More than 200,000 refugees fleeing Sudan’s civil war have arrived in the town of Adre, Chad, since the middle of June. Before the crisis, the town had a recorded population of just 40,000. In this report, Henry Wilkins asks Adre residents and newly arrived refugees what they are doing to help the influx of new residents.
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Encroaching waters from the Atlantic Ocean have destroyed several hundred homes and buildings along parts of Cameroon’s 400-kilometer coast on the Atlantic Ocean. Officials in the central African state have temporarily suspended fishing and tourism in the coastal town of Kribi because of the damage. Affected civilians are begging for help from the government.

Waves pound crumbling walls, seaside shops and abandoned fishing boats in Kribi, a tourist and commercial city along Cameroon’s Atlantic coast.

Remnants of buildings, especially fishermen’s homes, are still very visible, though civilians say some buildings were completely swept away by waves this week.

Tina Richard, a 70-year old tourist guide, says he lost his property because of the encroaching water.

He says he was helpless on Tuesday when high waves swept through and destroyed coastal villages, plantations, hotels and residential areas including parts of his house.

This is not the first time ocean waters have swept across Kribi. But Tina said the current destruction is more devastating than the floods in 1977, 2003 and 2013.

Nouhou Bello, the highest Cameroon government official in Kribi district, says the government is trying to limit the destruction and the danger to town residents.

Nouhou says he has prohibited the construction of buildings within 200 meters from the ocean and ordered the police to stop tourists and their host community members from swimming in the Atlantic ocean until further notice. He says there is a high risk of civilians drowning in ocean waves which are increasing in volume, power and speed and threatening to destroy more houses, villages, plantations and fishing communities.

Kribi is home to 70,000 civilians and is one of the most popular seaside resorts in central Africa. About 60,000 tourists, a majority of them Europeans, Americans and Asians, visit Kribi each year, according to the government of the central African state.

Nouhou said economic activity has nosedived because of the encroaching ocean waters that also killed goats and devastated poultry farms.

Several hundred fish sellers from Cameroon’s economic hub Douala and the capital Yaounde who visit Kribi every day say they have not been able to get enough supplies since high waves chased fishing boats from the ocean this week.

Cameroon government officials say scores of scared tourists fled from Kribi and dozens who were expected this week are scared to visit the seaside resort.

The fishers and farmers who constitute a majority of the Kribi’s population say they are poor and hungry and expect immediate government support.

Nouhou did not say if the government is planning to give assistance to civilians affected by the ocean waters.

Cameron’s environment ministry blames global warming and rising sea levels for the encroaching of ocean water into its coastal lands.

The Central African Economic and Monetary Community, CEMAC, reports that the ongoing rise in sea levels is potentially catastrophic for an economic bloc whose 30 percent of civilians live along the coastline.

CEMAC is a six member state economic bloc that groups Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.

Cameroon’s ministry of the economy says it is looking for funds to construct a 100-kilometer long coastal dike to stop erosion and reduce floods. The government has neither disclosed how much it needs nor when the construction is expected to begin.
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A Kenyan court has given Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and the content moderators who are suing it for unfair dismissal 21 days to resolve their dispute out of court, a court order showed on Wednesday.

The 184 content moderators are suing Meta and two subcontractors after they say they lost their jobs with one of the firms, Sama, for organizing a union.

The plaintiffs say they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at the second firm, Luxembourg-based Majorel, after Facebook switched contractors.

“The parties shall pursue an out of court settlement of this petition through mediation,” said the order by the Employment and Labour Relations Court, which was signed by lawyers for the plaintiffs, Meta, Sama and Majorel.

Kenya’s former chief justice, Willy Mutunga, and Hellen Apiyo, the acting commissioner for labor, will serve as mediators, the order said. If the parties fail to resolve the case within 21 days, the case will proceed before the court, it said.

Meta, Sama and Majorel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A judge ruled in April that Meta could be sued by the moderators in Kenya, even though it has no official presence in the east African country.

