Mali and the Ivoirian Soldiers: A Recap

On January 6, Mali’s transitional President Assimi Goita pardoned forty-nine soldiers from Cote d’Ivoire. The soldiers, part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission called MINUSMA, had been arrested in July, after seemingly paranoid (or perhaps opportunistic) Malian authorities dubbed them mercenaries. The pardon ends this particular episode, but lasting damage has been done to MINUSMA and to Mali’s relations with its civilian-led neighbors – all outcomes that Goita and his insular junta appear to welcome, given their domestic political posturing as defenders of Malian sovereignty.

The junta has either welcomed or acceded to the collapse of various international security architectures in Mali, including the withdrawal of France’s Operation Barkhane and the suspension of the European Union Training Mission in Mali. In keeping with this wider trend, the arrest of the Ivoirian soldiers became one accelerant of MINUSMA’s ongoing disintegration – in the months after the arrest, Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, the United Kingdom, and Germany all announced suspensions or early withdrawals of their contingents. Mali’s detention of the Ivoirian soldiers, in other words, was one among various incidents that reinforced the image of the transitional authorities as capricious and difficult.

Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) negotiated over the soldiers’ fate during the latter half of 2022, but on December 30, a Malian court sentenced forty-six soldiers to twenty years in prison (three female soldiers had been freed in September). ECOWAS had threatened to sanction Mali once more if the other soldiers were not released, but a January 1 deadline passed without action. The visit of Togolese President Faure Gnassingbé to Bamako on January 4 finally broke the deadlock.

With the soldiers back home, there is no clear winner except perhaps for Gnassingbé, who remains one of the Malian junta’s few real friends in West Africa. Gnassingbé has been acting as a mediator between ECOWAS and the Malian authorities (whose conflicts go well beyond the issue of the soldiers), and has forged a closer relationship with the latter than has ECOWAS’ official mediator for Mali, former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. Gnassingbé and his longtime foreign minister, Robert Dussey, have taken a very soft approach with the Malian junta. Gnassingbé and Dussey have even been accused of undermining ECOWAS’ sanctions against Mali by engaging the junta in early 2022, and Gnassingbé was a key advocate for the lifting of sanctions in July 2022. Gnassingbé is, for context, no stickler for democratic norms in West Africa, having taken power in a messy, disputed process following his father’s death in 2005. Gnassingbe’s soft approach to Mali has put him at odds with peers such as Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum, as well as with Cote d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara, although few West African leaders can claim a blemish-free record on democracy.

Ivoirian authorities are publicly conciliatory, seeming to want just to move on. Meanwhile, the Malian authorities appear not to have achieved one of their key goals – using the soldiers as “hostages” to trade in exchange for exiled Malian politicians such as former Prime Minister Boubou Cissé or Karim Keïta, son of overthrown (and now late) President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. At the rhetorical level, the Malian authorities took the release of the soldiers as an opportunity to once again lash out at ECOWAS, condemning the past sanctions as “illegal, illegitimate, and inhuman” and averring that Mali “no longer figures on the list of countries that can be intimidated.” The standoff thus ended in a stalemate; as with the struggle between ECOWAS and the junta over an electoral timetable, the junta did eventually give ground, but only after taking pains to show that it defied ECOWAS’ authority.

The Malian authorities have entered 2023 without achieving major leverage through their arrest of the soldiers, but without facing real punishment either. Supposedly, 2023 is a time for the junta and its civilian partners to prepare for the transition in 2024. But the junta’s obstinacy over the detained soldiers is just one indication that more struggles may loom between ECOWAS and Mali as the transition’s expiration date draws near.

