Mohamed Bazoum, president of Niger elected last February, did not take office until April 2, yet in the months between election and swearing-in he was the victim of an attempted coup. An episode more like a riot blocked in time than a real coup, but this speaks volumes about the political difficulties and security problems that await the new head of state.
This fact is added to the demonstrations of the opposition, which does not accept the results of the polls and shouts to the fraud, and also to the reappearance of the Islamist violence which, after a period of truce, has caused several dozen deaths in recent weeks.
The attempted coup
“The coup” began in front of the gates of the vast presidential estate, in Niamey, on the night between the Tuesday and Wednesday preceding the inauguration. Just before three in the morning, a series of gunshots rumbled in the air. “For half an hour the shooting was intense, with heavy and light weapons,” a resident of the Plateau district, where the president’s residence is located, told France Presse. The assailants were unable to enter the building and the situation on Thursday was calm.
The government immediately denounced “an attempted coup”, “a cowardly act”, without specifying anything else. According to official sources, at the origin of this upheaval there are soldiers and “numerous arrests” have been made, while the “frantic search” of other coup leaders continues.
The role of the army
An air force officer is suspected of being the organizer, along with men from the Special Information and Security Forces, an elite corps. “They have close ties to each other and do not accept defeat,” says a Nigerian official. The power accuses part of the army of being close to the opposition, of even having instigated the violent demonstrations following the announcement of the presidential election results.
At the end of February, Moumouni Boureima, former Chief of Staff, ended up in prison with these accusations, together with Hama Amadou, one of the main opponents. “The tensions that pervade the fabric of the army are known and this coup is not entirely a surprise. It is instead that they managed to organize themselves, because that restless fringe of soldiers is kept under careful observation at this time”, says a Sahelian security specialist.
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Anxiety is not without foundation. The arrival to power of Mohamed Bazoum, who succeeds Mahamadou Issoufou and to whom he is very close, represents the first peaceful transition of power in the history of Niger. A debut, in a country marked by coups d’etat; in fact, he has lived through four – the first, in 1974, targeted Hamani Diori and the last, in 2010, overthrown Hamani Diori – as well as a considerable number of attempts.
Armed Islam
Yet military turmoil and opposition pressures are not the toughest challenges the new president will face. The influence of armed Islamism continues to spread to Niger and its populations, thanks to the fragility of one of the poorest states in the world. The clearest evidence came on 21 March: on the very same day that the Constitutional Court confirmed Mohamed Bazoum’s victory, at least 137 people were murdered in three villages around Tilia, a town north of Niamey, close to the border with Mali. In a statement, the government stated that “armed bandits” attacked the villages of “Intazayene, Bokorate and the camps in the Akifakif area”. Tuareg and, to a lesser extent, Djerma, would have been victims.
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When those deadly attacks took place there were also looting and theft of livestock in neighboring Mali. Six days earlier there had been a massacre in the three border region, an area straddling Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso; nearly 60 civilians killed and, moreover, the victims had been chosen. “Groups of as yet unidentified armed individuals spotted four vehicles carrying passengers returning from the weekly market in Bani Bangou (…). These individuals cowardly and cruelly executed the passengers, targeted targets,” a government statement explained. In January, around 100 people had been murdered in the same area.
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These massacres were not claimed but took place in places where the presence of the Islamic State of the Great Sahara (SIGS) is strong, especially in the Tahoua region. In this vast area, where the state is practically absent, the local populations have organized themselves into militias. According to a source who intervenes in local mediations, in the previous two months the militias had intensified raids against Fula-speaking communities and Daoussak (both West-Atlantic-speaking populations, particularly numerous in Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon and Senegal They are mainly shepherds and farmers. Ed.). “The massacres are therefore, at least in part, a kind of revenge after those raids or a call to order by the SIGS,” explains our source.
An important hub for traffic
For months, the SIGS has been increasing pressure in this area of Niger and on the city of Tassara, which is controlled by Arab armed groups and represents an important hub for the control of trade routes and various highly profitable traffic between the north and the Algeria, Libya or Morocco – and the city of Gao to the south. A strategic interest, therefore. Observers fear that if Niamey does not intervene, local militias will resort to the great rival of the SIGS to protect themselves, namely the Islam and Muslim Support Group (GSIM), linked to Al Qaeda and, for the moment, still little active in Niger. A prospect that certainly does not facilitate the already very difficult task of Mohamed Bazoum.
(Le Figaro / Lena- Leading European Newspaper Alliance. Translation by Monica Rita Bedana)
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