When a group of military officers appeared on state television in Niger one year ago to announce a dramatic coup, they said they deposed the West African nation’s elected government for two key reasons: its security and economic crises.

But those challenges have persisted, even worsened. The country’s 26 million people — among the world’s youngest and poorest — are struggling after the junta severed ties with key international partners, who have imposed sanctions and suspended security and development support affecting close to half of Niger’s budget.

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

The coup was the latest and perhaps most significant of the recent military takeovers in Africa’s Sahel, the vast, arid expanse south of the Sahara Desert that has become a global hot spot for extremist violence. Niger had been the West’s last reliable partner in the region in battling jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Now, a crucial U.S. drone base is gone, along with U.S. forces vacating ahead of a September deadline. More than 1,000 French troops also pulled out after being told to leave. A key China-backed pipeline once meant to turn Niger into an oil exporter has stalled with the insecurity and uncertainty.

Support from international partners, notably the European Union, had made up close to 40% of Niger’s budget. With that gone, “we are only looking for something to live on,” said one resident in the capital, Niamey, Ibrahim Amani. Everything has become more expensive, he said.

On the streets, where thousands of mostly young people cheered the coup in its early dramatic days, there is growing frustration. But there are no public protests amid concerns about possible retaliation by the junta, which still holds deposed President Mohamed Bazoum in detention. The junta has said he will be charged with treason, to widespread criticism abroad.

There’s a “real depressing effect on the ability of the government to provide services and on the ability of businesses to thrive,” said Daniel Eizenga, a research fellow with the African Center for Strategic Studies.

As Niger’s military leaders consolidated their grip on power, they promised a three-year transition period to civilian rule. Analysts now say that is unlikely to happen on time.

The junta, along with those in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, is breaking away even from longtime West African allies.

The three countries, after expelling the forces of former colonizer France, have “completely changed the geopolitical dynamics” of the region and are forming their own anti-Western, pro-Russian alliance, said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Russia is a new force in the Sahel, but its ability to make up for Niger’s lost security support is limited. “Niger’s army is running out of material with the retreat of Western forces which the Russians – which has sent troops to Niger as its new security partner – can only partly compensate,” Laessing said.

On the ground, insecurity has worsened. Niger has quickly become the new target for extremists. Violent killings by rebels and militia groups more than doubled, from 770 people killed in the year before the coup to 1,599 in the year that followed, according to the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED.

Extremists carried out nearly five times as many large-scale attacks — involving at least 10 deaths — in the year after the coup, ACLED data shows.

“Al-Qaida and IS militants have … consolidated control over more territory since the junta took power by taking advantage of security force limitations that the withdrawal of Western support has contributed to,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project said in a new report.

That follows the trend in Mali and Burkina Faso, even after military juntas have invoked insecurity to justify taking power, experts have said.

“The coming years are likely to be difficult and violent in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, given the absence of clear inclusive strategies,” Alexander Thurston, an associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, said in the new report.

Niger’s junta leader, Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, outlined his goals for the country in a government document published last week: for it to be a sovereign nation that controls its resources, for good governance and justice to reign and for the citizens to be able to work.

However, the junta is “tightening their grip on the opposition, civil society, and independent media,” Samira Daoud, Amnesty International’s regional director for West and Central Africa, said Thursday in a statement that condemned dozens of “arbitrary arrests” in the last year in Niger.

For refusing to resign as president after being deposed, Bazoum has no public access apart from a doctor’s visit twice a week and the conditions of his detention are “becoming increasingly severe,” said Reed Brody, one of his lawyers.

On the business front, Niger’s already import-dependent economy is reeling from sanctions and the impact of border closures in the early days after the coup.

The status of hundreds of millions of euros in support from the European Union, one of Niger’s biggest donors, remains unclear. That affects agriculture, education, security, businesses and humanitarian activities along with work addressing migration.

Neither Russia nor other countries like Iran that Niger’s junta is seeking closer ties with is likely to step up and fill such gaps, said Eizenga with the African Center for Strategic Studies.

“Russia is ultimately acting in the interest of Russia,” he said. “And none of these other countries has the resources to provide the assistance that former partners did.”

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.

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.