DAKAR, Senegal — Three nations in Africa’s Sahel region announced Sunday that they were leaving the area’s most important political and economic bloc, deepening a rift between those countries’ military juntas and other states in West Africa.
Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso issued a joint statement accusing the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, of kowtowing to “foreign powers” and said their withdrawal from the union was effective immediately.
Col. