Analysis: The crisis in Niger could reach a tipping point this weekend. Kiari Liman-Tinguiri, Niger’s ambassador in Washington, spoke about the fraught state of play in an interview with Today's WorldView.
, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.ECOWAS, the geopolitical bloc of West African states, has set an Aug. 6 deadline for the coup-plotting Nigerien junta to step aside and restore the country’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum to power. The generals so far have shown little indication of heeding the bloc’s demands.
TWV: As the ECOWAS deadline approaches, and the junta shows no sign of backing down, how real is the prospect of open war in the region?ECOWAS has laid down a set of sanctions with a clear gradation that goes from cutting economic transactions, banning import and exports, cutting electricity supply and to, at last resort, the use of force. As we speak, sanctions are showing impact. People are in the dark. Prices are rising up for many goods.
If Niger falls, if you go from democracy to dictatorship, like in the two neighboring countries, it means Niger will go under the control of Wagner. The whole central Sahel will be under Wagner. What will then happen is that the Islamist militants will have it very easy to go directly and attack the coastal West African country. So that will destabilize the whole region, from the Sahara to the Gulf of Benin. From Libya to the coast, you will have no real states. That’s what is at stake.
Personally, I don’t believe there is huge anti-French sentiment. Forty percent of people in my country live with less than $2 a day. I really don’t think that these people are concerned with who is our international partner. Some of the young people now claiming to be “Pan-African” and anti-France have no clue about France, don’t even know what it is. Simply the social media itself, the digital era, made it easier to make a lot of noise out of very tiny things.
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