The case could have implications for how Meta works with content moderators globally. The U.S. social media giant works with thousands of moderators around the world, who review graphic content posted on its platform.

Meta has also been sued in Kenya by a former moderator over accusations of poor working conditions at Sama, and by two Ethiopian researchers and a rights institute, which accuse it of letting violent and hateful posts from Ethiopia flourish on Facebook.

Those cases are ongoing.

Meta said in May 2022, in response to the first case, that it required partners to provide industry-leading conditions. On the Ethiopia case, it said in December that hate speech and incitement to violence were against the rules of Facebook and Instagram.
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Polls opened in Zimbabwe on Wednesday as President Emmerson Mnangagwa seeks a second and final term in a country with a history of violent and disputed votes.

These are the second general elections since the ouster of longtime repressive ruler Robert Mugabe in a coup in 2017.

There are 12 presidential candidates on the ballot. The main contest is expected to be between the 80-year-old Mnangagwa, known as the “the crocodile,” and 45-year-old opposition leader Nelson Chamisa. Mnangagwa narrowly beat Chamisa in a disputed election in 2018.

Chamisa hopes to break the ruling ZANU-PF party’s 43-year hold on power.

A runoff election will be held on Oct. 2. if no candidate wins a clear majority in the first round. This election also will determine the makeup of the 350-seat parliament and close to 2,000 local council positions.

In the poor township of Mbare in the capital, Harare, some people were at polling stations two hours before voting opened, fearing long lines.

Ahead of the election, the opposition and human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accused Mnangagwa of seeking to silence dissent amid rising tensions due to a currency crisis, a sharp hike in food prices, a weakening public health system and a lack of formal jobs.

Mnangagwa was a close ally of Mugabe and served as vice president before a fallout ahead of the 2017 coup. He has sought to portray himself as a reformer, but many accuse him of being even more repressive than the man he helped remove from power.

Zimbabwe has been under United States and European Union sanctions for the past two decades over allegations of human rights abuses, charges denied by the ruling party. Mnangagwa has in recent years repeated much of Mugabe’s rhetoric against the West, accusing it of seeking to topple his regime.

Ahead of elections, observers from the EU and the U.S. have come under criticism from officials and state-run media for allegedly being biased against the ruling party.

The Carter Center, invited by the government to observe the polls, has said 30 members of its 48-member observer team were yet to be accredited on the eve of the elections and any further delay will “hinder its ability to observe polling, counting, and tabulation in many locations.”

Several local human rights activists, including lawyers and a clergyman viewed as critical of the government, have been denied accreditation to observe the vote.

The U.S. State Department has condemned Zimbabwe’s decision to deny accreditation to several foreign journalists and local civil society members.

The southern African nation of 15 million people with vast mineral resources, including Africa’s largest reserves of lithium which is a key component in making electric car batteries, has known only two leaders since gaining independence from white minority rule in 1980.
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Zimbabwe holds general elections on Wednesday, August 23, with just one woman presidential candidate out of 11 contenders. While the number of women running for parliamentary and council seats has improved, gender activists say more work is needed when just one woman is running for the nation’s highest office. Columbus Mavhunga files this report from Harare. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe
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The recent arrest and conviction of a Malian TikTok influencer and other critics of Mali’s military government have raised concerns among human rights activists about what they say is a crackdown on the government’s political opponents and the suppression of press freedoms since the junta took power. A VOA reporter talked to human rights workers in Mali’s capital, Bamako, who say the trend is worrying and likely to continue under military rule across the Sahel.
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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for an official state visit, full of pomp and ceremony, on the side of the BRICS summit on Tuesday. Xi was greeted in Pretoria with a 21-gun salute as the two countries marked 25 years of diplomatic relations.

Ramaphosa welcomed Xi warmly, recalling how Beijing supported South Africa’s struggle against apartheid and calling the relationship between the two a “very special” one.

