Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Niger coup leaders’ newfound allies in Mali and Burkina Faso, reduced prison sentences for opposition leaders in Myanmar, and a second Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s capital.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Niger coup leaders’ newfound allies in Mali and Burkina Faso, reduced prison sentences for opposition leaders in Myanmar, and a second Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s capital.
The prospect of an all-out regional conflict in the Sahel grew late Monday when both Mali and Burkina Faso announced that any move by a foreign power to directly undermine Niger’s ongoing coup would be deemed a “declaration of war” against their own countries.
Their vow appears to be directed largely at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which promised on Sunday to take “all measures necessary” to reinstate ousted Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum if he is not back in power by the end of the week. Already, the bloc has imposed sanctions on Niger—suspending all transactions between the coup-struck nation and ECOWAS member states—as well as frozen all Nigerien assets in regional central banks.
If both sides keep their word, then the Sahel may be facing war. The probability of ECOWAS using force in the West African state is unlikely, argued Rida Lyammouri, a senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Moroccan think tank. However, “the consequences on civilians of such an approach if putschists chose confrontation would be catastrophic,” he said.
It’s unsurprising that the two countries to back the coup are both junta-led states themselves. In August 2020, Col. Assimi Goïta led the Malian army in a coup against then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Nine months later, Goïta further asserted his power in a second overthrow, this time naming himself leader. The junta has since delayed Mali’s constitutional referendum, which would vote on significantly reducing the parliament’s powers, until 2024—thereby cementing Goïta’s authority for another year. Burkina Faso has also faced internal turmoil. In January 2022, the Burkinabe army, led by Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, dissolved the parliament, government, and Burkina Faso’s constitution. Then, a few months later, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré ousted Damiba.
All three nations—Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—have been battling insurgencies by Islamist extremist groups that former colonizer France along with the United States have tried and failed to eradicate. Poverty and high costs of living also plague the West African states. The Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, which led its own failed coup against the Kremlin on June 23, has taken advantage of these states’ instability by heavily investing and deploying troops in the region, though the White House said on Tuesday that it did not believe Russia was involved in the Niger coup.
Meanwhile, Paris announced on Tuesday that it would begin immediate evacuations of French citizens and other Europeans from Niger. Italy quickly followed suit. The move comes after the French Embassy in Niger’s capital of Niamey was attacked on Sunday following France’s decision to suspend all aid to the West African state on Saturday. The White House said the United States has not changed its decision on maintaining a U.S. military presence in the country, where some 1,000 U.S. troops remain stationed but are restricted to the U.S. military base in Agadez, in central Niger.
A drop in the bucket. Myanmar’s ruling military junta, known as the Tatmadaw, reduced the prison sentences of two key opposition figures on Tuesday. Former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was ousted in Myanmar’s 2021 coup, received a six-year reduction to her original sentence of 33 years. Just last week, reports emerged that Aung San Suu Kyi had been moved to house arrest. Former President Win Myint, who was also removed during the coup, had his sentence cut by four years.
The announcement coincided with a major religious holiday in the Buddhist-majority nation. To celebrate the holy day, the junta also released more than 7,000 prisoners, many of whom were foreigners charged with dissent. Aung San Suu Kyi herself was convicted on multiple counts of corruption, which rights activists have said was the Tatmadaw’s way of ensuring she could not run for reelection.
Strategic targets. Moscow once again found itself under fire on Tuesday after a drone hit a high-rise building that housed several Russian government ministries, with Russia blaming Ukraine for the strike. This was the second attack on the area and the second time that particular building was targeted. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, two other drones were shot down outside the capital. No casualties were reported.
Kyiv has recently stepped up attacks on key symbolic targets and military sites both inside Russia and in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. That includes the targeting of a vital bridge in Russian-controlled Chonhar last Friday and a drone strike on a fuel storage depot at a Russian-occupied Crimean port in April. “Ukrainians are trying to disrupt those supply lines in order to create the conditions most conducive to their counteroffensive,” Andrea Kendall-Taylor, the director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, told FP’s Ravi Agrawal.
Consulate shooting. A woman working at Sweden’s honorary consulate in Izmir, Turkey, was critically injured on Tuesday when a Turkish citizen opened fire outside. According to the local governor’s office, the assailant had a mental illness. The perpetrator’s motive is still unclear, and police are already investigating the matter.
Stockholm has faced intense criticism from Turkey and other majority-Muslim nations over Quran burnings in the country. Less than 24 hours before the consulate shooting, two Swedish protesters burned pages from a Quran outside Sweden’s parliament—making it the third such burning in recent weeks. Under Sweden’s vast free speech laws, the burning of religious objects is protected. Turkey and other Islamic countries have condemned these acts as Islamophobic.
Democratic backsliding. Senegal’s government dissolved its rival opposition party, the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF), on Monday after Senegalese President Macky Sall ordered the arrest of PASTEF leader Ousmane Sonko. Sonko was charged with calling for an insurrection, threatening national security, and conspiring against the state, among other accusations. He has continued to assert his innocence, calling his arrest unjust.
Protests quickly erupted across the country following Sonko’s arrest and the dissolution of his party. At least two demonstrators have been killed thus far. Sall responded by restricting mobile internet services, citing the “dissemination of hateful and subversive messages on social networks.”
“Sall has repeatedly interfered in the judiciary to disqualify viable candidates who could challenge him for the presidency,” Brookings Institution fellow Danielle Resnick argued in Foreign Policy. Enabling Sall’s constitutional coup could now threaten African democracy as a whole.
For all you conspiracy theorists out there, here’s one you can check off as verifiably false. On Monday, China’s Hangzhou Zoo posted on social media that its Malayan sun bears are not humans in disguise but rather are just standing on their hind legs. Not that China’s record of legitimate zoo animals is clean though. In 2013, a Chinese zoo was caught trying to pass off a Tibetan mastiff dog as an African lion.
