2023-08-02 17:38:27
Faced with the coup in Niger, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) gave the putschists a one-week ultimatum in its press release published on July 30. After this period, it does not exclude “use of force”in other words of an armed intervention, which would be added to the economic blockade already in progress against the country and the military.
An armed intervention that would not be a first. Created in 1977 for purely economic purposes – and 15 states strong – ECOWAS set up its ceasefire monitoring brigade, or Ecomog, in 1990. It quickly became the armed wing of the community and numbered up to 20,000 men in 1994. Its objectives: supervising ceasefires, maintaining peace like the United Nations blue helmets, preventive deployment in conflict zones or the disarmament of non-regular armed forces.
While Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sierra Leone provide part of the military contingents, it is above all from Nigeria that most of its troops come. The interventions remain decided by the Conference of Heads of State and Government, the highest decision-making body of ECOWAS.
In Liberia, the first mission of the “white helmets”
In 1990, civil war broke out in Liberia. It opposes the supporters of President Samuel Doe to the rebels of Charles Taylor. On August 24, after the failure of the peaceful solutions envisaged, Ecomog was set up. First 500, then 10,000 soldiers, mostly Nigerians, returned to the country under the banner of the “White Helmets”.
After thirteen failed peace attempts, in 1996, a ceasefire agreement was reached. It lays the foundations for the 1997 ballot, which Charles Taylor wins. The Ecomog troops leave the country, haloed with a bad reputation because of the looting, rapes and murders of which it has been guilty. His soldiers will be back in 2003 to oust this same Charles Taylor from power.
In neighboring Sierra Leone, in the grip of a civil war, Ecomog tries to curb the rebellion of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which came to power by a coup in 1997. It intervenes with nearly 11,000 men, but the RUF retaliated and marched on Freetown in 1999, before finally being driven out by Ecomog, supported by British troops, who arrived in 2000. ECOWAS armed troops were then deployed in Guinea-Bissau (1998 and 2012) and in Côte d’Ivoire with the dispatch of 1,300 soldiers in January 2003.
The waiting force, a derisory moult of the Ecomog
In this regionalization of security challenges, Ecomog was transformed in 2004 under the name of the ECOWAS Standby Force (FAC), made up of soldiers, police and civilians with approximately 2,500 soldiers and a total workforce set at 6,500. men. But although the FAC intervened in Mali in 2012, then in 2017 in Gambia, it is sorely lacking in human and financial resources, preventing its development.
It is in principle integrated into the African Standby Forces (FAA), of the African Union, the main political body of the continent which has given itself the mandate to seek African solutions to African problems. Despite its inclusion in the 2002 Constitution of the African Union, the ASF is also struggling to exist due to a lack of financial resources.
Towards a new “common military force”
While a military intervention by ECOWAS is the most serious option considered by the Western allies of President Mohamed Bazoum, after the ultimatum set for Sunday August 6, its operational forces remain difficult to quantify.
At the end of 2022, ECOWAS wondered about the creation of a “common military force” to counter the jihadist terrorist threat, but also coups d’etat. It aims to reach 5,000 men from the ranks of member countries and more quickly, a brigade of 1,650 available soldiers. A challenge in the light of the situation in Niger.
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