Muhammadu Buhari’s Comments on Third Terms Underline ECOWAS’ Credibility Gap on Democracy

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari was in Niamey, Niger on September 7 for an ordinary summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). He made headlines for the following comment:

President Buhari asks West African leaders to stop elongating their tenure in office, saying it is becoming a source of trouble. #PMBinNiger pic.twitter.com/60UPp6fUaL

— Garba Shehu (@GarShehu) September 7, 2020

More of his remarks quoted here:

As leaders of our individual Member-States of ECOWAS, we need to adhere to the constitutional provisions of our countries, particularly on term limits. This is one area that generates crisis and political tension in our sub-region.

Related to this call for restraint is the need to guarantee free, fair and credible elections. This must be the bedrock for democracy to be sustained in our sub-region, just as the need for adherence to the rule of law.

The obvious though unnamed targets of these remarks are Guinea’s Alpha Condé and Cote d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara, both of whom are seeking third terms in elections that fall, respectively, on October 18 and October 31 of this year. One could also, although I’m not sure that this was Buhari’s intention, read his remarks as applying to other leaders in the region who have not sought third terms but who made the electoral playing fields very uneven when running for re-election – I am thinking of Senegal’s Macky Sall and Niger’s Mahamadou Issoufou, both of whom jailed their main opponents while running for (and winning) second terms. And then there is perhaps the most egregious anti-democratic case in the whole region – Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, who won a fourth term this past February and whose family has been in power since 1967.

Buhari has many faults, but I think he has credibility on this issue of third terms – I do not expect him to seek a third one when his time is up in 2023, and he has repeatedly pledged not to do so. You never know, of course.

The context for Buhari’s remarks about third terms was the ongoing ECOWAS response to the August 18 coup in Mali, which removed second-termer Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. ECOWAS leaders’ domestic efforts to bend and extend rules have implicitly weakened their credibility in negotiating with different actors in Mali – first the anti-Keïta protesters who threw Bamako’s politics into turmoil from June until the eve of the coup, and then more recently with the junta (the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, French acronym CNSP).

Newsworthy though Buhari’s remarks are, I don’t see pressure from him or others resulting in a course change for Condé or Ouattara. Once presidents start down the third term route they are usually (although not always, as the cases of Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo and Mauritania*’s Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz exemplify) determined to go through with it.

I should probably do a separate post on the ECOWAS summit’s conclusions regarding Mali, but the final communiqué is here (French). The key paragraph on Mali is paragraph 16, page 6, where ECOWAS calls for a 12-month transition back to an elected president, and demands that the CNSP designate an interim president and prime minister, both of them civilians, by September 15. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

*Not an ECOWAS member currently.

Notes on the Joint Burkinabè-Ivoirian “Operation Comoé”

Bloomberg, May 24:

Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso troops dismantled an Islamist militant camp in the first such joint operation between the neighbors that’s part of regional efforts to curb the spread of jihadist attacks.

Soldiers killed eight suspected militants and seized automatic weapons, ammunition, motorbikes and mobile phones at the base in Alidougou in southern Burkina Faso, according to an army official who declined to be identified in line with official policy. Several dozen other militants were captured and helicopter gunships were used in the operation, he said.

AFP/Le Parisien has more details (French):

• The Operation was named “Comoé” after the river along the border, and took place between Ferkéssédougou in Côte d’Ivoire and Banfora in Burkina Faso (see map below).
• There were 38 arrests (24 in Burkina Faso, 14 in Cote d’Ivoire).
• The above-mentioned camp was at Alidougou, Comoé Province, Cascasdes Region, Burkina Faso (see photos via MENASTREAM/Héni Nsaibia below).
• Clashes occurred near the villages of Tinadalla and Diambeh, on the Ivoirian side near the border. Ivoirian military officials say there are no jihadist camps on their territory, but some indications (French) suggest otherwise.

For further context about what prompted Operation Comoé, see Nsaibia’s piece from 2019 on violence in southwestern Burkina Faso, as well as his ongoing and extremely detailed coverage of violence in Burkina generally.

