime the order is given. The D-Day is also decided, which we are not going to disclose.
“As we speak we are still readying mediation mission into the country, so we have not shut any door but we are not going to engage in endless dialogue,” said ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security Abdel-Fatau Musah during the closing ceremony.
He added that there was no immediate response from the junta.
Military officers deposed Bazoum on July 26 and have defied calls from the United Nations, ECOWAS and others to reinstate him, prompting the bloc to order a standby force to be assembled.
Abdel-Fatau Musah, ECOWAS commissioner, briefs the press on plans to deploy its standby force to the Republic of Niger, in Accra, Ghana, August 18, 2023.
“We’ve already agreed and fine-tuned what will be required for the intervention,” Musah said, declining to share how many troops would be deployed and other strategic details.
Most of its 15 member states are prepared to contribute to the joint force excepting those also under military rule, including; Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, and Cape Verde, according to the bloc.
ECOWAS has taken a harder stance on the Niger coup, the wider region’s seventh in three years, than it did on previous ones. The credibility of the bloc is at stake because it had said it would tolerate no further such overthrows.
“The decision is that the coup in Niger is one coup too many for the region, and we are putting a stop to it at this time, we are drawing the line in the sand,” Musah added.
Any intervention would spell further turmoil for West Africa’s impoverished Sahel region, which is already battling a decade-old Islamist insurgency and a deepening hunger crisis.
Niger also has strategic importance beyond West Africa because of its uranium and oil reserves and role as a hub for foreign troops involved in the fight against the insurgents linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts continue as the United Nations special envoy for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simao, met with the junta’s Prime Minister Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine on Friday.
Simao said in comments broadcast on Niger’s state television that he wanted to listen to the junta’s point of view “to study together a way for the country to return as quickly as possible to constitutional normality and legality too. We are convinced that it is always possible with dialogue.”
