Military rule and rule of law in the Sahel

How should the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deal with the Sahel juntas, as they plan to break away from the community and form a separate group, the Confederacy of the Sahel States (they already have set up an Alliance of the Sahel Sates—ASS)? The withdrawal is neither legal nor legitimate. The Sahel states are bound by ECOWAS’ democracy protocol of 2001, which makes of the juntas de facto authorities, not legal ones. Only a legal government, that is, a democratic one, can denounce the protocol. That is so because only such a government can actually lend legitimacy to such an action. Withdrawal from ECOWAS engages in a myriad ways the welfare of the citizens of the Sahel and those citizens must be consulted on the decision via a referendum. The referendum must be democratic, with people free to campaign for and against the motion. If, at the end of such a referendum, the people voted to withdraw, then the law could be legitimately changed. The people are sovereign. That is not what happened in the Sahel. The three juntas talked to each other and made the decision among themselves, thus trampling both ECOWAS law and the rights of their people. The question then is, should ECOWAS accept this assault as a fait accompli?

If the answer is yes, the loss of the three Sahel states will not be a great one in economic terms. In fact, it will be a greater injury to the real economy of the Sahel, the one-off which most Sahelians live. Circular migration and diaspora remittances from the Gulf of Guinea are a lifeline for all three countries. In general, ECOWAS is a huge value added to West Africa’s real economy, in the sense that it gets the state out of the way of people seeking their opportunity in it, aside from the routine scandal of bribing at the border. In that way, ECOWAS compensates for a lot of the failure of its member states to fix their economy and provide for the welfare of their citizens. This is truer for the Sahel than for any other part of West Africa.

But the situation in the Sahel represents a high-security risk for the Gulf of Guinea. Half of rural Mali and Burkina Faso is overrun by Jihadist groups that are creeping southward toward Benin, Togo, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. The juntas consider a ‘Sahelexit’ to be part of a policy of isolationism, meaning they reject any meaningful cooperation on security matters with their southern neighbours. This is a peril for West Africa. ECOWAS should not accept the fait accompli. It should say, ‘no, but.’

No, because the juntas are illegal and oppressive, which means ECOWAS can treat them like de facto authorities, but must not admit their lawfulness. On that basis, two courses of action are open to ECOWAS, the Carrot and the Stick.

The Carrot would be a bargain whereby ECOWAS admits ASS as a subset, just like it does the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) on the condition that the juntas accept to retake a path back to a lawful, democratic regime. Many practical concessions can be arranged, so long as the principle is accepted. In exchange, ECOWAS would commit to assist ASS in the specific ways requested by the juntas, so long as there is no injury to the interests of other member states.

If the juntas refuse this, then the Stick approach should apply. In that more unpleasant case, ECOWAS should devise, unilaterally, a facility for the free circulation of Sahelian citizens while also developing, in coordination with WAEMU’s non-Sahelian states, an additional facility for activating pressure points targeting the Sahel official economies that would hurt the juntas. This dual-facility proposal rests on the West African reality that it is possible to differentiate the official from the real economy. While the juntas depend on the official economy of rent, and not so much on the real economy, the Sahelian populations depend mostly on the real economy and very little on the official economy. It is of course not possible to disentangle completely the two, but it is very possible to identify the specific areas where sanctions will hit directly at the official economy. As long as they are allowed to travel in West Africa as part of their activities in the real economy, the Sahel citizens will not blame ECOWAS for this, especially if ECOWAS is savvy enough to communicate to them its benefits, thus turning against the juntas their populist discourse by demonstrating that it is on the side of the people.

In short, ECOWAS must not resign itself to a fait accompli that comes with so much hardship and peril, and two; it must work to make of this challenge something it will come out a stronger, more effective, and more popular union.

Idrissa (a.idrissa.abdoulaye@asc.leidenuniv.nl) and Akinyoade (a.akinyoade@asc.leidenuniv.nl)  are Senior Researchers at the African Studies Centre Leiden of Leiden University, The Netherlands.

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