The Reasons Underlying the Coup in Niger

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

This past July 26, armed troops in Niger overthrew the government, arrested the elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and seized power. The junta, led by General Abdourahmane Tchiani, proclaimed themselves the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP).

 Nigeriens who welcomed the coup gathered in the capital city, Niamey, Aug. 6, to show their support for the new military regime, some waving the Russian flag. If Niger’s junta manages to stay in power, might it align itself with Moscow?

Since 2020, there have been coups throughout the Sahel, the belt stretching across Africa just below the Sahara Desert. In 2020, Mali’s government fell. In 2021, the same thing happened in Guinea. Last year, a coup took place in Burkina Faso. Niger was seen as the Sahel’s final bulwark against chaos and instability.

The most surprising threat to Tchiani’s plans has emerged from a major regional power broker, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The bloc of 15 West African countries, with Nigeria as its most powerful member, has taken a hard-line stance against the coup and have threatened to take military action.

“One reason why regional presidents are interested in military intervention is because they’re increasingly scared of being taken out themselves,” according to Professor Nic Cheeseman, an expert on African politics at the University of Birmingham. “It comes after several other coups in the region, and they realized that they could be next if they didn’t draw a line in the sand.”

Any military intervention by the bloc could further strain regional ties, as juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea have voiced support for Niger’s new military rulers.

Mali’s military leader Assimi Goita has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the situation. Putin “stressed the importance of a peaceful resolution of the situation,” Goita reported.

More than 10 million of Niger’s 26 million people are living in extreme poverty. One of the poorest countries in the world, it receives close to $2 billion a year in official development assistance. This, and political instability, have been the backdrop to four previous coups.

Niger struggles with a security crisis in its hinterland areas bordering Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Mali, where armed groups continue to menace civilians as well as carry out repeated attacks against the Nigerien and foreign security forces. Seventeen Niger soldiers were killed Aug. 15 in an attack by suspected jihadists.

President Bazoum, who hails from Niger’s small Arab minority, in a predominantly Black Hausa nation, was successful in winning office in February 2021, but the country has in many ways remained at the mercy of former colonial power France and the United States.

The two have sought to use the country as a regional base and garrison for the purpose of safeguarding the Sahel area of West Africa from the threat of Islamist insurgent groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State, who directly threaten Niger, as well as Burkina Faso, Mali, and some areas in Chad.

The U.S. has two military bases in Niger, including a drone base, with an estimated 1,100 soldiers, while the French presence in the country is estimated at 1,500 military personnel.

France, which is mostly powered by nuclear energy, gets roughly some 10 to 15 per cent of its uranium supplies from Niger, its main source of supply. It has condemned the coup, demanded the release of President Bazoum, who is now accused of “high treason,” and refused any suggestion that its military forces leave the country.

In any case, despite claims by Paris and Washington that the coup overturned democracy, things were far from good prior to the current putsch. The country’s status as a model of stability in a fraught international region was to some extent more in the imagination of Western diplomats than reality.

The military takeover has followed at least two other coup attempts since 2021, one of which occurred just two days before President Bazoum’s inauguration. Over the years, both protest movements and critical journalists have been brought to heel through the Nigerien state’s liberal use of bribery and threats, including fiscal auditing and other administrative chicanery. Civil society activism had become a spent force and the independence of the media was considerably diminished.

When Bazoum won the presidential election, he and his Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) promised reforms. Yet when a protest coalition called M62 (Sacred Union for the Safeguarding of the Sovereignty and Dignity of the People), founded in August 2022, attempted to mobilize popular resentments, it was foiled by the regime.

Nigerien politics had previously operated based on opposing coalition blocs that jockeyed for position and forced each one to compromise with one another. This created a political balance that gave hope to opposition forces. But it was this balance that the PNDS set out to destroy, in a bid to consolidate its permanent hold on power.

The dominance of the PNDS had deleterious consequences for Niger’s democracy. It depoliticized the public sphere, which thereby increased the politicization of other areas of national life, including the civil service, where promotion came to depend on allegiance to the party and its coalition, and the army.

De facto single-party rule was established. As is often the case, it’s then usually only the military that can put an end to it.

 

Russians, Non-Russians in Post-Soviet Nations

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Sydney, N.S.] Cape Breton Post

Remember these two numbers: 15.4 and 71.5. I’ll explain.

Following the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, millions of ethnic Russians living on the fringes of the former Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, which was just one of 15 union republics, suddenly found themselves in foreign countries. These were the 14 newly independent non-Russian successor states that most Russians now refer to as the “near abroad.”

Perhaps as many as 20 million ethnic Russians are estimated to live in the former republics outside the bounds of today’s Russian Federation. They comprise about 15.4 per cent of the overall ethnic Russian population in what had been the USSR.

These ethnic Russian communities, mostly in Ukraine, Belarus, and northern Kazakhstan, with lesser numbers in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and the Baltics states of Estonia and Latvia, serve not only as a significant factor in Russia’s quest for a national identity, but also as a political conduit for Russian influence.

The situation faced by the ethnic Russian diasporas varies widely. In Belarus, a close ally of Moscow’s, there was no perceivable change in status, but in Estonia and Latvia, they were deemed non-citizens if none of their ancestors had been a citizen of those countries before they were forcibly absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940. Their situation remains precarious to this day.

This historical legacy has often been a source of tension between Russia and its neighbors. “Support for the rights of compatriots abroad is a crucial goal,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said as far back as 2005. “It cannot be subject to a diplomatic or political bargaining. Those who do not respect, observe, or ensure human rights have no right to demand that human rights be respected by others.”

