"Niger's president hid behind a bulletproof door of his official residence and talked over a phone he assumed was monitored. To anxious French and American allies, he repeated assurances that the army would soon rescue him from an unfolding coup.
Outside the ground floor safe room Mohamed Bazoum had recently renovated to protect himself from such an event, mutineers from his presidential guard fanned out across the presidency compound, furious about a proposal to replace their longstanding commander, according to Nigerien, U.S. and European officials. Hunkered over the phone beside his wife and son, Bazoum delicately encouraged advisers to send the army's regular units.
At around noon, his cellphone rang with a call from a former U.S. ambassador, who was about to board a flight on his vacation. The ambassador was worried one of Washington's closest allies in Africa could become the latest in a string of regional states to fall into the hands of coup leaders sympathetic to Russia.
Everything is fine, the imprisoned president carefully intoned.
A week later, Bazoum was still imprisoned in his palace, junta leaders were seeking aid from Vladimir Putin's regional partners and America wass on the verge of losing its most important ally in a crucial and unstable part of Africa. An obscure personnel dispute within Niger's presidential guard has now become what appears to be a geopolitical win for Russia and its Wagner Group paramilitary company in their bid to flip Western allies.
The situation could turn into open military conflict. Eleven West African countries, led by Nigeria, have threatened to use force to restore Bazoum to power if the coup wasn't reversed by Sunday. In return, the pro-Russian leaders of Mali and Burkina Faso have vowed to defend Niger.
Officials in the U.S. and Europe were scrambling for ways to return Bazoum to power but concede the window is closing. The Kremlin on Friday warned against any intervention.
The coup lead Russia to pick up some of America's most important drone bases, used to fly missions across the Sahara between Libya and Nigeria.
This outcome wasn't predestined. A week of missteps and communication breakdowns pushed the vast nation of Niger toward Russia. Nigerien, American, European and other West African security officials, as well as Nigerien soldiers, described a series of unexpected blunders.
Washington, caught without key personnel in its Africa posts, failed to anticipate what is now the seventh coup in the region since 2020 -- not including a failed attempt in Niger two years ago. While Bazoum sat in his safe room calling for help, America and its allies struggled to react.
The U.S. has spent more than $500 million arming and equipping Niger's military. Yet the country's special forces, trained for nearly every counterterrorism eventuality, had no answer for Sunday's coup -- West Africa's most enduring security threat. The forces were left chatting over WhatsApp groups over whether to intervene.
The U.S. and Europe have made Niger the centerpiece of their fight against the spread of Islamic State and al Qaeda in Africa's Sahel, a 3,000-mile semiarid territory on the southern shore of the Sahara. Nearly half of Niger's budget comes from foreign aid.
"This is your strong ally, your reliable ally, you have invested a lot and then there is a coup without any reason," said Kiari Liman Tinguiri, Niger's ambassador to Washington who was recently fired by the junta. "It's very nice to be friends of the West, but it may not be helpful when hard times come."
The coup began with an idea for a personnel change, mulled over months by Bazoum and his aides, to replace the leader of the presidential guard that held watch over the country's commander-in-chief.
U.S. and French intelligence officers had long known about the president's plan to reshuffle his security detail and the risks it entailed. The presidential guard felt marginalized after vast sums of military assistance poured into the country's counterterrorism units, people familiar with the situation said.
The French intelligence service DGSE warned Paris of the risk, but neither France nor the U.S. took significant action to defend their ally in Niamey, according to French and West African intelligence officials.
Bazoum, elected in 2021 in Niger's first democratic transfer of power, had been feted in Washington as a reliable partner against the twin threats of jihadist attacks and Russia's growing influence.
After coup leaders in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso shifted toward Russia, Bazoum made clear he stood with America.
In April, Bazoum replaced the army chief of staff and the head of the national gendarmerie, hoping to place more trusted officers in their ranks, according to European and West African security officials. That stirred suspicion within his presidential guard. On July 24, Bazoum directed an aide to draft a decree to dismiss the guard's leader.
Gen. Omar Tchiani had protected Niger's leaders for 12 years, with a unit of some 700 elite soldiers. The unit had stopped a coup attempt against Bazoum days ahead of his inauguration. As Bazoum built up the country's counterterrorism forces, Tchiani's guard lost out on resources and stature.
At 3 a.m. on July 26, the general's men drove up to the presidential palace. Carrying heavy weaponry, they disarmed security officers equipped only with handguns and walked to Bazoum's residence.
Bazoum fled into the safe room and phoned aides to say he was confident that U.S.-trained elements of his army would rally to his rescue.
In a twist, some of the best U.S.-trained special forces among Niger's regular army units were on counterterrorism missions in distant desert regions, with few roads.
