By Ejiroghene Barrett
The first meeting of foreign ministers of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) ended on Friday, December 1, in Bamako, Mali. Ministers adopted concrete recommendations, including the creation of a Confederation between the three member states of the Alliance, namely Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
This meeting, according to the participating ministers, was called to draft a common economic plan that would reinforce the foundation for a viable alliance, which would lead to decisions concerning the functioning of the Alliance, its legal architecture and its strategic coordination in the security, economic and diplomatic fields.
The meeting had the particular objectives of deciding on appropriate measures for the establishment of a fully functioning Alliance, including through the adoption of additional protocols; agreeing on a mechanism for coordinating the political and diplomatic action of the AES member states; and to determine the modalities necessary to strengthen integration between the three member-states, a report said.
As part of initial talks to iron out the modalities for the meeting and in a show of solidarity with his colleagues, Nigerièn military head, General Tiani, flew to Bamako on his first trip outside the country since he seized power, to meet his Malian counterpart, Colonel Assimi Goita and in the afternoon he flew straight to Ouagadougou to meet with the Burkinabe military head, Captain Ibrahim Traore.
As ECOWAS prepares for its Ordinary Summit on December 8, in Abuja, Nigeria, it will undoubtedly discuss these new developments in the region and the possible implications they may have for the regional body’s current state and its future objectives.
A confederation with potentials and bottlenecks.
If the push towards a Confederation by the three Sahelian states is achieved, It would be the only confederation in the world. The consequences of such a union would be significant. A Sahelian Federation comprising the three states would become the largest state in Africa and overtake India as the 8th largest in the world.
It would bring together 70 million people, and enjoy an abundance of resources, from cattle and cotton to gold, uranium and oil. Mali is constructing West Africa’s biggest gold refinery, with Burkina Faso also building one – while a 2,000 km pipeline from Niger to international markets has been commissioned.
Many analysts are sceptical about the sustainability of such a union, considering the extreme political balancing acts required for its success. Their scepticism is also stirred by historical antecedents.
West Africa has witnessed an attempt at a Confederation with the creation of Senegambia, a union between Senegal and Gambia in 1982, and its quick demise due, in part, to claims of ethnic domination, a reality that may also rear its head in the AES with the diverse ethnic make-up of its member-states.
Coordinating the operations of three national armed forces with their own internal political and Logistic challenges will be a real test for the Alliance as well, commentators say.
An alliance built on defiance
From its declared scope, the AES looks set to establish itself, not just as a rival to its much larger counterpart, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), but also as an opponent of what leaders of its member-states have described persistently as France’s hegemonic control over the affairs of their states.
Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, who was named prime minister by the military junta in Mali in September 2022, made this point in his criticism of France for its “neo-colonialist, condescending, paternalist and vengeful policies”.
In many cases, France has shown itself to be openly supportive of corrupt and oppressive figures, such as former Burkinabe President Blaise Compaoré, who play by the social and economic rules imposed by France, creating challenges for those who defend the democratic principle in former French colonial territories.
The alliance started as a security pact finalised on September 16, following the July coup in Niger. After the democratic government was ousted, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Guinea in a separate communique, stated that they would come to the aid of Niger after ECOWAS reached a decision to launch military operations to reinstate the ousted democratic government of Mohamed Bazoum.
The AES convened its inaugural ministerial summit on November 25 in Bamako, bringing together ministers responsible for Economy and Finance from the three Sahelian countries.
The gathering followed the adoption of the Liptako-Gourma Charter on September 16, amid political tensions between the three states and ECOWAS after the latter imposed tough sanctions on the military regimes.
The summit primarily centred on economic development within the Liptako-Gourma region, resulting in the adoption of 18 key recommendations. These aim to set the stage for genuine integration within the newly formed alliance.
The proposed measures included enhancing the free movement of goods and people across the AES, implementing a robust food security mechanism, formulating a collective industrialisation strategy for alliance states, expediting the execution of energy, agricultural, hydraulic, and transportation projects, and even considering the establishment of regional civil nuclear power projects.
In its current formation, the group appears to be a counterforce to the opposition that has greeted the re-emergence of military intervention in the sub-region‘s political space.
