West Africa’s defense chiefs agreed to a plan for a potential military intervention in Niger as a deadline looms for the junta that seized power in the key Western ally to restore democracy by Sunday.
The agreement was announced on Friday after a three-day meeting of defense officials of the Economic Community of West African States regional bloc in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. It came as the president of Nigeria, the region’s most influential country and largest military, sought legislative permission for military action.
Read more: What’s Driving Coups in Niger and Across West Africa?: QuickTake
“All the elements that would go into any eventual intervention have been brought out here and been refined, including the timing, the resources needed and the how and where and when we are going to deploy such a force,” Abdel-Fatau Musah, Ecowas commissioner for peace and security, told reporters after the meeting.
“It is the last resort. We want diplomacy to work,” Musah said.
Over the past three years Ecowas has tried and failed to convince military leaders to restore democracy in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, but it did not threaten the use of force in those countries. An Ecowas delegation left Niamey on Thursday without having met the coup leaders or ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
Niger’s junta would be given time to “reflect on what they have done and to return the country to constitutional order,” Musa added. “If they don’t, then we will make them hand over to civilian authorities.”
He said the region’s leaders were determined to “put an end to the coup contagion,” but didn’t say whether Ecowas would intervene immediately when the deadline expires on Sunday.
Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal have all pledged to support an intervention to reverse the coup, which is the sixth successful putsch in the past three years in a region rife with jihadist activity and plagued by poor governance.
“We must ensure that the decisions taken here today are not mere rhetorics, but are transformed into tangible actions on the ground,” Nigeria’s defense minister General Christopher Gwabin Musa told reporters in Abuja. “The success of this meeting will not be measured by the words spoken here today, but by the actions we take tomorrow and in the days to come.”
The regional bloc has taken a hard line against the soldiers who detained Bazoum in the July 26 coup, closing borders and issuing harsh sanctions that have sent food prices in the impoverished country soaring.
The coup has created a belt of military-run countries that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, many of them less friendly with the West than they are with Russia, which has made inroads in the region in recent years partly through the Wagner Group.
Niger has been a key ally in the international fight against jihadist groups that have killed thousands and displaced millions in the Sahel over the past decade. But the junta, led by presidential guard chief General Abdourahamane Tiani, has severed defense ties with ex-colonial power France — which has 1,500 troops stationed in the country — and received support from neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, which both moved closer to Russia after recent coups.
French Defense Minister Catherine Colonna on Saturday received Bazoum’s Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou, according to a statement. France supports Ecowas’ efforts to “defeat this putsch attempt,” it said.
The US on Friday became the latest country to suspend some aid to Niger, which receives roughly 40% of its budget from foreign aid, following France and other European allies.
--With assistance from Albertina Torsoli.