Ecowas’s more measured outreach to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger can be seen in the bloc’s use of the new alliance’s formal name in official messaging. It has become clear that the bombast of a year ago will only aggravate grievances, amplifying suspicion in those countries that Western powers are behind attempts to tell them what to do.
In Senegal’s Faye, Ecowas has a fresh face whose youth and anti-colonialist sentiment could bode well for conciliation. He and Togo’s Gnassingbe “have the right contacts and are respected” in the AES countries, says Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel Programme at German think tank Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
But a breakthrough is unlikely to come from these talks since the junta leaders “base much of their legitimacy on being critical of Ecowas, which they see as a French tool,” Laessing told me. “The AES with all the noise the countries make is pretty much the only ‘results’ these juntas have to show so they won’t be looking for an understanding with Ecowas.”
The bloc seems to acknowledge this already with its sights set on a forward-looking contingency plan. A cooperation agreement between AES and Ecowas now seems the most likely resolution, rather than a collapse of the former into the latter, Laessing believes.
Source link : https://www.semafor.com/article/07/08/2024/ecowas-launches-push-to-dissuade-junta-led-breakaway
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Publish date : 2024-07-08 16:24:00
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