The security challenges faced by member-states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have seen a frightening increase in the number of casualties recorded, sparking an outcry by the regional body and a call for greater efforts from the United Nations (UN) to contain the threat.
According to the president of the ECOWAS Commission, Omar Touray, West Africa recorded over 1,800 terrorist attacks in the first six months of 2023, resulting in nearly 4,600 deaths with dire humanitarian consequences.
Touray, told the UN Security Council (UNSC) that half a million people in the 15-nation organisation are refugees and nearly 6.2 million are internally displaced. He noted that if there isn’t an adequate international response to the 30 million people that ECOWAS assesses need food right now, the number of people in need would continue to increase, estimating that the number would have reached 42 million in August.
Touray identified terrorism, armed rebellion, organised crime, unconstitutional changes of government, illegal maritime activities, environmental crises, and fake news as the main sources of insecurity in the region.
With military coups in four countries- Mali; Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Niger, heads of ECOWAS member-states and officials of the organisation are worried about the resurgence of the military and the possibilities of the scourge of military interventions spiralling out of control, creating serious social and political challenges.
“The reversal of democratic gains runs parallel to insecurity that West Africa and the Sahel have been facing for some time now,” Touray said at the UNSC, and insecurity continues to create major obstacles to political stability and economic growth for the region, spreading insecurity far beyond its usual strongholds and setting the stage for a major refugee crisis.
For example, Touray said, the 4,593 deaths in terrorist attacks between January and June 30 include 2,725 in Burkina Faso, 844 in Mali, 77 in Niger, and 70 in Nigeria. He added that terrorist attacks in Benin and Togo which have coastlines on the Atlantic Ocean are a “stark indication of the expansion of terrorism to littoral states, a situation that poses an additional threat to the region.”
A major obstacle that Touray identifies is an absence of the needed synergy in anti-insurgency operations. As he notes, there have been a multiplicity of initiatives to tackle terrorism and insecurity which have had an impact on the ground, but there is a lack of coordination and ECOWAS wants to integrate the various initiatives into a regional plan of action.
ECOWAS military chiefs of staff have held consultations to strengthen a regional standby force “in a manner that will enable it to support member states in the fight against terrorism and against threats to constitutional order,” he said.
According to him, the military chiefs proposed two options, establishing a 5,000-strong brigade at an annual cost of $2.3 billion or deployment of troops on demand at an annual cost of $360 million. He restated the African Union’s request for African peace operations to receive funding from the UN regular budget, to which all 193 UN member states contribute.
The military staff recommendations, Touray said, were made before Mali’s military junta demanded that the more than 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in the country leave, which was followed by the Security Council’s unanimous vote on June 30 to immediately end the mission. Mali has since contracted mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group to help fight the Islamic insurgency, which has stretched the country’s military to its operational limits.
Considering the possible adverse impact of the UN withdrawal on the region, ECOWAS member-states decided to convene an extraordinary session on peace and security by the end of August. The Security Council was also briefed by the new head of the UN Office for West Africa, Leonardo Santos Simão, who said the security situation in the central Sahel, especially the border region of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, “has deteriorated further, with multiple attacks against civilians and defence and security forces.” He also said, “The southward expansion of insecurity remains a potent threat.”
Simão appealed for “robust and decisive support” for the ECOWAS action plan to eradicate terrorism in the region and for the African Union and efforts by countries to stem insecurity in the Sahel.
It is not certain what steps the UN can and will take to help stem the spread of an insurgency that appears to have taken the governments of the entire region by surprise. However, what is certain, according to observers, is that the steps being contemplated by the military chiefs in the region, as reported by Touray, would go a long way in addressing most of the challenges faced, especially as it would involve greater coordination of operations among member-states.
