W. Africa Bloc Says Military Intervention in Niger ‘Last Resort’

ECOWAS Senegalese troops hold their position in Barra, across from the Gambian capital Banjul Jan. 22, 2017. (AP)
ECOWAS Senegalese troops hold their position in Barra, across from the Gambian capital Banjul Jan. 22, 2017. (AP)
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W. Africa Bloc Says Military Intervention in Niger ‘Last Resort’

ECOWAS Senegalese troops hold their position in Barra, across from the Gambian capital Banjul Jan. 22, 2017. (AP)
ECOWAS Senegalese troops hold their position in Barra, across from the Gambian capital Banjul Jan. 22, 2017. (AP)

West Africa's regional bloc on Wednesday said a military intervention in junta-ruled Niger was "the last resort" as Nigeria cut electricity supplies to intensify pressure on the country's coup leaders.

Military chiefs from the grouping were meeting on Wednesday to frame a response and a delegation was in Niger for negotiations, a week after a coup shook the fragile nation and prompted ex-colonial power France to evacuate its citizens.

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) leaders on Sunday imposed trade and financial sanctions and gave the coup leaders a week to reinstate Niger's democratically elected president or face potential use of force.

"(The) military option is the very last option on the table, the last resort, but we have to prepare for the eventuality," said Abdel-Fatau Musah, ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security.

An ECOWAS team headed by former Nigerian leader Abdulsalami Abubakar was in Niger to "negotiate", added Musah, speaking at the start of a three-day meeting of the grouping's military chiefs in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

The current chair of ECOWAS is Nigeria, West Africa's military and economic superpower.

It has vowed to take a firm line against coups that have proliferated across the region since 2020, most of them the outcome of a bloody extremist insurgency.

A source in Niger's power company said Nigeria had cut off its electricity supply to its neighbor as a result of the sanctions.

"Since yesterday, Nigeria has disconnected the high-voltage line transporting electricity to Niger," the source at Nigelec, the country's monopoly supplier, told AFP.

Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, depends on Nigeria for 70 percent of its power, buying it from the Nigerian company Mainstream, according to Nigelec.

Junta-ruled Mali and Burkina Faso have warned that any military intervention in their neighbor would be tantamount to a "declaration of war" against them.

General Salifou Mody, one of the Niger coup leaders, arrived with a delegation in Mali's capital Bamako on Wednesday, a senior Nigerien official and a Malian security official told AFP. They did not give further details.

Europeans leave

Mohamed Bazoum, 63, was feted in 2021 after winning elections that ushered in Niger's first-ever peaceful transition of power.

He took the helm of one of the world's poorest and most unstable countries, burdened by four previous coups since independence from France in 1960.

But after surviving two attempted putsches, Bazoum himself was overthrown on July 26 when members of his own guard detained him at the presidency.

Their leader, General Abdourahamane Tiani, has declared himself leader, but his claim has been condemned internationally.

France on Wednesday scheduled more evacuation flights from the capital Niamey following hostile anti-French demonstrations at the weekend.

By Wednesday more than 500 people had landed in Paris aboard two flights, mostly French citizens but also Portuguese, Belgians, Nigerians, Ethiopians and Lebanese evacuees.

Two final flights have been organized for Wednesday, according to the French army.

Italian authorities also said they had evacuated around 100 foreigners living in Niger, who arrived in Rome early Wednesday, with ANSA radio reporting they included 36 Italians and 21 Americans.

Germany has urged its citizens to leave, but the United States -- which has 1,100 troops stationed in Niger -- has opted to not evacuate Americans for now.

Strategic ally

Under Bazoum and his predecessor Mahamadou Issoufou, Niger has had a key role in French and Western strategies to combat an extremist insurgency that has rampaged across the Sahel since 2012.

After joining a regional revolt in northern Mali, armed extremists advanced into Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015 and now carry out sporadic attacks on fragile states on the Gulf of Guinea.

Countless numbers of civilians, troops and police have been killed across the region, many in massacres, while around 2.2 million people in Burkina Faso alone have fled their homes.

The impact has contributed to army takeovers in all three Sahel countries and inflicted devastating damage to economies at the very bottom of the world's wealth table.

France at one point had about 5,400 troops in its anti-extremist Barkhane mission, supported by fighter jets, helicopters and drones.

But that mission had to be drastically refocused on Niger last year, when France pulled out of Mali and Burkina Faso after falling out with their juntas.

Today, the reconfigured French force has around 1,500 men, many of them deployed at a major air base near Niamey.

France's army chief of staff announced on Tuesday that a pullout was "not on the agenda".



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."