Not everyone is hostile to last week’s coup in Niger
Not everyone is hostile to the coups in Niger and other African nations in the past few years that have worried the West. In the “family photo” for last week’s Russia-Africa Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood next to Ibrahim Traore, the young military officer who seized power in Burkina Faso in September.
It was an uncomfortable moment for many leaders elsewhere in Africa. “The normalization and dignifying of military takeovers must trouble our great continent,” Kenya’s cabinet secretary for foreign affairs wrote while sharing the photo this week.
Now Burkina Faso and another military junta-led country friendly with Russia, Mali, have taken the unusual step of declaring that foreign military intervention in neighboring Niger after last week’s coup would be considered a declaration of war against them, too.
They are defying the West African regional body known as ECOWAS, which said on Sunday it could use force if Niger’s coup leaders don’t reinstate the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, within a week. Another coup-affected nation, Guinea, in a separate statement supported Niger’s junta and urged ECOWAS to “come to its senses.”
Their defense of the events in Niger complicates the world’s response as the resolve of partners is tested. It also reflects what a United Nations study warned last month after surveying thousands of citizens of African countries that recently went through coups or other undemocratic changes of government.
“A possible regional-level scenario might see the military juntas in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso team up» to challenge the region’s traditional response to coups, the report said. It warned they could defy sanctions and stand for elections, with help from “new international alliances.”
The report said that “paradoxically,” popular support for the recent military coups in Africa is “symptomatic of a new wave of democratic aspiration that is expanding across the continent” as overwhelmingly young populations grow frustrated with existing economic and political systems and press for change more rapid than what elections can deliver.
