Col. Amadou Abdramane, spokesman for Niger’s junta, learn from the assertion in a televised tackle. ECOWAS, he stated, had turned away from “the beliefs of its founding fathers” and didn’t assist the three international locations, that are wracked by Islamist insurgencies, of their “existential struggle towards terrorism and insecurity.”
The three international locations fashioned a mutual protection pact in September. However Sunday’s announcement marked an escalation in tensions that soared final 12 months following a navy coup in Niger — the final of the three international locations to lose their democratic governments.
The primary was Mali, the place mutinous troopers seized energy in 2020 and once more in 2021, when a navy officer ousted the unique coup chief. Neighboring Burkina Faso adopted an analogous sample, with two navy coups in 2022.
The July coup in Niger — a key safety associate of the West — got here as a shock to many within the area and internationally and was met with a pointy rebuke by ECOWAS, which imposed sanctions and later threatened to invade to revive the elected president.
The assertion Sunday criticized ECOWAS for the sanctions, which the juntas known as “illegitimate, inhumane and irresponsible.” The commerce restrictions, the assertion stated, had “additional weakened populations already bruised by years of violence.”
