The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Thursday ordered the activation and deployment of a reserve force to “restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger” while also saying it would seek peaceful means to restore Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum.
After the summit, Alassane Ouattara, the president of Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), said the West African bloc agreed to launch an intervention “as soon as possible” and said his country would provide a battalion of 850 to 1,100 soldiers.
The ECOWAS summit in Nigeria came a few days after the August 6 deadline that the West African bloc gave Niger’s junta to reinstate Bazoum. In the statement ordering the activation of the standby force, ECOWAS Commission President Omar Alieu Touray also said the bloc would “keep all options on the table for the peaceful resolution of the crisis.”
Also during the summit, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, the chair of ECOWAS, threatened force but as a “last resort” and said he hoped “that through our collective effort, we can bring about a peaceful resolution as a roadmap to restoring stability and democracy in Niger.”
There’s no sign that the Niger junta intends to back down in the face of sanctions and threats from ECOWAS. It’s unclear at this point if ECOWAS intervention is imminent or if it will take time to activate the bloc’s standby force.
Intervention in Niger could turn into a major regional war as Burkina Faso and Mali have warned they would consider the action a declaration of war on them. The US and France have backed ECOWAS threats to oust the anti-Western Niger junta, and each has over 1,000 troops in the country.
ECOWAS is a 15-nation bloc, but several of its members have been suspended due to military coups, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and now Niger. The initial ECOWAS statement threatening military action in Niger was signed by Benin, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, and Togo.
This is crazy. Niger wants the French out, so other countries are going to attack them?
It’s amazing when the illusion of democracy fades away revealing the US/UK//France puppeteers this whole time.
The US likely planned the Niger Coup. My theory. see above.
We’ve seen this movie before! Let’s not do the Cold War again please
Too late
“…. ECOWAS Commission President Omar Alieu Touray also said the bloc would “keep all options on the table for the peaceful resolution of the crisis.””
Niger is no threat to any of the ECOWAS countries. A “peaceful resolution” is to mind your own business, stop making threats and stand down your troops.
Nigeria, the country with all the oil, is landlocked Niger’s neighbor.
Nigeria’s population is about ten times larger than Niger’s and their military is about ten times larger. And they have actual tanks. The military is the strongest in Africa after Egypt, Algeria and South Africa. They intervened in Liberia’s civil war and have taken part in peacekeeping operations across Africa.
Niger is a landlocked country with military vehicles at least two decades old, and their main firepower comes from machine guns mounted on Toyotas. They have practically no air force.
Can’t help to think it’s funny that their names are so similar, though.
Nigeria, the country with all the oil, is landlocked Niger’s neighbor.
Nigeria’s population is about ten times larger than Niger’s and their military is about ten times larger. And they have actual tanks. The military is the strongest in Africa after Egypt, Algeria and South Africa. They intervened in Liberia’s civil war and have taken part in peacekeeping operations across Africa.
Niger is a landlocked country with military vehicles at least two decades old, and their main firepower comes from machine guns mounted on Toyotas. They have practically no air force.
Can’t help to think it’s funny that their names are so similar, though.
First, war is means to a political end, Nigeria intervening could come at a great political cost domestically and regionally. Already, the fact that she is spearheading this coalition of the vassals is evident enough that her political clout is on the line, not that it was great to begin with. The west African region has been in an upheaval since US grouped itself as AfriCom in different nations of the continent. The fact that Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea have all had coups testifies to the region’s wariness of the political climate. This is the reality, some African states have a very deep comprador elite network. ECOWAS exhibit A, but not the only one. However, it still too early to determine whether the Niger coup leaders are pulling a ‘Kagame’ or are part of a ploy to have AfriCom activated in the region since its become apparent to everyone including the previous coup instigating countries that US has lost its leverage in the region and has no reason to be there, along with the French. Knowing Washingron, this could be viewed as an.opportunity to engage as a face saving off ramp from the debacle in Ukraine going into the elections, that’s why Cruella was so fast in diving her fat face first into the proceedings…to set the stage, muddy up the cause and redirect to fulfill the State Dept’s need in its very desperate times. Time will reveal the true nature of this situation. I should also remind folks that Prigozhin was at the Africa Summit in Russia. There is a whole other string to pull on this. The string to trace is called…Putin did WHAT?!
