How the Niger coup will affect the Sahel West African region

The Niger coup unfolded in the easternmost part of West Africa, a fragile region where back-to-back military interventions from Guinea to Burkina Faso to Mali have ousted pro-Western governments in recent years, sending jitters across Western capitals whose geopolitical interests are tied to the continent.

The trend is worrisome for the US-led Western bloc, especially in light of the growing Russian influence across a region formerly colonised by France and increasing terrorist activities across the Sahel, a broad belt which lies between the Sahara desert of the north and the tropical savanna areas of the south stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea.

Despite Wagner leader Yevgeny Prizgohin’s recent high-profile death, which just followed his visits to the Central African Republic and Mali, experts believe that Russia will continue to be active in many African countries thanks to the mercenary group’s continuing connections in the region.

Niger protests by the supporters of Russia and the coup have further increased the chances that Western powers might lose access to a critical mineral-rich West African region, where strong anti-French sentiments have taken over the streets. Last weekend, Niger asked the French ambassador to leave the country in 48 hours, cutting electricity and water to the embassy.

“Niger lies across a transition zone between the north and south [Africa]. Therefore, an instability that may occur in Niger has the potential to spread to both directions, escalating tensions between pro-Russian West African military-led governments and pro-Western states in the region,” says Yunus Turhan, the managing director of Mediterranean Basin and African Civilizations Research Center at Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University.

“This also shows that the Niger coup can lay the groundwork for the development of a regional dynamic that Russia might support militarily and China economically,” Turhan tells TRT World. China, which has a growing economic clout across West Africa, recently stated that only Africans could really solve African problems.

Fault lines

ECOWAS (The Economic Community of West African States), a union of largely pro-Western states, has already issued an ultimatum against Niger’s coup leaders, threatening to launch a military intervention in the country if putschist generals did not reinstate the country’s democratically-elected President Mohamed Bazoum.

But ECOWAS’s threat was immediately met with a strong response from the three West African states friendly to Russia – Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. The trio declared support to Niger’s coup leaders, promising to defend them against the ECOWAS intervention. Many believe that the Niger situation might have decisive effects on ECOWAS’s political future.

“The Niger coup has divided the ECOWAS bloc between those who have kept elected governments and those who are experiencing a series of coups,” says Yasser Louati, a French political analyst and the head of the Committee for Justice & Liberties (CJL).

While military leaderships in West African countries are capitalising on anti-Western sentiments, ECOWAS is perceived as pro-Western, Louati tells TRT World. Despite the fact that being against coups provides a better political and legal argument to ECOWAS, the pro-Western label has its own disadvantages, he says.

As a result, if pro-Western bloc in ECOWAS moves against the Niger coup, it will look like they are acting on behalf of Western interests, which many perceive as neocolonial practices carried out by former colonial powers, according to Louati. This shows ECOWAS’s political position is kind of “cornered”, he adds.

Richard Falk, a leading expert on international affairs, describes recent military interventions in the Sahel West African region as “anti-colonial coups”. Falk believes that “any intervention by ECOWAS or France would violate international law and the UN Charter, absent a Security Council authorisation, which is highly unlikely, given the attitudes of Russia and China.”

Without UN Security Council’s approval, if France uses force against the Niger coup, “it would be acting in a manner similar to Russia in Ukraine, except that the context would be more discrediting for France as it could not make a sphere of influence or fault line arguments,” Falk, an emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University, tells TRT World.

“ECOWAS reaction to the Niger coup is far stronger compared to previous West Africa coups. When we also look at the reaction of global actors to the Niger issue, we see that the Niger issue has a huge impact in the global context,” Turhan says.

Beyond a possible confrontation between ECOWAS and pro-Niger coup countries of West Africa, increasing terrorist activities inside Niger also threaten Western interests as terror groups use political instability to quickly expand their influence, according to Turhan.

France has 1,500 soldiers to support the deposed president’s fight against terror groups as the US backed French counter-terrorism operations in Niger operating two airports and deploying its soldiers there. “The US sees Niger as a key country for both Western interests and the Sahel region's security,” Turhan says.

Last week, a terrorist attack killed 17 Nigerien soldiers near the Malian border according to the country’s defence ministry, a troublesome indication of increasing terrorist activities in the Sahel West African region.

Terrorist groups from Boko Haram to Al Qaeda’s regional branches are very active across the Sahel region, which accounted for far more terrorism-related fatalities than anywhere in the globe last year, constituting 43 percent of the world total.

In 2007, the Sahel terrorism-related fatalities comprised only one percent of the global total,. The sharp increase shown in the 2022 data demonstrates how the region has become a hotbed of terrorist groups.

A ‘coup ecosystem’

This increasing trend of terrorist activities has been the main base of French military operations in the Sahel West African region from Mali to Burkina Faso and Niger. France’s counter-terrorism operations began in 2012 with the Operation Serval and continued in 2014 under the Operation Barkhane, which formally ended last year.

France failed to defeat armed groups in West Africa, however. Instead, it led to a strong public backlash in Mali and Burkina Faso against Paris, facilitating a ground for coups led by anti-Western military leaders of the two countries, says Kaan Devecioglu, an expert on the Sahel region at Orsam, an Ankara-based Turkish think-tank.

“We can see a coup axis stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Interestingly, if we look at the recent coups across the Sahel, it is not a coincidence that it followed a horizontal direction from west to east from Guinea to Mali and most recently Niger on the line followed by French colonialism in the past,” says Turhan.

“What happened in Niger is a result of the discontent stemming from French domination in West Africa, as has been experienced especially in the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea since 2020,” Devecioglu tells TRT World.

Like Turhan’s ‘coup axis’, which some also call a ‘coup belt’, Devecioglu sees a “coup ecosystem” across the Sahel based on the anti-French sentiment, which the juntas across these West African states used to enable themselves to come to power.

Louati also believes that West African coups are related to each other due to the fact that the French-led Western war against terrorism “failed” in the Sahel region, “fueling the anti-West popular resentment” across those countries, which are victims of both terrorism and Western intervention.

This political psychology has paved the way for respective juntas to claim power in the name of asserting full sovereignty for their states, where Western states continue to have significant economic interests even in the post-colonial period, he adds.

Devecioglu sees a growing possibility that similar coups could happen in other former French colonies in West Africa in the coming period. “As a matter of fact, there are similar sentiments and conditions across the societies of other West African countries to Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger,” says Devecioglu.