He noted that China is South Africa’s biggest global trade partner, with some $32 billion in bilateral trade last year, but stressed a trade imbalance in China’s favor needs addressing.

“As South Africa, we would like to see the significant trade deficit narrowed and this visit is an opportunity for us to look at ways to do so,” Ramaphosa said.

South Africa is currently in the throes of a major energy crisis, with its economy being hit hard by almost-daily blackouts. Ramaphosa thanked China for donating emergency power equipment and for a grant of approximately $26 million as development assistance.

“Energy cooperation with China is a recent development that we look to deepen, particularly in line with our respective commitments to low-carbon, climate resilient development,” he said.

Ramaphosa confirmed South Africa’s commitment to the One-China policy, and noted that Pretoria and Beijing shared a similar position in supporting the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.

For his part, Xi noted the two nations share a strong bond, “as comrades and brothers.”

Paul Nantulya, a China expert at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said while China is the world’s second largest economy, it has always projected itself as a fellow developing country.

“It would like Global South countries to see it as a developing country and that becomes particularly important in terms of providing a counter-weight to what it sees as a western and a U.S. dominated international order and international system,” Nantulya said.

Several memorandums of understanding were signed during the state visit, including agreements on direct investment, the digital economy, the export of avocados, and the development of industrial parks and special economic zones.

The two nations also agreed to step up cooperation on tourism and education.

Later Tuesday, the BRICS Summit of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – gets into full swing. All the BRICS country leaders are in attendance save for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will be taking part remotely.

Expansion of the bloc is expected to dominate the agenda of the summit, which ends on Thursday.
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The Somali government has offered amnesty to al-Shabab militants amid an ongoing military offensive in central parts of the country. The move is seen by some analysts as a way to remove al-Shabab fighters from the battlefield, thereby weakening the insurgent group.

The amnesty offer is part of a widening approach by the Somali government in its fight against the al-Shabab militant group. The government has deployed the military, targeted financial networks and waged an ideological battle against the group.

The announcement by the National Counter Terrorism Center to open doors for defections follows President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s remarks that al-Shabab leadership was not willing to negotiate with the government.

Abdiaziz Hussein Issack, a security analyst with Hamad Bin Khalifa Civilization Center, said the amnesty offer to al-Shabab is a strategic tactic by the Somali government to further weaken the group.

Already, he said, there have been reports of discontent among the foot soldiers that they are not getting support from the top leadership as the government forces pile pressure on them.

The federal government launched a large-scale offensive against al-Shabab in the Mudug and Galgaduud regions in central parts of the country.

Clan militias also provided support to the forces, which, the government said are on course to finish the first phase of the operation. Issack says amnesty might also provide government forces with intelligence about the group.

If well-coordinated, the amnesty could be a plus for the government, he said. If the fighters desert their positions, the government forces will not only face little resistance but will also benefit from intelligence from the defectors.

Despite the expected positive outcomes, some analysts think an amnesty offer may not tilt the scales of the war. Abdirashid Farah Ali, a security and political analyst at Linking Governance, a policy and strategy consultancy in Mogadishu, warned not to expect too much from the amnesty offer.

He said there is no guarantee the amnesty will net a major gain for the government. There might be just a few defectors out of the thousands of soldiers, and while it has a psychological effect on the war against al-Shabab, it may not change the course of the war.

Several senior figureheads in al-Shabab have defected in the past. The current minister for religious affairs was the founder and the second most senior leader before he defected to the government in 2017 and he’s currently leading the ideological warfare against the group.

Ali says if the amnesty does work and several militants defect, it might force al-Shabab to the negotiating table.

He says major defections are unlikely.  But if there are some defections, al-Shabab might be forced to consider negotiation rather than face humiliation. So, there might be a good opportunity for the government to pursue amnesty.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has been leading the war campaign in Galmudug state in central Somalia for the last two weeks. The two-time leader has staked his presidency on the annihilation of al-Shabab.

