Risks of conflict grow in Niger
Concerns prompt Europeans to leave
More than 250 Europeans were evacuated from the West African nation of Niger on Tuesday on a plane sent by France, nearly a week after a coup threatened to set off a regional conflict
The evacuations came less than a day after two neighboring states, Burkina Faso and Mali, said that they would join forces to defend Niger’s new military junta if a bloc of other regional countries carried through on a threat to intervene unless the ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, was returned to office.
France’s foreign ministry said that most of the 262 people on the plane were French. A second plane was also scheduled to depart Tuesday, and Italy has said that it, too, would set up a flight.
Tensions rose after the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States, vowed Sunday to take “all measures necessary,” including possible military action, to force the reinstatement of Niger’s president.
Mali and Burkina Faso, themselves ruled by military governments that took power in coups, responded Monday, saying that they would consider any move against Niger to be a “declaration of war” against their own countries.
Many analysts said in interviews that an imminent military confrontation was unlikely. But the statement further raised the stakes in a spiraling crisis that has exposed deep regional fissures and set off international alarm over the direction of a region where a succession of governments have fallen to military takeovers in the past four years.
It also raised the prospect that the crisis in Niger, where about 2,600 American and French troops are stationed, could spread into a wider regional conflict.
A French military official said in a briefing Tuesday that military cooperation with Niger has been suspended, but that French troops were not leaving the country. The Pentagon also said that it had suspended military cooperation with Niger for the time being.
Uncertainty persists over who is truly in charge in Niger.
Bazoum, 63, who was detained by his own presidential guards Wednesday, is being held in his private residence near the presidential palace in Niamey. But he can receive visitors — a photo posted to social media Sunday showed a smiling Bazoum sitting with the visiting president of Chad, Mahamat Déby, a mediator in the crisis — and he takes phone calls from world leaders and his own officials.
General Abdourahmane Tchiani, the head of the presidential guard, has claimed to be in charge of the military council running the country. Tchiani, 59, has received military training in France and in the United States, at the College of International Security Affairs Fort McNair, in Washington, D.C. But he fell into disfavor with Bazoum and has criticized Bazoum’s approach to fighting insurgents in the country, which relied heavily on French and American support.
The crisis is a stiff test for the bloc and its head, the recently elected president of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu. The group had already suspended Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea over military coups in those countries since 2020. The bloc set a deadline of next Sunday for Bazoum’s reinstatement. For now, though, it hopes to combat the coup through an economic blockade of landlocked Niger, which depends heavily on its neighbors for trade and financial stability.