West African defense chiefs met Thursday to discuss the crisis in Niger after coup leaders there ignored their deadline to step down, leaving the region's countries with few options in their effort to restore democratic rule.
Niger's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, was overthrown in July and remains under house arrest with his wife and son in the capital, Niamey.
ECOWAS has a poor track record in stemming the region's rampant coups: neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali have each had two within three years. Niger's coup was seen by the international community and ECOWAS as one too many and in addition to threatening a military invasion, the bloc has imposed severe economic and travel sanctions.
“An intervention could backfire and damage the organization in numerous ways, while a failure to extract major concessions from the could weaken the organization politically at an already fragile time,” he said. But on Thursday, Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS commissioner for peace and security, told reporters that the bloc was working with the United Nations on Niger's situation and didn't “need any approval from the Security Council to find a solution to the crisis.”
On Tuesday, at least 17 Nigerien soldiers were killed and nearly two dozen wounded in the Tillaberi region in the biggest attack by jihadis in six months. Former militants have told The AP that active jihadis would leverage the coup to move around more freely and plan further violence while Niger's security forces are distracted in Niamey and Western assistance has halted.
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