As he prepares to launch the second phase of operations in the south, he faces two tasks: an ongoing al-Shabab build-up and tough terrain. But should he succeed in getting defectors, the war might work in his favor.  
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Russia and China will look to gain more political and economic ground in the developing world at a summit in South Africa this week, when an expected joint dose of anti-West grumbling from them may take on a sharper edge with a formal move to bring Saudi Arabia closer.

Leaders from the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will hold three days of meetings in Johannesburg’s financial district of Sandton, with Chinese premier Xi Jinping’s attendance underlining the diplomatic capital his country has invested in the bloc over the last decade-and-a-bit as an avenue for its ambitions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will appear on a video link after his travel to South Africa was complicated by an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him over the war in Ukraine. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will be at the summit alongside Xi.

The main summit on Wednesday — and sideline meetings Tuesday and Thursday — are expected to produce general calls for more cooperation among countries in the Global South amid their rising discontent over perceived Western dominance of global institutions.

That’s a sentiment that Russia and China are more than happy to lean into. Leaders or representatives of dozens more developing countries are set to attend the sideline meetings in Africa’s wealthiest city to give Xi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who will represent Putin in South Africa, a sizeable audience.

One specific policy point with more direct implications will be discussed and possibly decided on — the proposed expansion of the BRICS bloc, which was formed in 2009 by the emerging market countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and added South Africa the following year.

Saudi Arabia is one of more than 20 countries to have formally applied to join BRICS in another possible expansion, South African officials say. Any move toward the inclusion of the world’s second-biggest oil producer in an economic bloc with Russia and China would clearly draw attention from the United States and its allies in an extra-frosty geopolitical climate, and amid a recent move by Beijing to exert some influence in the Persian Gulf.

“If Saudi Arabia were to enter BRICS, it will bring extraordinary importance to this grouping,” said Talmiz Ahmad, India’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Even an agreement on the principle of expanding BRICS, which already consists of a large chunk of the developing world’s biggest economies, is a moral victory for the Russian and Chinese vision for the bloc as a counterbalance to the G-7, analysts say.

Both favor adding more countries to bolster a kind of coalition — even if it’s only symbolic — amid China’s economic friction with the U.S. and Russia’s Cold War-like standoff with the West because of the war in Ukraine.

Nations ranging from Argentina to Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia and United Arab Emirates have all formally applied to join alongside the Saudis, and are also possible new members.

If a number of them are brought in, “then you end up with a bigger economic bloc, and from that a sense of power,” said Prof. Alexis Habiyaremye of the College of Business and Economics at the University of Johannesburg.

While Brazil, India and South Africa are less keen on expansion and seeing their influence diluted in what’s currently an exclusive developing world club, there is momentum for it. Nothing has been decided, though, and the five countries must first agree on the criteria new members need to meet. That’s on the agenda in Johannesburg amid Beijing’s push.

“BRICS expansion has become the top trending issue at the moment,” said Chen Xiaodong, China’s ambassador to South Africa. “Expansion is key to enhancing (the) BRICS mechanism’s vitality. I believe that this year’s summit will witness a new and solid step on this front.”

The U.S. has stressed its bilateral ties with South Africa, Brazil and India in an attempt to offset any outsized Russian and Chinese influence emanating from BRICS. In the buildup to the summit, the State Department said that the U.S. was “deeply engaged with many of the leading members of the BRICS association.”

The European Union also will closely follow happenings in Johannesburg, but with almost sole focus on the war in Ukraine and the bloc’s continued effort to draw united condemnation for Russia’s invasion from the developing world, which has largely failed so far.

With Xi, Lula, Modi and Ramaphosa coming together, European Commission spokesman Peter Stano said the EU was calling on them to use the moment to uphold international law.

“We look forward to their contribution to make Putin stop his illegal, destabilizing behavior,” Stano said.