Some political watchers argue that the basis for the AES alliance is not subjective on the presumption that only one political system is acceptable. According to them, the alliance indicates a willingness to look beyond the aesthetics of leadership and address the core issues of economic and political sovereignty.
An alliance against insurgency
From its initial mandate of forming a security alliance against threats to any of the three-member states by any nation, the alliance has evolved into a full-fledged network against all perceived security threats, including those by non-state actors.
The Sahelian states have faced a security crisis ever since a NATO-backed insurgency overthrew Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, spawning terrorist groups throughout the Sahara Desert and the neighbouring Sahel region. Burkina Faso lost up to 40 per cent of its territory to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, according to ECOWAS.
However, recent developments show Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have been undergoing the process of reclaiming land and also carrying out coordinated attacks against insurgents.
Some analysts, however, believe that by pooling their resources together, those countries can reduce individual reliance on foreign countries and tackle the security challenge with one front.
Recent reports reveal the challenges that the AES would have to confront to ensure that it eradicates the violent insurgency in the region. The current battles against the insurgency have brought some successes but have also exposed major challenges for the armed forces of these countries.
Burkina Faso is Africa’s fourth-largest gold producer and the 14th-largest in the world. Since 2016, these groups have denied the developing country much-needed revenue by stealing $140 million in gold to finance their activities, according to a 2020 report the government had commissioned.
Last year, only two towns in Burkina Faso were not truly free from Islamist control, that is Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso. The country’s Prime Minister says that, presently, 65% of the country’s national territory has been recovered.
Weeks after the recapture of the Malian town of Kidal, Burkina Faso has taken back Falagountou, a town in the north, close to the Nigerien border. They have also announced the recapture of Djibo, a strategic town 100 miles to the west of Falagounto.
The clashes between the insurgents and Burkinabe military in this town have been the source of controversy as reports by Western media claimed that the Burkinabè military recorded huge casualties, even as the gendarmerie, responsible for internal security, claimed it quashed an attack of a reported 3,000 insurgents.
The Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) successively repelled terrorist attacks against four posts in the localities of Labbezagan, Gossi, Tessalit and Menaka, in northern Mali, the army announced in a press release published this Sunday, December 3.
In Dori, a town in the far north of Burkina Faso, which, just last year, was still under the control of Islamists, the Burkinabè armed forces claim to have re-established control.
A new front for multipolarism
The three member-states, all governed by military regimes that have been sanctioned by ECOWAS and several international bodies for disrupting the democratic process and imposing unconstitutional governments, are at the cusp of a new multilateral political structure that has emerged from current global political dynamics.
With the steps taken so far, it is clear that the three Sahel countries are charting a new path that establishes cooperative structures, even in the defence sector, outside those created by Western-endorsed African institutions, commentators say.
The Prime Minister of Burkina Faso, Apollinaire Kyelem de Tambèla, in a recent remark, captured this fact succinctly. He said; “faced with the blockade imposed by certain Western states, diversification was not only appropriate but necessary. We have also strengthened military cooperation with China and Turkey. This allowed us to have modern and impactful means. Burkina Faso currently has the latest generation of defence equipment.”
There has also been a major shift in military alliance by these states towards Russia, which has led to a growing presence of the Russian private military contractor, PMC Wagner, in the war against Islamist insurgents.
The recent signing of agreements on military cooperation between the three states and a Visiting Russian delegation underscores the new drive by the military leaders to establish a deterrent force against potential external military intervention.
However, several political commentators have advised that turning to Russia should be more of a tactical move as these countries send France packing and not a strategic move because it would be a failure of the goals espoused by these military rulers “to replace French with Russian, Chinese or Turkish neo-colonialism.”
A serious obstacle for the ECOWAS objectives and the CFA.
The imposition of sanctions on these states may have inspired this new drive that could eventually see them pull out of the ECOWAS body and establish the AES as a rival to the current integrated economic grouping that ECOWAS represents. And the recommendations at the end of the Bamako meeting indicates that this is the objective.
According to the Malian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Abdoulaye Diop; “Our Alliance is no longer limited to defence and security. We aspire, among other things, to make the AES a space where independence and economic development in all their components are firmly anchored.
“We are aware of the colossal challenges that lie ahead of us, but it is precisely in these difficult times that unity and solidarity prove to be our most powerful assets.”
