Defense chiefs of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc meet in Ghana on Thursday to discuss the Niger crisis after a deadline expired for mutinous soldiers to release and return the President Mohamed Bazoum or face military intervention. Bazoum was ousted in July and remains under house arrest with his wife and son in the capital Niamey.
This is the first meeting since ECOWAS ordered the deployment of a “reserve force” last week to restore the country’s constitutional government. It is unknown if or when troops will intervene. A force is likely to consist of several thousand soldiers from Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Senegal and Benin and could take weeks or months to prepare, according to conflict experts.
ECOWAS has a poor record of stopping coups in the region: neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali have each suffered two in three years. The Niger coup was seen by the international community and ECOWAS as too much and, in addition to threatening a military invasion, the bloc has imposed severe economic and travel sanctions.
But as time passes without military action and a deadlock in negotiations, the junta is entrenching its power, leaving ECOWAS with few options.
“ECOWAS has very few good options…particularly as the (junta) seems unwilling at the moment to bow to foreign pressure,” said Andrew Lebovich, a researcher at the Clingendael Institute think tank. “An intervention could backfire and harm the organization in many ways, and failure to win significant concessions from the (board) could politically weaken the organization at an already fragile time.”