Map showing Ferkéssédougou and Banfora:

MENASTREAM and Jessica Moody have also pointed out, citing this Jeune Afrique article (French), that the operation did not go entirely smoothly – an Ivoirian commander reportedly leaked details of the operation to a civilian, leading to the commander’s arrest.

As part of a longer thread that goes into much greater detail than I am doing here, MENASTREAM discusses the Ivoirian commander’s alleged leak, and also includes photos of the camp at Alidougou:

#BurkinaFaso: If one operation failed, another didn't, militant base near #Alidougou, #Comoé, dismantled by joint Burkinabe-Ivorian forces – @radiosomega https://t.co/BFBaDGPb4d pic.twitter.com/N0V7xS5nZp

— MENASTREAM (@MENASTREAM) May 23, 2020

Deutsche Welle (French) places this incident into what it calls a wider pattern of internal military scandals in the region, including the Nigerien procurement scandal that I wrote about yesterday.

On another note, I also want to point out that this is an instance of an anti-jihadist operation proceeding amid the COVID-19 pandemic – a data point to consider for those who say that the pandemic implicitly favors jihadists. That’s not to say that an operation like this in and of itself is a success, just that the pandemic is not necessarily leading to the kinds of postures that analysts initially envisioned.

Finally, one detail – not even necessarily connected directly to this operation, since I didn’t have time to dig into the full context – caught my eye. There was apparently some outcry over uniforms that some Burkinabè soldiers have been wearing in certain conflict zones, green uniforms associated at least in some citizens’ minds with the President Security Regiment (French acronym RSP), prominent under former President Blaise Compaoré but deeply controversial (and, since 2015, formally disbanded) in the post-Compaoré era. The outcry was strong enough that Army Chief of Staff Major-General Moïse Minoungou made a public statement about it (French) while touring two areas experiencing insurgency, the Est and Cascades Regions; Minoungou said that the uniforms were chosen to match wooded terrain, and for no other reason. Still, the outcry indicates that fear of an RSP resurgence is still out there. I could not, as I said, fully uncover the context, so I couldn’t determine whether these uniforms were being worn specifically in Operation Comoé; reader insights, as always, are welcome.

Africa News Roundup: Mali, Algeria, Senegal, and More

Reuters: “Mali’s interim government has removed General Amadou Sanogo, who led a coup last year, as head of a military committee tasked with reforming the West African country’s armed forces, a government statement said.” For more on Sanogo’s promotion to general, see here.

On Friday, Mali’s President-elect Ibrahim Boubacar Keita visited Cote d’Ivoire (French).

Magharebia: “Algeria is offering pardons to thousands of armed extremists, provided their hands are unstained with citizens’ blood…Army units are distributing leaflets and flyers in Tlemcen, Sidi Bel Abbes and Ain Témouchent, urging extremists to lay down arms and benefit from the 2005 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, Ennahar daily reported this week.”

Imams in Touba, Senegal (French) complain of a lack of water, electricity, and other amenities, and cast blame on political authorities.

Reuters: “Nigerians Seek Refuge in Niger.”

Moulid Hujale: “My Journey Back to Somalia.”

What else is happening?

Africa News Roundup: UN Political Mission in Somalia, Governor in Kidal, Coup Attempt in Chad

Reuters: “At Least Four Dead in Chad Coup Attempt.”

WSJ: “South Sudan to Resume Oil Exports.”

Magharebia: “Maghreb Minister Back Security Cooperation.”

IRIN: “A Long Road Ahead for Justice in Cote d’Ivoire.”

BBC: “Why Libya’s Militias Are Up in Arms.”

UN News Centre: “Security Council Unanimously Approves New UN Political Mission in Somalia.”

Maliweb (French): “The Government Appoints a Governor in Kidal.”

Times Live: “Ethiopia Confirms Jail Terms for Blogger, Opposition Figure [Eskinder Nega and Andualem Arage].”

What other news is out there?

