By Henry Wilson-Sadlowski 

In late July, President Bazoum of Niger’s military guard overthrew the country’s government and installed a military dictatorship led by General Abdourahmane Tchiani, a former close advisor to the president. The coup followed months of Bazoum’s campaigning against corruption, which had reportedly bred significant insecurity among top military officials regarding their positions in government.  Tchiani’s takeover therefore met little resistance from the other branches of the military and was even welcomed among some citizens of the capital who had come to mistrust the leaders of Niger’s nascent democracy.

Since achieving its independence in 1960, Niger has undergone five similarly undemocratic transitions of power, with Bazoum’s assumption of the presidency in 2021 marking the first peaceful change of leadership in the country’s young history. Niger’s prominent geographic position and its significant contributions to fighting regional jihadist insurgencies always made the possibility of its collapse particularly concerning for its international partners like the United States and Nigeria, and Bazoum’s imprisonment prompted an immediate response from the international community.¹ The United States and France suspended military cooperation with the government and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) immediately condemned the new ruling junta, placed a series of economic and travel sanctions on Tchiani’s government, and issued a threat of military intervention in the event that Bazoum’s government was not immediately restored.² Despite foreign condemnation, domestic reaction to the coup was more positive, with some citizens in the capital publicly celebrating the overthrow of a government they deemed incapable of meeting their needs and subject to imperialist French influence.³ 

Such optimism is unlikely to last. While Nigerien citizens deserve a government that they feel advocates for their interests, previous military governments have displayed a propensity for human rights violations, often commit arbitrary arrests, and generally contribute to a breakdown in the rule of law. In recent years Mali and Burkina Faso, two former French colonies whose militaries also took power riding a wave of anti-French sentiment, witnessed a vast increase in the territory held by Jihadist groups and a severe decline in economic growth.⁴ Such conditions make it difficult for the international community to justify cooperation with the new military government, whose assumption of power has already produced significant consequences. The departure of French troops, suspension of US military activity and the lack of attention by the Nigerian Military have all emboldened Jihadist groups to increase their activity in the countryside.⁵ At least 29 soldiers were killed in early October using “improvised explosive devices and kamikaze vehicles” according to the Nigerien defense ministry in what was the largest such attack since the coup.⁶ Furthermore, prices of food and nonalcoholic beverages rose to their highest levels since May 2018.⁷ Even before the coup Niger was the world’s third least developed nation, with 4.3 million people in need of humanitarian aid. Now, economic and travel restrictions imposed by ECOWAS and Western countries will inevitably increase the hardships experienced by the Nigerian population.

While particularly geopolitically significant, the coup in Niger is only one example of what has been labeled an “epidemic” of autocratic upheaval in western Africa during the past decade. Similar coups in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso demonstrate a regional trend of democratic backsliding that has generated some concern among the international community.  ECOWAS’ president Abdel-Fatau Musah described past negotiations between ECOWAS and coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso as ineffective. In Musah’sview the juntas’ purported three-year “democratic transition plan” amounted to little more than a hollow attempt at temporary appeasement.⁸ He reiterated the organization’s commitment to intervene militarily should the situation not resolve itself quickly and in a manner that satisfied the organization’s commitment to democratic self-rule and human rights. 

While the United Nations Security Council has condemned Tchiani, growing ties between the Russian Wagner group and coup leaders make it unlikely that any military intervention would actually be authorized by Russian representatives on the body.⁹ The responsibility therefore falls upon ECOWAS to handle what is the clearest threat to their legitimacy since expanding their mandate to include the protection of democratic norms in 1993. The body struggled in combating authoritarianism in the following decades, though by the late 2010s it began achieving some successes. In 2015 it successfully negotiated for the reinstatement of democratic principles in Mali, and later that year helped the interim president of Burkina Faso return to power after an attempted coup. Between 2015 and 2020 there was not a single undemocratic transition of power in West Africa, an achievement for which the organization received high levels of praise.¹⁰ However, ECOWAS’ failure to address democratic backsliding in Guinea after its president, Alpha Conde, implemented undemocratic constitutional changes was said to have emboldened the special forces who overthrew Conde’s government in 2021.¹¹ Successive coups in Mali (August 2020 and May 2021) and Burkina Faso (January and September 2022) also served to undo much of the credit built up by the organization’s successes.

The recent string of failures for ECOWAS has placed even greater pressure on the manner in which it handles the coup in Niger. However, the stakes of this conflict are also much greater than in any of the previous examples. As soon as ECOWAS announced its willingness to intervene militarily in Niger in early August, the military governments of Mali and Burkina Faso both announced that they would see such an intervention as a direct threat to their own sovereignty, and have since formalized a security alliance with Niger’s military government.¹² The dangerous possibility of the situation collapsing into a  regional war is likely the reason why ECOWAS has thus far been hesitant to abide by its own threats of intervention, however the organization has not ruled out the possibility of an invasion should Niger’s military government fail to adequately satisfy their demands.

As recent French military withdrawal across Africa has signified the country’s diminishing role as a regional policeman, Niger and its neighbors are finally emerging from the influence of their former colonizers. However, Jihadist groups continue to capitalize on these withdrawals for territorial gain, and democratic institutions are under stress. ECOWAS and its partners will have to weigh the consequences of a possibly region-encompassing conflict against those of a world in which it did nothing to stop a fourth military Coup in as many years by one of its members. 

Henry Wilson-Sadlowski is sophomore at Tufts University studying International Relations.

Image: Parade des militaire (Conakry) (Wikimedia Commons)

This piece is a reproduction from its original issue in Hemispheres vol. 47, no. 1.