If a BRICS foreign ministers meeting in Cape Town in June, the precursor to the main summit, is anything to go by, there will be no public criticism of Russia or Putin over the war. A planned protest by the Amnesty International rights group and the Ukrainian Association of South Africa outside the Sandton Convention Centre will likely be the only condemnation heard.

If anything, Russia might see the summit as an opportunity to leverage some favor.

Having halted a deal allowing the passage of grain out of Ukraine last month, Putin might use the BRICS gathering to announce more free Russian grain shipments to developing countries, as he has already done for several African nations, said Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow at the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

It would allow Putin to demonstrate “goodwill” to the developing world, Snegovaya said, while cutting Ukraine out of the process.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin would have “full-fledged participation” in the summit despite appearing on a video link and would make a speech.

What’s also likely to be aired regularly over the three days in Johannesburg is the developing world’s gripes over current global financial systems. That has streamlined in the months and weeks leading up to the summit into a criticism of the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the world’s currency for international trade.

BRICS experts are generally united in pointing out the difficulties the bloc has in implementing policy due to the five countries’ differing economic and political priorities, and the tensions and rivalry between China and India. 

But a focus on more trade in local currencies is something all of them can get behind, said Cobus van Staden, an analyst at the China Global South Project, which tracks Chinese engagement across the developing world.

He sees BRICS pushing a move away from the dollar in regional trade in some parts of the world in the same way he sees this summit as a whole.

“None of this is the big sword that’s going to slay the dollar. That’s not the play,” said van Staden. “It’s not one big sword wound, it’s a lot of paper cuts. It won’t kill the dollar, but it’s definitely making the world a more complicated place.”

“They don’t need to defeat the dollar … and they don’t need to defeat the G7. All they particularly want to do is raise an alternative to it. It’s this much longer play,” he said.
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A global aid official urged the international community Sunday to provide more funds to help Sudanese citizens trapped by a monthslong military conflict between rival generals in the African nation.

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said his organizations have received only 7% of the $45 million they appealed for to help those inside Sudan. The war pits the military against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

“The needs are real,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Cairo. “Sudanese people need urgent support, urgent solidarity and urgent interest.”

Sudan was plunged into chaos in April when simmering tensions between the military, led by Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere.

The conflict has turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. Many residents live without water and electricity, and the country’s health care system has nearly collapsed. The sprawling region of Darfur saw some of the worst bouts of violence in the conflict, and the fighting there has morphed into ethnic clashes with RSF and allied Arab militia targeting ethnic African communities.

Clashes also intensified earlier this month in the provinces of South Kordofan and West Kordofan. A rebel group attacked Kadugli, the provincial capital of South Kordofan and clashed with the military, killing and displacing civilians, according to the U.N. mission in Sudan.

In al-Fula, the provincial capital of West Kordofan, fighting erupted for days between the military and the RSF before local officials helped stop the clashes, the U.N. mission, known as UNITAMS, said Sunday. But government offices, banks and the offices of the U.N. and other aid agencies were looted, it said

More than 3.4 million people were forced to flee their homes to safer areas inside Sudan, according to the United Nations’ migration agency. Over a million crossed into neighboring countries, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Central African Republic, the agency added.

Chapagain called for the international community to show the same solidarity with Sudanese people they showed last year when they rushed to help those who fled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“I see the humanitarian side of the Ukraine is a good example. That’s how the world community can come together. We need a similar solidarity for Sudan now,” he said.

Along with the $45 million needed to help those inside Sudan, Chapagain said another $35 million is needed to provide assistance to those who fled the fighting to Sudan’s neighboring countries.

His comments came following a trip to the Egyptian border with Sudan, where he met with customs officials and Sudanese refugees who fled the fighting in Khartoum. Egypt received more than 272,000 Sudanese as of Aug. 1, according to official figures.

Although the operations at the Egyptian side of the border were organized, he said, there were long lines for people on the Sudanese side waiting to be allowed into Egypt. He said between 400 and 600 people are crossing daily into Egypt compared to thousands in the first weeks of the war.