Africa News Roundup: Abdel Aziz Back to France, Jubaland Plans, Muslim Protests in Ethiopia, Trials of Mutineers in Burkina Faso, and More

The United Nations Security Council is considering a plan by the Economic Community of West African States and the African Union to deploy troops in Mali. The French government has urged the UNSC to pass the resolution approving the force by December 20.

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who was shot on October 13, returned to Mauritania one week ago after an extended convalescence in France. Yesterday he announced that he will return to France briefly for further medical treatment, raising questions about the state of his health. At the same press conference, Abdel Aziz also stated his opposition to an external military intervention in Mali.

AFP: “Renewed Flooding Threatens Niger Capital.”

Garowe on “Jubaland”:

According to Jubaland authorities, there have been five committees set up to establish the Jubaland state in southern Somalia.

The committees include a Security Committee, Election Committee, Selection Committee, Logistics and Financial Committee, and an Awareness Committee, according to Jubaland sources. Each committee consists of 11 members.

The committees will be fundamental in creating the Jubaland state that has been backed by IGAD regional bloc.

IRIN:

After almost a decade of rebel rule, northern Côte d’Ivoire is coming to terms with a new authority as the government of President Alassane Ouattara, who assumed power some 18 months ago, establishes its presence in a region which effectively split from the rest of the country.

Aman Sethi’s op-ed on the Muslim protests in Ethiopia.

Reuters:

Seven gendarmes were jailed on Thursday for taking part in last year’s military mutinies in Burkina Faso, in the first trial linked to the outburst of deadly riots, protests and looting in the normally peaceful West African nation.

A new video from Abubakar Shekau of Nigeria’s Boko Haram.

What else is happening?

Africa News Roundup: Clinton in Africa, Strikes in Chad, Oil in Niger, and More

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tour of Africa continues. Yesterday she traveled to South Sudan and also met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. In Uganda, she seemed to indicate that Washington is looking toward a post-Museveni future. Today she is due in Kenya where she will also meet with Somali leaders and exhort them to complete that country’s political transition in a timely manner.

Sudan and South Sudan have reached an agreement on oil sharing.

An apparent suicide bombing wounds nine “near an air base” in Nairobi, Kenya.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has announced that the country’s oil production has reached a record high of 2.7 million barrels per day.

In Yobe State, Nigeria, it appears that a suicide bomber tried to kill the Emir of Fika, but failed.

Strikes in Chad have gone on for over two weeks (French).

Niger announces new discoveries of oil.

Violence in western Cote d’Ivoire:

“The events in Duékoué, including the collective blame and mob justice, underscore the need for a concrete reconciliation process, as well as the restoration of the rule of law and state authority across the country,” Bert Koenders, the UN Special Representative to Côte d’Ivoire, told reporters on 27 July.

The attack, blamed on ethnic Malinkés and traditional hunters known as Dozos, was the second in about six weeks in the restive western region. On 8 June, armed militia killed seven UN peacekeepers and more than a dozen civilians in the Para area near the Liberian border.

Christian Science Monitor: “In Mauritanian Refugee Camp, Mali’s Tuaregs Regroup.”

What else is happening today?

Another Post on a Potential Foreign Intervention in Mali

Talk of foreign intervention in Mali continues. Leaders of nearby countries, especially but not only Niger, have expressed alarm about Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its alliance with the Islamist group Ansar al Din, which now controls key areas in northern Mali. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), France, the United States, and others have talked (with varying degrees of enthusiasm) about military intervention in Mali for months. Over time the level of seriousness seems to be gradually increasing. Yesterday (French), President Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire told a French newspaper, “Negotiations are continuing but, if they were not to succeed, we would be obligated to utilize force to clear northern Mali of these terrorist and Islamist groups.”

More significant still is the Malian military’s reported willingness to allow a foreign force into the country, a change from their previous stance.

Coup leader Capt. Amadou Sanogo had initially expressed opposition to accepting assistance from foreign troops, and Thursday’s announcement appeared to be a softening of that position.

