Joe Biden has called for the immediate release of Niger’s elected president and for the country’s democracy to be restored, in the highest profile statement by the US since the coup that removed Mohamed Bazoum from power, as Senegal also ramped up the pressure by saying its troops would join a a military intervention if necessary.
“I call for President Bazoum and his family to be immediately released, and for the preservation of Niger’s hard-earned democracy,” the US president said in a statement on Thursday, the 63rd anniversary of Niger’s independence. “In this critical moment, the United States stands with the people of Niger to honour our decades-long partnership rooted in shared democratic values and support for civilian-led governance.”
Bazoum said in an opinion piece published on Thursday in the Washington Post that he is a hostage and called on the international community to restore constitutional order. “This coup, launched against my government by a faction in the military on July 26, has no justification whatsoever. If it succeeds, it will have devastating consequences for our country, our region and the entire world.”
The Niger junta late on Thursday revoked five military cooperation agreements with France amid a wave of anti-French sentiment. France has between 1,000 and 1,500 troops in Niger, helping to fight Islamist insurgent groups.
A decision about the revocation of the military deals with France, dating between 1977 and 2020, was read out on national television late on Thursday by junta representative Amadou Abdramane. Abdramane added that a diplomatic notice would be sent to France to that effect. There was no immediate response from France. Niger also suspended broadcasts of French state-funded international news outlets France 24 and RFI – drawing condemnation from the French foreign ministry.
The move is similar to post-coup crackdowns on French media by the juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso, who have also kicked out French troops, many of whom are stationed in Niger.
The coup against Bazoum was the seventh in the west and central Africa region since 2020.
In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, the foreign minister, Aïssata Tall Sall, told reporters that there had been “one coup too many” in the region and that Senegal would participate if the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) decided to intervene militarily in Niger.
“Senegalese soldiers, for all these reasons, will go there,” she said, citing Senegal’s international commitments. “Senegal’s conviction is that these coups must be stopped.”
Sall and Biden’s comments came as the country’s junta appeared on television to warn against foreign military interference in the impoverished country.
In one of few addresses to the west African country since seizing power from Bazoum, Niger’s democratically elected president, a week ago, Gen Abdourahmane Tchiani warned against foreign meddling and intervention.
Tchiani called on “the people of Niger as a whole and their unity to defeat all those who want to inflict unspeakable suffering on our hard-working populations and destabilise our country”.
His remarks came after Ecowas officials said the political and security group would consider military intervention as a “last resort” should the coup leaders fail to back down.
Niger has been a key western ally in the Sahel region in the fight against regional jihadist groups, and has hosted French, US and other troops. Russia has attempted to exploit the spate of recent coups in the Sahel.
Western officials fear that if military missions leave Niger it would create a vacuum that Russia and its Wagner mercenary group would fill. The Kremlin already has a significant presence in Mali, Central African Republic and Sudan while courting Burkina Faso.
With the ousting of Bazoum those missions – France’s in particular – are seen as under threat as coup leaders have stirred anti-foreign sentiment that has spilled over into sometimes violent demonstrations.
Biden said: “The Nigerien people have the right to choose their leaders. They have expressed their will through free and fair elections – and that must be respected.”
Tchiani, in his televised speech, said Niger was facing difficult times and he condemned the “hostile and radical” attitudes of those opposing his rule.
He called the sanctions imposed by Ecowas after the coup illegal, unfair, inhuman and unprecedented. These include halting energy transactions with Niger, which gets up to 90% of its power from neighbouring Nigeria, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Niger has blamed a series of recent rolling electricity blackouts in several cities on Nigeria cutting its power supply.
Tchiani’s fierce rhetoric came as a fourth French military evacuation flight left Niger, after France, Italy and Spain announced evacuations of their citizens and other Europeans in Niger’s capital city, Niamey, amid concerns they could become trapped. Nearly 1,000 people had left on four flights, and a fifth evacuation was under way, France’s ministry of foreign affairs said.
The US state department on Wednesday also ordered what it said was the temporary departure of nonessential embassy staff and some family members from Niger as a precaution.
A two-day meeting of defence leaders of the Ecowas bloc opened on Wednesday in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, to confer on next steps. Abdel-Fatau Musah, the bloc’s commissioner for political affairs, peace and stability, said the meeting a would deal with how to “negotiate with the officers in the hostage situation that we find ourselves in the Republic of Niger.”
It remains unclear how likely an Ecowas military intervention is. While one western diplomat in Niamey, who did not want to be identified for security reasons, judged it likely, other analysts have suggested that the coup might back down in the face of a credible threat.
The M62 Movement, an activist group that has organised pro-Russia and anti-French protests, called for residents in Niamey to mobilise and block the airport until foreign military personnel left the country. “Any evacuation of Europeans [should be] conditional on the immediate departure of foreign military forces,” Mahaman Sanoussi, the national coordinator for the group, said in a statement.
With Reuters
