W. African leaders activate ‘standby force’ vs. Niger

Stick with threat of military action against generals

DAKAR, Senegal — West African leaders on Thursday said they have ordered the immediate deployment of a “standby force” ready to intervene in Niger, sticking with their threat of military action against coup leaders who removed the country’s president from power last month.

They provided no details of their plans but released the announcement at the end of a crucial summit in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, to address the crisis in neighboring Niger, where the mutinous generals who seized power more than two weeks ago have shunned mediation efforts and ignored an ultimatum to relinquish power.

“No option is taken off the table, including the use of force as a last resort,” President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria, the current-chair of the West African bloc, said in a statement.

Heads of state from the Economic Community of West African States, the 15-nation regional bloc known as ECOWAS, had already threatened military intervention if Niger’s president was not reinstated by last Sunday. But heading into the summit, their options appeared to be limited, and there were doubts they would follow through on the red line they had drawn.

It was unclear how many troops would be mobilized, from which countries they would be drawn, or when or where they could be deployed. Niger shares borders with four countries that are part of the bloc, but two of them, Burkina Faso and Mali, have said they would defend Niger’s junta in the event of a military intervention. Both of those countries have been suspended from the bloc because they are led by military juntas that took power in coups.

Hopes for an end to the stalemate were further dimmed when the junta on Thursday replaced the Cabinet of the ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, with a new government made up of 21 officials led by Ali Lamine Zeine, an economist and former finance minister. The two highest-ranking officials after Zeine are generals and coup leaders.

The continuing crisis has been humbling for several powers active in West Africa, including the United States, which has bases and troops in the country but no current ambassador; France, the former colonizer, which has faced growing resentment over its presence in the region; and Nigeria, Niger’s giant neighbor to the south.

Tinubu had vowed weeks before the coup that leaders in the region would no longer tolerate unconstitutional power grabs.

Despite widespread condemnation in the West and from most West African countries, many Nigeriens have welcomed the military takeover, which they see as a welcome change from what they say was more than a decade of corruption under Bazoum and his predecessor, Mahamadou Issoufou.

Until mutineers detained him July 26, Bazoum had maintained a close security partnership with Western allies like the United States and European countries, while buying drones from Turkey and developing a pipeline project with China’s national oil company.

Whether that fragile security architecture could survive under the rule of the new generals in power, in a region plagued by frequent military takeovers and roaming Islamist insurgencies, including in Niger, is unclear.

The United States and France, which have about 2,500 troops combined in Niger, have suspended their military assistance and called for the reinstatement of Bazoum.