Reading all the comments makes me feel
like a naive school boy, but as I try to often say that the comments are essential when obscure events occur in distant places. I have been on the Ukraine follies since the Maidan coup like white on rice. Africa for me is a bridge a bit to far to follow when we have our own government on the brink of WWIII with Russia in what is more & more looking like another futile fiasco try to regain lost or fleeting unipolar hegemony. As if the Afghan rout wasn’t enough to get them off their never ending regime change sauce and on to a more congenial foreign policy, but no. These neocons seem to double down time after time hoping to win the big one… “What We Worry” style. Do I need to draw the picture of Alfreda E. Nulund…..?????????
Don’t sweat it mate. We are living in unprecedented times. History repeats itself Yes, but that Covid bomb revealed another dimension into the picture and set about massive movements in the political, economic and social fabric in different regions or parts of the world. For starters, you can’t deny it brought about an awakening in the American nation that wasn’t there before. Many still have their heads in the sand, but with the advent of Covid, Wokeism, Trump and the SMO, there has been an awakening in all parts of the world. This is key to understand. The US/EU elites machination have been brought closer to the light and energized the human populace that has been marginalized and/or affected negatively by their works, their financial instruments of slavery and their social attack on humanity. People all over the world have more in common than in difference. Its almost a spiritual rejuvenation. A harmonization of the human experience and how it is under assault from the same people throughout the world. So in light of this, you would be surprised how many events are connected. The normal American patriot who just wants to live in a productive and secure country that has a shared vision of prosperity for the future is in harmony with an African dreaming for the same reality in his country, just the same way a Taiwanese and or Moldovan is in anguish with fear of the future and all have a common enemy. I read somewhere this culmination of events reaching their tipping.point happens every 500 years and then something “notable” or historic happens and we enter a new cycle. Trust me your fears and wariness is prevalent throughout the world and as such there are forces working against these culprits that number greater than the RF armed forces. They won’t succeed at any level. They have reached their zenith, they are done. Its over!
US leadership, Establishment, Deep State, Behind the curtains elites doubling down is a bluff used to maintain a non existent facade. Ever seen a knocked down person who keeps getting up in defiance because he has no fight (prob was out of league in 1st place) in them but that act of defience becomes hailed as bravery even though every time he gets up he gets knocked back down until all is left is a nasty bloody pulp of a person and women voices in the background crying for the punisher to “please stop, you’re gonna kill him’. Yep that’s all their doubling down is going to get them. A bloody pulp beating but with the usual PR that they never backed down.
Agreed, but not as funny as using an army for “peacekeeping.” LOL
It is their neighborhood.
I’m not going to sit in my cheap seat, look down my nose and declare those nations are “dummies/vassals/pawns” like a good little westener.
If those leaders of African nations have decided this is their play, it is their desision not the West’s to make.
“The US and France have backed ECOWAS threats to oust the anti-Western
Niger junta, and each has over 1,000 troops in the country.” Is it really “their” decision?
So we are to assume these are our BOYS and they’ll shuffle and grin as they do as we say?
They have no national considerations for themselves?
In fact if they want to carve it up into the various ethic or religious factions/areas and absorb that western colonialism created country into their own similar ethnic/religion peoples that would be just swell to me because it might solve some troubles in what is called the African coup belt.
“ECOWAS Activates Standby Force for Potential Niger Intervention”
Victoria Nuland Wicked Witch of the West starting another war!
More like the Devils Hand Maiden . however lucky for her and all the other Western War Criminals there is no God or Devil because if there where they would all be going straight to HELL.
war is what it’s all about. the rest is for show.
