After the forced departure of the French troops from Operation Barkhane and their European allies from Mali, in the summer of 2022, and from Burkina Faso, in September of the same year, as a result of two military coups, Niger had become a refuge and main pivot of the device to fight against jihadism in the Sahel. The coup on Wednesday night in Niamey means for the European Union and the West, the descent into hell of the last ally in the Sahel.

A group of rebel soldiers held the president, Mohamed Bazoum, in the presidential palace and announced the end of his regime on Wednesday night. “We, the defense and security forces, meeting within the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Fatherland, have decided to put an end to the regime” of Bazoum, proclaimed Major Colonel Amadou Abdramane, seated and surrounded by nine other uniformed men without identify. They blamed their uprising on the “continued deterioration of the security situation and poor economic and social governance.”

The chief of the General Staff of the armed forces, General Abdou Sidiku Issa, joined the coup leaders and justified his move in order to “avoid a confrontation” in the country. The Board has suspended all institutions, has closed the borders and has established a curfew until further order.

Niger is therefore following in the footsteps of Mali, which has suffered several coups and counter-coups between 2020 and 2022, and Burkina Faso, in a spiral of instability and reaction against European stabilization troops that has infected the entire Sahel. “Behind all these movements in these three countries there are common motivations, forces and regional and local powers that try to distribute the cards in an area where the Westerners have shown that they no longer have the capacity to maintain the political and geopolitical order, not to mention military, with the French in Mali in the first place,” explains Frédéric Mertens, a professor at the European University and an expert in International Relations, to EL MUNDO.

In the cases of Mali and Burkina Faso, the departure of the French troops led to the landing of the mercenary troops of the Russian Wagner group. In their withdrawal from their Malian bases, the French troops settled in neighboring Niger, where more than 1,000 troops were deployed. Anti-French sentiment has been growing in recent months, but the EU had outlined a new mission in Niger this February in which Spain – which maintains a discreet presence in Mali – was going to participate with military observers. Now the question is whether Niger will be next to open the door for Wagner.

“There is one more destabilizing factor, which has played a role in Ukraine, until recently, which is Wagner, and who is ‘accidentally’ in the region. The interests go beyond the coup leaders themselves, since everything that can weaken Westerners are also in the interest of powers that are present on the continent, such as Russia, China and Iran,” the expert outlines. Although Russia has formally condemned the coup and has called on the “parties to the conflict” not to use force against civilians and to work for “the restoration of peace”. Sergei Lavrov himself, Russian Foreign Minister, spoke, according to Efe, in these terms: “In Niger it is necessary to restore constitutional order.”

But what raises suspicions is that the leader of the Wagner group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, could also be seen meeting at the summit that Russia was holding with the African countries this Thursday in Saint Petersburg with representatives of the Nigerien delegation, according to the Spanish agency, citing the newspaper digital Fontanka.ru. The content of the conversations was not known. Wagner’s mercenaries maintain a presence, in addition to the aforementioned Mali and Burkina Faso, in the Central African Republic, Sudan and Libya.

The events in Niger, Mertens estimates, “could have a contaminating effect on other countries. It can and will aggravate the situation in Burkina Faso and Mali. And, in general, the situation will worsen for this continent, as that may have an impact on economic exchanges and the security of movement of goods and people”.

In addition, the risk of greater instability in the Sahel, an area considered by the European Union -and Spain itself- “southern border”, soars after the coup in Niger, the last ally of Europeans and Americans in the region. With the fall of President Bazoum, he considers Professor Mertens “the cancer of Al Qaeda’s Islamist extremist terrorism and all the nebulae of him become a structural and not a conjunctural factor.”

The Sahel is the scene of several overlapping crises: the consolidation of powerful terrorist groups that take advantage of the inability of fragile states, illicit trafficking, the food crisis caused by drought and the effects of climate change, the rise of Russia’s influence with the irruption of Wagner, who has replaced the French and European stabilization troops…

Until now, Niger was an important base for international operations against jihadist extremism that has been expanding in this area over the last decade. In addition to hosting Barkhane’s 1,000 French soldiers, the north of the country hosts a US drone base as part of the effort to combat armed groups in the vast Sahel. The fate of this base is now in question.

The Sahelian part of West Africa is, according to experts, the region in the world most affected by terrorism today. According to data from the UN Security Council this week, in the first six months of 2023 there have been 1,800 attacks with 4,600 deaths. Most occurred in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

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