The lightly armed units in the capital weren't in a position to assault the palace and the chain of command broke down. Rank-and-file soldiers said they debated over WhatsApp groups what to do.
Bazoum, who still had full control of his communications in the safe room, phoned international allies and ambassadors in the West. He stressed over phone and video calls that the coup was a personnel dispute and could easily be reversed.
Though the U.S. had spent hundreds of millions of dollars transforming Niger into its top military outpost in the Sahara, it didn't have an ambassador in the country.
The Biden administration didn't formally nominate one until eight months after the previous ambassador left, only to face opposition from Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who has put holds on State Department appointees until the White House releases intelligence he believes could show Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab.
Washington also has no ambassador at the African Union or in neighboring Nigeria -- or anybody in a special envoy post that it had created to deal with the region's deterioration. The relevant Africa desk at the National Security Council was in flux, held by a short-term temporary post that was due to hand off to another temporary caretaker within days.
"This is extremely frustrating. This was not a widely supported coup -- it was one unit that had its grievance for years and we should have done more to act," said J. Peter Pham, former U.S. special envoy to the Sahel under President Trump. In the early hours, he added, "his exfiltration could have been organized relatively easily. . . . The golden hour has passed."
Bazoum contacted allies in France, which had about 1,500 troops in the country. A decision would have to come from President Emmanuel Macron, who was traveling in the South Pacific. France's government declined to comment.
Junta leaders headed to a state TV station and stood around a table where a stone-faced spokesman said the military could no longer "witness the gradual and inevitable demise of our country."
If Bazoum was going to be freed, it would have to come from outside.
Macron had just landed in the South Pacific when he spoke to his top defense and diplomatic officials, who laid out options to free Bazoum.
For years, the French president had been briefed on a growing protest movement against France in its former West African colonies.
In Mali, then Burkina Faso, coup leaders seized power and justified their takeovers as an act of liberation from France, before turning to Russia as their protector and benefactor.
The French president ruled out sending a unilateral force. Instead, he wanted to assist Nigerien armed forces that remained loyal to Bazoum, an option that vanished as the country's military command acquiesced to the coup.
Russia was in an excellent position to step into the vacuum. Vladimir Putin was already receiving African leaders invited to a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg due to start the day after the coup.
Bazoum had refused the invitation, but the Kremlin-backed leaders of Mali and Burkina Faso, Assimi Goita and Ibrahim Traore, gathered for meetings. As news of the coup trickled in, their intelligence chiefs met under Russian auspices to agree on a coordinated response.
Officials in Mali and Burkina Faso didn't respond to requests for comment.
Protests, organized by an opposition movement, thronged France's embassy in Niger. France sent military planes to evacuate its citizens. The U.S. moved its 1,100 troops, sent there to fight Islamist insurgents, inside American-built drone and special-forces bases. The State Department held off on calling the upheaval a coup, a designation that could, under U.S. law, sharply restrict America's ability to keep funding, training and equipping Niger's military.
The stakes were becoming more serious for the giant to Niger's south. Nigeria was once the world's 33rd richest country per capita, until decades of military coups and misrule left it among the poorest.
On Sunday, July 30, Nigeria's new president, Bola Tinubu, gathered with presidents and foreign ministers from 11 West African states, along with a representative from Bazoum's government, in the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Tinubu said that after coups in Mali and Burkina Faso -- both supported by Russia -- as well as in Guinea and Chad, the one in Niger was the last straw. If they accepted this coup, more would come. A Nigerian government spokesperson declined to comment.
After their meeting ended, the West African leaders issued an ultimatum: Tchiani had one week to return power to the democratically elected president or face the possible use of military force.
Blinken issued statements of general support for the Nigerian-led idea.
On Thursday the junta announced on state TV it had terminated military cooperation agreements with France.
From his palace, Bazoum phoned his ambassador to the U.S. to dictate an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Post calling for international intervention.
By the time it published, parts of the country were in the dark. Nigeria, which provides some 75% of Niger's electricity, had cut off one of its main transmission lines, plunging villages and towns into blackouts. The presidential residence lost power as well.
Bazoum's phone remains charged, his aides said Friday. If it goes out, the U.S. could lose its ability to reach the president. "I hope he has a lot of lithium batteries," one former official said." [1]
The lithium batteries did not help too.
The uneven distribution of Western military aid has eroded Western influence in Niger. There is a lot of irony here...
1. How the U.S. Fumbled Niger's Coup --- A week of missteps and breakdowns pushed a key ally toward Russia. Hinshaw, Drew; Faucon, Benoit; Parkinson, Joe. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 05 Aug 2023: A.1.
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