The Egyptian government had allowed women and children to cross without visas in the first weeks of the war, but in June it began requiring visas for all Sudanese citizens despite objections from activists and rights groups.

Chapagain said the Egyptian government is under economic pressure as they are hosting more than 9 million migrants, including Sudanese, Syrians and others, as well as the country’s growing population of over 105 million.

“They want to be generous. They want to be welcoming,” he said. “But at the same time, they do have concern in the sense that … they are still a developing country.”
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Armed gunmen killed at least 23 people and wounded 12 in an attack on a village in central Mali, officials said Sunday.

Sidi Mohamed El Bechir, governor of the Bandiagara region where the attack took place, said unidentified men killed nearly two dozen people Friday and set fire to several homes in the village of Yarou.

“The assailants stayed in the village until 7 p.m. and burned down part of the village, smashed stores and took away the villagers’ cattle,” said Amadou Lougue, president of the regional youth organization on Sunday. The attack has not been claimed.

Communities across central and northern Mali have been in the grips of protracted armed violence since 2012. Extremist rebels were forced from power in the West African nation’s northern cities the following year, with the help of a French-led military operation. But they regrouped in the desert and began launching attacks on the Malian army and its allies.

Friday’s attack in the central Mopti region took place on the same day that the Malian army accused armed extremists of aiming a rocket at the western city of Timbuktu, 170 miles (275 kilometers) north of Bandiagara.

Elements of JNIM, a West African jihadi group linked with al-Qaida, placed a blockade on the ancient trading city nearly two weeks ago in response to an influx of Malian soldiers and foreign mercenaries into the area.

The blockade has caused shipments of food and other goods to halt. Boubacar Sadigh Ould Taled, a legislator in Mali’s interim junta-led government, said many residents of the nearby town of Ber have fled due to insecurity following the arrival of Malian troops and those from the Russian mercenary group Wagner in early August.

The recent uptick in insecurity in the area likely stems from the departure of a U.N. peacekeeping mission from its base in Ber, which has been under the control of separatist rebels since they signed a peace deal with the Malian government in 2015. A July U.N. resolution said the peacekeeping mission would be shuttered after a decade of operations.

Since a military junta seized power of the country in 2020, Mali has increasingly renounced intervention by Western nations, opting instead to unofficially partner with the Wagner Group to help regain control from armed groups in the center and north.

Analysts fear the 2015 peace deal, mediated with help from Algeria and the U.N. mission known as MINUSMA, may fall apart after the peacekeepers leave. The insecurity in Ber, which caused peacekeepers to leave earlier than planned, has become an early testing ground for post-MINUSMA Mali.
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A delegation from regional nations arrived in Niger on Saturday afternoon in a last-ditch diplomatic effort to reach a peaceful solution with mutinous soldiers who ousted the country’s president last month. 

The representatives from the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, came to the capital, Niamey, and joined efforts by the United Nations special representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simao, who arrived on Friday, in trying to find a resolution to the ongoing crisis. 

On Friday, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Simao would meet with the junta and other parties to try to facilitate a swift and peaceful resolution to Niger’s crisis. 

“What we want to see is a return to the constitutional order. We want to see the liberation of the president and his family, and restoration of his legitimate authority,” he said. 

On August 10, the Economic Community of West African States ordered the deployment of a “standby force” to restore constitutional rule in the country. 

The soldiers who overthrew Niger’s democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum in July have quickly entrenched themselves in power, rebuffed most dialogue efforts, and kept Bazoum, his wife and son under house arrest in the capital. 

ECOWAS troops ‘ready to go’

On Friday, the ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security, Abdel-Fatau Musah, said 11 of its 15 member states agreed to commit troops to a military deployment, saying they were “ready to go” whenever the order was given. 

