On Military Coup: Liptako-Gourma Charter and what it portends on the Sahel Foreign Policy

The central idea behind the establishment of the Liptako-Gourma Charter is that Military leaders from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger signed a significant mutual defence pact known as the Liptako-Gourma Charter, marking a crucial step in addressing the security challenges plaguing the Sahel region.

It is a known fact the aforementioned countries who are signatories in this pact are the countries practising stratocracy- the system of government administered by the military junta.

The primary reasons for the creation of  the Liptako-Gourma Charter are:

• This pact establishes the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and aims to create a framework for collective defence and mutual assistance among these nations.

• The Liptako-Gourma region, where the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger converge, has been severely affected by jihadist activities and instability in recent years.
• The AES seeks to combine military and economic efforts to confront common security threats and advance the well-being of their populations.

Key Provisions of the Charter are:

• Mutual Assistance: The charter binds signatory nations to provide mutual assistance, including military support, in the event of an attack on any one of them.
• Security Restoration: It specifically allows the use of armed force to restore and ensure security in the face of aggression.
• Rebellion Prevention: The agreement also commits the 3 countries to collaborate on preventing or resolving armed rebellions within their borders.

A finicky attention to the provisions proffers that the primary essence of the establishment of these provisions is to fortify the triumvirate signatories against external advances which includes ECOWAS whom they have conceived as an external threat because of the relative threat ECOWAS has posed to the signatories of the Liptako-Gourma Charter for violating its stance on Democratic Governance by adopting military rule. In a broader sense, ECOWAS military aggression would be met by an aggressive military counterstrike by the signatories. This therefore polarises Sahel Africa into two extreme political and administrative ideological stances. With one end, favouring military governance and the other favouring democratic governance.

Essentially, if this does result in a Hot War, it could spark WW III as this would be fuelled by the Russo-Ukrainian war and the countries in coalition- this is so because countries in alliance with Ukraine would support the democratic part of the Sahel Africa while those in alliance with Russia would support the military junta of Sahel Africa. Also, there could be a Cold War in Africa with Europe being the third party which has the choice to either align or not align with either of these extreme ideological stances. This therefore brings to the fore the existence of power tussle in the quest for complete emancipation from neo-colonialism and European influence in administration in Africa.

This adducement leads us to the foreign policy of the signatories of the Liptako-Gourma charter. The likely foreign policies are

• Breaking diplomatic ties with their colonial masters- Mali is a relevant case study
• Limited bilateral relationship between the signatories and advocates of democratic governance in Africa
• Advocating true indigenous rule free from foreign influence across Africa

In this Cold War of ideologies, which may later develop into a Hot war, it is an axiomatic claim to aver that, a victory for the Axis (the signatories of the Liptako-Gourma Charter) would hasten the downfall of ECOWAS as ECOWAS would be in the quicksand and would no longer have the legitimacy it has enjoyed in West Africa ever since its inception in 1975. More concretely, the ideological stance of the victor would be widely adopted in Sahel Africa. Thus a victory for the Axis powers in this war would signify the end of European influence on Africa.

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