Leaders of the Sahel states of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso met for the first time on the 6th of July 2024 to cement their alliance, the Alliance of Sahel States, known by its French acronym AES. The AES members have irrevocably cut ties with the regional body, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which they see as an existential threat. They have also pivoted towards Russia after drastically cutting ties with the colonial power, France.
First announced in September 2023, the Alliance of Sahel States is a pact made up of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – all led by military juntas. The pact enables the members to cooperate in the event of armed rebellion or external aggression.
What brings the three countries closer together is political convenience and strategic security interests. All three are led by military juntas who seized control in a series of coup d’états between 2020 and 2023 and severed military and diplomatic ties with regional allies and Western powers. They all face grave security threat from Islamist militants, and they are all former French colonies and France’s post-colonial engagement in the region has, for years, been a source of controversy with the former colonial power being accused of meddling in internal politics to the detriment of locals.
The three countries withdrew from ECOWAS in January 2023 due to the regional bloc’s tough stance against the coups and its insistence on the immediate restoration of civilian rule in those countries. Faced by ECOWAS imposed sanctions, the three coup-hit states opted to form an alliance and irrevocably cut ties with the organisation. Although ECOWAS has lifted sanctions on Niger, no progress has been made.
Progressives in the Sahel region and Africa at large must be concerned, especially when the lens focus on the priorities of AES. No one believes ECOWAS is a beacon of progress in West Africa, but everyone must understand that legitimising military coups takes the region and continent a century or two back.
AES leaders met for the first time in Niger’s capital, Niamey, on Saturday 6 July to cement their alliance, the Alliance of Sahel States. Top of the agenda is to increase military cooperation to strengthen security within member states. They will also be looking at strengthening economic ties with long-term plans to create their own currency as they focus on rejecting Western imperialists. It is also their goal to create a foreign influence-free alliance to bring true independence for their citizens, and they stress the need to create systems that express African culture.
Significantly, after intentionally turning their backs on the West, France, all three countries have demanded the withdrawal of French and other Western soldiers who were there as part of an anti-jihadist mission; they have instead now turned towards Russia for military assistance. And the Wagner Mercenaries who were already operating in the region have now taken control, replacing the French and US military.
Replacing French and US military personnel with Russians while claiming to be creating a foreign influence-free zone is of itself controversial, to say the least. And to believe Russia does not harbour imperial tendencies is rather delusional, ill-informed, and dangerous. Wagner mercenaries are not teaching AES to be self-reliant but charging the alliance to be dependent.
How the juntas’ Russian posturing presumably empowers the public and improves the security situation of the three countries is anybody’s guess. Foreign ‘solutions’ are the antithesis of local empowerment. The only sure way of improving security in the Sahel region is empowering local populations to plan and build their lives; it is giving the ordinary man and woman real control of political levers.
What is obvious is that the three leaders are not in a rush to relinquish and transfer power to a civilian government. In their recent summit, there was no mention of a timetable to return to civilian rule or a commitment to a transition to elected civilian authority to which the military will be subordinate.
AES needs to be realistic with its potential or risk turning into a little more than an expensive isolation from reality. Self-isolation as a long-term strategy will neither improve security nor empower the AES member states; the allies cannot realistically fund and maintain sufficient levels of security in total isolation, some level of cooperation with their ECOWAS neighbours would be required for intelligence sharing and to close possible gaps that can be exploited by the many armed groups operating in the region.
There are already signs of security inadequacies within the AES; according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), which tracks violence in the region, at least 8,000 people were killed in Burkina Faso in 2023, and gains against armed groups largely backslid in Niger.
If on one hand you want to reduce foreign influence, empower and project local solutions while on the other you invite and affirm a different set of foreigners and leave gates wide open to foreign solutions, you are not being honest to yourself and your local audience.
MTHWAKAZI INDEPENDENT 