The 11 member states don’t include Niger itself and the bloc’s three other countries under military rule following coups: Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso. The latter two have warned they would consider any intervention in Niger an act of war. On Friday, Niger’s state television said that Mali and Burkina Faso had dispatched warplanes in a show of solidarity. 

Friday’s announcement is the latest in a series of empty threats by ECOWAS to forcefully restore democratic rule in Niger, conflict analysts say. 

Immediately after the coup, the bloc gave the junta seven days to release and restore Bazoum, a deadline that came and went with no action. 

“The putschists won’t be holding their breath this time over the renewed threat of military action,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank. Meanwhile, the mutinous soldiers are cementing their rule and appointing loyal commanders to key units while ECOWAS has no experience with military action in hostile territory and would have no local support if it tried to intervene, he said. 

“Niger is a very fragile country that can easily turn, in case of a military intervention, into a failed state like Sudan,” Laessing said. 

ECOWAS used force to restore order in a member country in 2017 in Gambia, when longtime President Yahya Jammeh refused to step down after he lost the presidential election. But even in that case, the move had involved diplomatic efforts led by the then-presidents of Mauritania and Guinea, while Jammeh appeared to be acting on his own after the Gambian army pledged allegiance to the winner of the election, Adama Barrow. 

Also on Saturday, the new United States Ambassador to Niger, Kathleen FitzGibbon, arrived in the capital, said Matthew Miller, spokesman for the State Department. The U.S. hasn’t had an ambassador in the country for nearly two years. 

FitzGibbon will focus on advocating for a diplomatic solution that preserves constitutional order in Niger and for the immediate release of Bazoum, his family, and all those unlawfully detained, Miller said. Her arrival does not reflect a change in the U.S. policy position, he said. 

Many residents side with junta

On the streets of the capital Saturday, many residents said they’re preparing to fight back against an ECOWAS military intervention. 

Thousands of people in Niamey lined up outside the main stadium to register as volunteers, fighters and to help with other needs in case the junta requires support. Some parents brought their children to sign up; others said they’d been waiting since 3 a.m., while groups of youths boisterously chanted in favor of the junta and against ECOWAS and the country’s former colonial ruler, France. 

“I am here for the recruitment to become a good soldier. We are all here for that,” said Ismail Hassan, a resident waiting in line to register. “If God wills, we will all go.” 

Event organizer Amsarou Bako said the junta was not involved in finding volunteers to defend the coup, although it is aware of the initiative. Hours after the drive started, the organizers said it would be postponed, but didn’t explain why. 

Millions hungry, thousands displaced

The humanitarian situation in the country is also on the agenda of the U.N.’s West Africa and Sahel special representative. 

Before the coup, nearly 3 million people were facing severe food insecurity and hundreds of thousands were internally displaced, according to CARE, an international aid group. Economic and travel sanctions imposed by ECOWAS after the coup, coupled with the deteriorating security, will have dire consequences for the population, CARE said. 

Previously, Western countries saw Niger as one of the last democratic nations they could partner with to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, and they poured millions of dollars of military aid and assistance into shoring up Niger’s forces. 

Since the coup, former jihadis told The Associated Press that militants have been taking advantage of the freedom of movement caused by suspended military operations by the French and the U.S. and a distracted Nigerien army that is focusing efforts on the capital. 

Last week, at least 17 soldiers were killed and 20 injured during an ambush by jihadis. It was the first major attack against Niger’s army in six months. A day later, at least 50 civilians were killed in the Tillaberi region by extremists believed to be members of the Islamic State group, according to an internal security report for aid groups seen by the AP. 

“While Niger’s leaders are consumed by politics in the capital, the drumbeat of lethal jihadist attacks goes on in the countryside,” said Corinne Dufka a political analyst who specializes in the Sahel region. 

“The recent attacks should motivate all parties to work for as speedy and inclusive a transition as possible so they can get back to the crucial business of protecting civilians from the devastating consequences of war. In due time, Nigeriens and their partners should look long and hard at why and how democracy in Niger faltered,” she said.  
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