[…]

[Military chief of staff Ibrahim] Dembele said Thursday that Malian officials would agree to “security assistance” in addition to help in taking back the troubled north.

“Before deployment of the foreign troops, there should be public awareness about the mission’s objective,” he said. “Once people understand, it will facilitate the presence of foreign troops.”

This week, the European Union also suggested a readiness to back an external force in Mali:

EU foreign ministers gathered in Brussels asked EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Catherine Ashton to make “concrete proposals” on support for “the possible deployment of a well-prepared ECOWAS force in Mali, under a UN mandate and in conjunction with a government of national unity and the African Union.”

Washington, in the person of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, has seemed fairly unenthusiastic about the idea of an intervention throughout the spring and summer. This week, however, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflicts Michael Sheehan spoke of a need to “accelerate” US efforts to foster political progress in southern Mali, deny Al Qaeda access to “ungoverned places,” and keep all options open in the face of a “looming threat.” More on Asst. Sec. Sheehan’s remarks here.

Commentators such as Todd Moss have argued compellingly that the crisis in northern Mali cannot be solved until the political situation is clarified in the south. That concern seemed present in Sheehan’s thinking as well. But as an ECOWAS-imposed July 31 deadline for the formation of a national unity government in Mali approaches, southern Mali politics appear bitter and confused. This state of affairs leaves many wondering where political resolution will come from.

In short, then, it seems there is increasing international talk of and enthusiasm for an intervention, but limited progress (at least in public) on the political and logistical conditions that would make such an intervention feasible. Various players favor an ECOWAS-led, European- (and American-?) backed force, but it is not clear how such a force would obtain sufficient troops or what its goals and strategies would be.

Africa News Roundup: ECOWAS Troops, Malian Politics, Displaced Persons in Cote d’Ivoire, and More

The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) voted on Thursday to deploy troops to Mali and Guinea-Bissau, both of which have suffered coups this spring. The junta in Mali says it will treat any foreign soldiers on Malian soil as enemies. Readers who understand French may be interested in RFI’s article entitled (my translation) “In Mali, Confusion and Uncertainty on the Role of the Military Junta.”

In Guinea-Bissau, meanwhile, soldiers have released former PM Carlos Gomes Junior and interim President Raimundo Pereira.

AFP analyzes the “unlikely role” of Burkinabe President Blaise Compaore as “the Sahel region’s troubleshooter.”

In negotiating [Swiss hostage Beatrice] Stockly’s release from the Islamists [in northern Mali], Compaore proved he’s in tune with the shifting realities on the ground, observers said.

“We have in Compaore a serious intermediary with a serious network,” said one western diplomat.

[…]

Compaore is perhaps an unlikely fit for this partly benevolent role: he took power in a 1987 coup that saw his predecessor and once brother-in-arms Thomas Sankara assassinated, and his democratic credentials have been steadily questioned since.

But his skills at navigating among the sometimes shadowy armed groups operating in the Sahel were reinforced last month when fellow heads of state from the west African bloc ECOWAS named him mediator for the Mali crisis.

IRIN reports that displaced persons in western Cote d’Ivoire “feel forgotten.”

Most displaced families told IRIN they could not return to their homes because they were destroyed, or because their farms were taken over by other groups and are now being guarded by armed guards or “dozos”.

Téhé comes from a village 5km outside of Duékoué but he has not returned home because his fields were taken over during his absence. “It’s because we’re Guéré,” he says, referring to his ethnic group, whose members overwhelmingly supported the former president, Laurent Gbagbo.

Much of the long-term inter-community conflict in the west is rooted in issues of land tenure, as members of different ethnic groups claim ownership to the same land.