Statements by some officials from the AES member-states indicate that the future of ECOWAS, as it is currently constituted, may be imperiled if the decisions reached the Bamako meeting are fully actualised.
Former Malian Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Mamadou Ismaël Konaté, declared in a recent interview that ECOWAS is at a turning point. He said the sub-regional organisation is increasingly losing credibility, particularly due to the sanctions it has imposed on Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
“These sanctions, which aimed to force the three countries to return to civilian rule, did not have the desired effect. On the contrary, they reinforced the mistrust of the populations and the authorities towards ECOWAS”, he said.
The countries have already exited one union that they were a part of. The three countries have withdrawn from the G5 Sahel. The G5 Sahel is an institutional framework for the coordination of regional cooperation in development policies and security matters in West Africa, which was created on 16 February 2014 in Nouakchott, Mauritania, at a summit of five Sahel countries.
More than a year after Mali pulled out of the G5 Sahel, the Transitional Governments of Burkina Faso and the Republic of Niger, announced that, after an in-depth examination of the G5 Sahel and the functioning of the organisation, they were withdrawing their countries from all bodies of the G5 Sahel as of November 29, 2023.
Several commentators have stated that the establishment of the AES outside the framework of the ECOWAS would create a significant drawback for the Commission’s broader objectives of strengthening its free-trade protocols.
Some political analysts have called on the region’s largest economy, Nigeria to leverage more on the cordial bilateral relationship to defuse a multilaterally complex problem. They say the Nigerian Government has the opportunity and the burden of having a close bilateral relationship with Niger and could help diffuse tensions that could destroy a longstanding relationship.
These three countries combined possess the potential for creating one of the wealthiest axis for gold mining in the sub-region, and recent statistics show an increase in production that illustrates this potential. In one year, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger produced 232.4 tonnes of gold. That’s approximately 7.8 billion CFA.
The member states of the Alliance have taken a bold and visionary initiative by planning the creation of a stabilisation fund. This approach is part of a broader strategy aimed at strengthening their economic and monetary cooperation.
They are also considering the establishment of an investment bank dedicated to the region. This financial institution will aim to catalyse investments in key sectors, thus promoting economic development and shared prosperity.
The ambition does not stop there. One of the most significant and symbolic projects of this integration is the creation of a common currency. This initiative represents a major step towards regional economic unity, facilitating trade, strengthening monetary stability, and consolidating cooperation between these nations.
The contemplation of establishing a common currency is a major obstacle for the ECOWAS single currency initiative. Even more so as the new currency’s strength would likely be tied to the immense gold reserves of the three states.
Analysts say if these three countries were to establish a single currency, gold could be excellent collateral.
These measures, if successfully implemented, could significantly transform the landscape by bringing stability, growth and lasting prosperity to the populations of the region, but also seriously undermine the objectives of ECOWAS, some economists say.
This recommendation, many believe, also spells a death blow for the common French West African currency, the CFA.
Drawbacks for a successful alliance
There are major challenges ahead. The threat of an invasion by ECOWAS still looms, even as the regional body says it has suspended such moves for now. Also, the battle against a growing insurgency imposes huge financial burdens on these states. Such limitations would have been best managed by a broader alliance that ECOWAS and its Security arrangements represent.
Some political commentators, such as Nate Allen, an associate professor at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, have said that the alliance “is in part an effort to entrench and legitimise (their) military governments” more than to tackle the violent extremism which they have limited capacity to fight.
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger remain heavily reliant on external financial, food, and humanitarian aid, often sourced from countries traditionally unsupportive of unconstitutional governments.
The economic repercussions of these stringent sanctions continue to impact the economies and financial systems of these three nations, compounded by the significant humanitarian consequences of the ongoing security crisis.
An independent conflict analyst in the Sahel says “Its long-term success depends both on the resources that member countries can mobilise and the support that Africans and the broader international community could provide.”
The Alliance of Sahel States represents an effort to uphold the demands of sovereignty and the right to self-determination, government officials say. The people of the three member-states have poured into the streets to show support for this demand.
However, the challenges ahead indicate that the military leadership must look beyond their initial defiance and objections to calls for a return to civil rule, and ensure that a genuine transition that would recognise the need to address key political demands is essential to the stability of any alliance established.
