Ruler by Putin's grace

After the military coup: General Abdourahamane Tiani at the Niamey stadium, August 6, 2023

Shots at sunrise: Heavy fighting broke out in several neighborhoods of Niamey, the capital of Niger, early in the morning on Saturday last week. Young soldiers apparently tried to seize the palace of the military dictator Abdourahamane Tiani, who has ruled since 2023, and other important buildings in Niamey such as military bases and the headquarters of state television Télé Sahel by force of arms. However, the presidential guard remained loyal and, according to media reports, was able to defend the palace against the coup soldiers. The number of deaths remained unclear for days afterwards, but the government presented dozens of detained army personnel on social media. The fact that a noticeable number of military personnel were still visible on the streets days later and that the first reports of “purges” within the Nigerien army began circulating on Monday showed how volatile the situation is.

Tiani forces were able to retake the strategically important air base 101 near Niamey airport, which like two other important objects was briefly in the hands of the attackers, on Sunday night. The military base houses, among other things, the general staff of the joint armed forces of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), which was founded in September 2023 by the respective military regimes of the Sahel states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Troops from the state-run Russian Afrika Korps deployed in the country, the successor to the Wagner mercenary company that has been operating in the AES states since 2023, were also stationed at the base.

A high-ranking Nigerien army delegation delivered a message of thanks for their help in suppressing the coup, according to the Russian ambassador.

The Afrika Korps was apparently involved in combat operations with the attackers. The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday: "These attacks were repelled by the national armed forces with the help of the military of the African Corps of the Russian Ministry of Defense." Like the AES in a joint communiqué, it speaks of an "attempt to destabilize." In the Russian statement this is explicitly traced back to “former European colonial metropolises”, i.e. France; that of the AES is not so clear. Russia's ambassador to Niamey, Viktor Voropaev, told the Russian state news portal Sputnik that the Republic of Niger had requested this military assistance from the Afrika Korps. Afterwards, a high-ranking Nigerien army delegation went to the base to deliver a message of thanks.

The northwestern neighbor Algeria, with which Niger has a 956 kilometer long border, condemned the attempted coup on Saturday and sent four Soviet Sukhoi SU-30 army aircraft and a tanker plane to Niger the following day.

Nigerien-Algerian relations had previously been tense, especially since Algeria shot down a Malian drone near the border with Mali. The Malian military regime, allied with Niger, accuses Algeria of supporting Tuareg groups in northern Mali who are fighting against the central state. However, since an official visit by the Nigerien military dictator Tiani to Algeria's capital Algiers in February, relations between the two neighboring countries have improved, as have those between Algeria and the AES state of Mali. Russia in particular had pushed for such a rapprochement so that it would not have to choose between its ally in North Africa and those in the Sahel region. Algeria also used the improved relations to intensify deportations of Nigerien migrants who were either working in Algeria or trying to transit to Europe.

Some of the digital media in the Sahel states, which communicate primarily on Facebook or WhatsApp, quickly looked for and found the causes of the attempted coup in the former colonial power France. This had to withdraw its troops, which had been deployed since 2014 as part of the fight against jihadists and most recently "Operation Barkhane", from Mali in 2022 and from the neighboring republic of Niger in 2023 and see their replacement by Russian troops.

“The 25th Column of Françafrique has been crushed,” responded Pan-African activist and writer Franklin Nyamsi, who comes from Cameroon and has French citizenship and is currently working as a university lecturer in Mali. The video was distributed via the digital pro-government media of the AES states, where other similar messages also circulated, portraying, among others, French President Emmanuel Macron as the direct mastermind of the coup.

An article by the German state-run international broadcaster Deutsche Welle expressed an opposite opinion. He saw the increased "dependence of the Nigerien army on the Russian Afrika Korps" as the cause of the dissatisfaction of the Nigerien soldiers and quoted the Senegalese researcher Pape Ibrahima Kane in this regard. The Russian combatants would have too much influence over the army and too much freedom of action without control. There are also internal conflicts in the Nigerien army and dissatisfaction with the low pay. There is no catalog of demands from the mutineers. The majority of them came from the regions around the towns of Tillabéri and Dosso in the southwest of the country. These are in the immediate vicinity of the front, as the attacking jihadist combat units are mainly active in the western part of the country and near the borders with Burkina Faso and Mali.

A lawyer working in Niamey told Jungle World that many soldiers accuse President Tiani of disrespecting them. Too much of the army's money and resources are only being channeled to the Presidential Guard as its elite unit, and it also receives many unjustified privileges. At the same time, the units fighting at the front against the jihadists at risk of their lives are being neglected. Before Tiani came to power, he had been in command of the presidential guard for a long time. The fighting and political chaos of the last few days and the “purges” that have now been carried out within the army could now benefit the very jihadists that the Nigerien military regime brought Russian soldiers into the country to combat.