President Ouattara recognized that the west is still very unstable, with forests “infested with armed persons”, which is “not acceptable”. Nonetheless, during his visit to the towns of Toulépleu, Bloléquin and Duékoué he repeated calls for the displaced to return home, and called on Ivoirians to leave it to the justice system to punish those who have committed crimes. He stressed that he is the president of all Ivoirians, regardless of ethnicity, religion or region.

VOA: “Sudan Fighting Damages Both Sides’ Oil Industry.”

I leave you with a video on hunger in Chad from the World Food Programme:

Africa Blog Roundup: Senegal’s Marieme Faye Sall, Guinea Bissau Coup, Algeria Campaign, Boko Haram, Malawi, DRC, and More

(I’ve mixed in a few news reports with the blog roundup this week, given the importance of several stories.)

Africa Is A Country on Senegal’s First Lady Marieme Faye Sall:

Joyce Banda of Malawi, the newest President of an African country–and only the second sitting African president who is a woman–is getting all the love for her achievements.* (So what if her ascendency came about due to the death of an aging president and his politically weak, colluding brother?). There is also much chatter on the internet about Malawi’s new First Gentleman, retired Chief Justice Richard Banda (with whom Madame Banda has two children). However, the Senegalese might suggest that their country’s new first lady, Marieme Faye Sall, represents a “bigger” deal in how her move to the presidential palace breaks with Senegal’s political history after independence.

Madame Sall’s husband, Macky Sall, has just been elected as President of Senegal. Her significance lies in the fact that she is the first woman of Senegalese birth and ancestry to become First Lady of Senegal. (Previous First Ladies have either been French or in the case of Madame Diouf of Lebanese descent.) This has made her a sensation, especially amongst Senegalese women; this is the first time they are seeing someone they recognize as one of their own in the presidential palace. Some more poetic accolades for her—within Senegal—have included “daughter of the land,” “a committed housewife,” “real Senegalese lady,” and “future burner of thiouraye (a secret mixture of oils, perfumes, seeds and fragrant wood used as a body [perfume], with an exotic, sweet, spicy, herbal aroma) and harbinger of Africa-ness to the state residence.” Top that if you can, Madame Banda.

Some Senegalese women hope that seeing Madame Sall by the president’s side will send a message to their men: They do not need to be married to a “white” French woman before they achieve success in the country. Another important dimension of her ascendancy is the fact that she is a Muslim. All the three previous First Ladies of Senegal were Christians in a nation that is 90% Muslim. Madame Sall’s carefully constructed story includes her having always been there as a support pillar for her husband, leaving her university studies to tend to his career and well being, and having his children.

Check out the whole piece. The significance of such cultural/political symbolism has been debated on this blog before, and will be again. At the very least it is an interesting set of issues to think about.

Lesley Anne Warner on the coup in Guinea-Bissau.

Electoral campaigning kicks off in Algeria in advance of May 10 parliamentary elections.

Boko Haram’s spokesman assassinated over plans to defect?

The New York Times on art in Senegal, Mali, and Cote d’Ivoire.

Owen Barder, “How Will the UK Cast Its Vote for the World Bank?”

The UK has repeatedly said that it favours merit-based appointments of the heads of the World Bank and IMF. It is also a leading advocate for transparency and accountability in development. Now it can live up to both these commitments.

The UK Executive Director will shortly be casting a vote on behalf of British citizens for the next President of the World Bank. At the beginning of the process it was widely assumed that all the European countries would back Dr Jim Kim, because he is the American nominee. Now that all three candidates have been interviewed by the board, I gather that is no longer being taken for granted.

Chris Blattman writes that “identity has crowded out substance” in the debate over the Bank presidency.

Speaking of Malawi’s new President Joyce Banda, The Economist‘s Baobab says that it “looks like she is off to a good start.”

Dr. Laura Seay, “What’s Next for the DRC?”

In light of a new report from the International Crisis Group on China and South Sudan, Amb. John Campbell assesses the relationship between the two nations. Roving Bandit looks at DFID’s livelihoods program in South Sudan.

What are you reading today?