Of course it has nothing to do with control of Niger’s uranium mines. It’s all about ‘protecting democracy’, see? I think- aside from the uranium issue- this is another example of a nation being made an example for thumbing its nose at The West. The Iranians have been doing it for decades and look at them: THE WORST NATION SINCE HITLER OMG. Prepare for Niger to be named and shamed for any number of ‘human rights violations’ and its new leaders found to be pedophiles of the worst sort or some such tripe. The truth is, even absent the resources, The Empire cannot allow even the smallest nation to step out of line and take its destiny in its own hands- it must obey the Empire no matter what- or it will be destroyed. Film at 11.
Another “boogeyman”.
Definitely and especially because they’re poor. …How poor are they? Dude! They’re so poor, they can’t even afford their own WMDs? (Sarcasm)
Boy, how LUCKY is the US they managed to find Nigeria’s Tinubu, just in time for the Niger Coup! How LUCKY!
Tinubu, is clearly known to US authorities. His past crimes in Chicago (over 9 Citibank accounts in Chicago as a new immigrant in the early 90s, drug charges etc) were already public knowledge in Nigeria during the late stage of the Nigerian election!
And now, Tinubu is the lynchpin for the Entire western effort. HOW LUCKY!
Or, if it’s not “luck”, then a bigger game is afoot in Africa:
The game of “problem”, “reaction”, “solution”! To achieve Macchiavellian outcomes of interest to the west! In this reading of events, the Niger Coup was likely planned by western agencies precisely to take advantage of “our man on the ground”, Tinubu!
• May 29, 2023, Tinubu Elected
• 26 July 2023 Niger Coup.
Imagine: Both are the same hand!
In comic opera fashion, Victoria Nuland is dispatched to Niger to demand that then rebels free the president and let him resume his term And if they don’t comply she threatens to attack with all means and return the president to power. Apparently the rebels told her, NOT POSSIBLE. If you attack we will kill him.. Why Bonkerz Biden would pick Nuland is just insane… Isn’t Biden having enough trouble with the mess she has gotten America into alre4ady…..??????? I am talking about the Ukraine war that she & Piatt, Ole Uncle JOE…and Hillary Clinton devised by means of the MAIDAN COUP to overthrew Ukraine’s elected president and installed Nazi friendly goons who began making Life a Third Reich hell for the half of their citizens still speaking Russian and shelling their neighborhoods and killing them & their families on a regular basis.. This woman has lost all her sense of what will work and what will surely fail. and she is pulling America down.
“In comic opera fashion, Victoria Nuland is dispatched . . .”
She is the very model of a modern troublemaker.
Niger is desperately poor, 40% suffering “extreme poverty” of food insecurity, and 90% without electricity.
Yet Niger is rich in natural resources of many kinds. Those resources ARE being taken to market.
The problem is that almost none of that money goes to the people of Niger. Western corporations pay cut rate prices and charge gigantic fees for “security” that is limited to their own operations. They create an oasis surrounded by the starving, and the “security” is to keep them away, out there beyond the wire.
The five American trained officers who overthrew the government doing this to Niger all spent time in the US, then went home and gave the Penguins of Madagascar response to arriving back “home” in Antarctica.
So like a soldier would, they did something about it. What they did was a very American response actually, pretty much how we trained them to think.
But it cost us our own exploitation of Niger, our base to drone-kill widely and spy on the entire region (and rent-free for the base), and corporate exploitation of near-free resources of uranium, gold, rare metals, and more.
So we threatened them. Their response was they’d kill if we tried. Yes, no doubt they would.
Meanwhile, the other ruined nations of the region, mired in poverty and total military/government corruption, are in no way capable of such an attack on anybody — they can barely beat up their own people enough to maintain their own coups.
HRC jokingly, “Can’t We Just Drone These Guys?” (Sarcasm)
LOVED: “…they can barely beat up their own people enough to maintain their own coups.”