Beginning with Putin’s third term as president in 2012, the ideological concept of ‘Russkii Mir” (Russian World) has become an intrinsic part of Russian diasporic policies. It  is comprised of three pillars: Russian language, historical Soviet memory, and the Russian Orthodox Church.

The issue gained particular saliency in Ukraine, with its nine million ethnic Russians. In 2014, Russia annexed Russian-majority Crimea, which prior to 1954 had been part of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Moscow also supported a war in eastern Ukraine through military incursions on behalf a Russian population opposed to the nationalistic anti-Russian Kyiv regime that emerged in the Maidan Revolution that year.

The events in Ukraine, including the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, left countries with a high ethnic Russian population feeling vulnerable.

Is Russia confined to its post-Soviet territorial border, or do Russians in the “near abroad” lend support to the nationalist proposition that Russia extends beyond this “artificial” demarcation? With Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, this is no longer a theoretical question.

Meanwhile, the still geographically enormous Russian Federation contains millions of non-ethnic Russian nationalities, especially in the Caucasus and in Siberia and the far east.

The country’s overall population in the 2021 census was reported at 144.7 million, or 147.2 million if Ukraine’s Crimea is included. Of these, only 105.6 million, or 71.5 per cent, are ethnically Russian.

The Russian state acknowledges 21 ethnic republics named for their titular majority. Many chafe under Russian rule, particular Muslims peoples such as the Chechens and Tatars.

The Chechens took advantage of post-Soviet Russian weakness in the 1990s to fight two bloody wars for independence before finally being defeated. Tatarstan retains such a large degree of autonomy that it is a virtual de facto state.

Still, the governing system of President Putin “is based on a fear of ethnic separatism,” asserts sociologist Guzel Yusupova, a visiting professor at Carleton University.

“This has been a major factor in how we view diversity,” she remarked. “In our country, diversity is associated with danger -- migrants are drug traffickers, Muslims are associated with terrorism, ethnic activists seek the destruction of Russia, and so on.”

For years, state propaganda has stressed patriotism and unity. Constitutional amendments adopted in 2020 bolstered the identity of Russians as the country’s “state-forming” nation and the primacy of the Russian language. The Russian Federation has veered towards an increasingly ethnic version of nationalism.

 

 

Is an Israeli-Saudi Normalization Deal Possible?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Sydney, N.S.] Cape Breton Post

The possible normalization of Israeli-Saudi Arabian relations is in the news, following emerging signs that the United States is ready to promote the process.

Washington thinks Saudi Arabia has made a strategic decision to promote contacts with Israel, though with terms and circumstances that suit it. On the Israeli side, its government hopes to sign a treaty with Saudi Arabia as a continuation of the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco that were signed in 2020.

Israel has a clear interest in strengthening and publicizing its ties with Saudi Arabia, which has the status of the “custodian of the holy sites of Islam.” An agreement with the kingdom, it hopes, would give other countries in the Muslim and Arab world greater legitimacy to form ties with Jerusalem.

Saudi Arabia has an interest in improving its relations with Israel and the dividends it can obtain on this account, particularly from the United States. For Riyadh, though, caution on normalization with Israel is essential, because of its status in the Arab and Muslim world, anti-Israel sentiment among the Saudi public, and the country’s religious and conservative character.

While Israel and Saudi Arabia do not enjoy formal diplomatic ties, informal and clandestine cooperation has been mutually beneficial for some time. Both fear Iran, so since 2021 reports have suggested that Israel and Saudi have discussed cooperating on regional issues.

While Riyadh was not an active partner in the Abraham Accords, they could not have happened without Saudi consent. Following the agreement, the kingdom allowed airlines, including Israeli carriers, to overfly its territory on flights to and from the UAE and Bahrain. An additional step towards normalization was Riyadh’s 2022 easing flyover restrictions for Israeli commercial aircraft travelling to China and India. All of this was personally authorised by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the country’s effective ruler.

American involvement, by providing incentives, is critical because the Saudis are making possible normalization with Israel conditional on receiving some reward from the United States. And Washington increasingly considers Israeli-Saudi normalization imperative.

In May, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan headed to Riyadh for talks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid his own visit in early June, at which the advancing of an Israel-Saudi deal was discussed. Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro was then appointed to a special envoy position, tasked with expanding the 2020 Abraham agreements, with Saudi Arabia at the forefront of the mission. 

To broker a new diplomatic pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the White House will need to persuade the two countries to find common ground on thorny issues like nuclear enrichment, weapons sales and the territorial rights of Palestinians.

 “Israel has a lot of potential and normalization can do wonders, not just for Israelis and Palestinians, but there’s potential for trade and cultural exchanges and exchanges with Israel on multiple fronts,” Fahad Nazer, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said recently. “But for that to happen, for the kingdom to take that step, we need that core dispute to be resolved.”

American officials have said that Saudi Arabia is also demanding a new security relationship with the United States as part of any deal to normalize relations with Israel. Riyadh seeks the end of the freeze on American weapons sales, including F-35 combat aircraft, and acquiescence to its development of a civilian nuclear programme.

The kingdom will also want any deal with Israel to not “merely” be an extension of the Abraham Accords but something unique, reflecting its size and importance.

Israel would also have to make significant, but as yet undefined, concessions to the Palestinians, and it is not clear how much of a gesture the Saudis would see as satisfactory.

A political breakthrough between Israel and Saudi Arabia is possible but will require deep U.S. involvement. It remains to be seen whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will consider and be able to convince others that the prize of Saudi normalization is worth the security and political costs demanded by the Americans and the Saudis.