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".



US Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Workers

US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
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US Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Workers

US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)

A California federal judge on Thursday ordered six US agencies to reinstate thousands of recently-hired employees who lost their jobs as part of President Donald Trump's purge of the federal workforce.

The ruling by US District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco is the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies are facing a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.

Alsup's ruling applies to probationary employees at the US Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

The judge said the US Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for federal agencies, had improperly ordered those agencies to fire workers en masse even though it lacked the power to do so.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees. They have fewer job protections than other government workers but in general can only be fired for performance issues.

Alsup ordered the agencies to reinstate workers who were fired over the last few weeks, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofit groups, and the state of Washington.

He did not order the 16 other agencies named in the lawsuit to reinstate workers, but said he would promptly issue a written decision that could expand on Thursday's ruling.

A Veterans Affairs spokesperson declined to comment. A Department of Interior spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on litigation over personnel matters.

The White House and the other agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. The union's president, Everett Kelley, in a statement said the decision was an important victory against "an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public."

25,000 WORKERS

Alsup last month had temporarily blocked OPM from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back. The plaintiffs subsequently amended their lawsuit to include the agencies that fired probationary workers.

About 25,000 workers across the US government had been fired as of March 5, according to a Reuters tally, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout. The Trump administration has not released statistics on the firings, and it was not immediately clear how many employees could be affected by Thursday's decision.

In the lawsuit before Alsup, the plaintiffs claim the mass firings were unlawful because they were ordered by OPM rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies.

OPM has maintained that it merely asked agencies in a January 20 memo to identify probationary workers and decide which ones were not "mission critical" and could be fired, and did not order them to terminate anyone.

The agency on March 4 revised that memo, adding that it was not directing agencies to take any specific actions with respect to probationary employees.

OPM has pointed to the updated memo and to press releases by agencies as proof that it had no control over agencies' decisions.

Alsup on Thursday told the US Department of Justice lawyer representing OPM, Kelsey Helland, that he did not believe that was true, and scolded the government for not presenting OPM's acting director, Charles Ezell, to testify at the hearing.

“I’ve been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years and I know how we get at the truth, and you’re not helping me get at the truth. You’re giving me press releases, sham documents,” Alsup said.

Helland said it was common for presidential administrations to prevent high-ranking agency officials from testifying in court, and that the information provided by OPM in court filings was enough to prove that it never ordered agencies to terminate workers.

Along with the lawsuit in California, several other challenges to the mass firings have been filed, including cases by 20 Democrat-led states and a proposed class action by a group of fired workers.

The Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal employees' appeals when they are fired, earlier this month ordered the Agriculture Department to reinstate nearly 6,000 probationary workers at least temporarily.