Russian Influence in the Sahel - Is the West Losing Out?

The Sa­hel re­gion has emerged as a crit­i­cal arena of in­creas­ing po­lar­i­sa­tion be­tween pro-Western "mod­er­ate" na­tions and those striv­ing for au­ton­omy from neo-colonial in­flu­ences, opt­ing in­stead to en­gage with non-African pow­ers such as Rus­sia.

On July 6, Mali, Burk­ina Faso, and Niger so­lid­i­fied their al­liance by es­tab­lish­ing the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Sa­hel States (AES), a coali­tion of military-led gov­ern­ments that re­ject West­ern pres­sures, par­tic­u­larly from the Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity of West African States (ECOWAS).

The tim­ing of the AES's for­ma­tion, oc­cur­ring just one day prior to the ECOWAS sum­mit in Nige­ria, was de­lib­er­ate and un­der­scored the widen­ing rift in West Africa. For the United States and the Eu­ro­pean Union, this de­vel­op­ment in­di­cates a com­plex geopo­lit­i­cal tran­si­tion, prompt­ing con­cerns re­gard­ing re­gional sta­bil­ity and in­flu­ence within the Sa­hel. These coun­tries, all cur­rently un­der mil­i­tary gov­er­nance fol­low­ing coups that re­moved pro-Western ad­min­is­tra­tions, are in­tent on pur­su­ing a new tra­jec­tory.

The es­tab­lish­ment of the AES re­flects the dis­con­tent ex­pressed by Burk­ina Faso, Mali, and Niger re­gard­ing their treat­ment by the African Union and ECOWAS. These na­tions con­tend that both or­gan­i­sa­tions have in­ad­e­quately sup­ported their ef­forts to com­bat ji­hadist in­sur­gen­cies.

In March, a del­e­ga­tion from the United States, headed by As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Molly Phee, along with Ce­leste Wal­lan­der and Gen­eral Michael Lan­g­ley from U.S. Africa Com­mand, faced a re­buff from the leader of the mil­i­tary junta in Niger. The U.S. of­fi­cials aimed to dis­cuss the fu­ture of the two mil­i­tary bases they main­tained in the na­tion.

How­ever, just two days af­ter their de­par­ture, U.S. of­fi­cials dis­cov­ered through a Face­book an­nounce­ment that Niger had ter­mi­nated the bi­lat­eral agree­ment es­tab­lished in 2012.

A spokesper­son for the junta re­marked that the U.S. del­e­ga­tion ex­hib­ited a "con­de­scend­ing at­ti­tude" and sought to un­der­mine the "sov­er­eign peo­ple of Niger's right to se­lect their part­ners and the types of part­ner­ships that could gen­uinely as­sist in com­bat­ing ter­ror­ism."

Amer­i­can of­fi­cials ac­knowl­edged that they had voiced con­cerns re­gard­ing Niger's grow­ing ties with Rus­sia and Iran. A week later, Moscow re­vealed that it had en­gaged in a phone con­ver­sa­tion with Gen­eral Ab­doura­hamane Tiani, the head of Niger's junta, to dis­cuss "en­hanc­ing se­cu­rity co­op­er­a­tion."

This de­vel­op­ment sig­ni­fies a broader with­drawal of West­ern forces from West Africa, a trend catal­ysed by mil­i­tary coups that have strained re­la­tions be­tween the af­fected na­tions and West­ern pow­ers. It also re­flects sig­nif­i­cant shifts within the re­gion, where anti-Western sen­ti­ments and al­liances with non-Western na­tions, par­tic­u­larly Rus­sia, are be­com­ing in­creas­ingly promi­nent. As the Sa­hel re­gion moves to­wards closer re­la­tions with Rus­sia, the United States is crit­i­cally re­assess­ing its in­volve­ment in the Sa­hel, which has his­tor­i­cally been a vi­tal area for coun­ter­ing al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS)-af­fil­i­ated groups.

Sources

1. MSN News
2. Financial Times
3. Carnegie Endowment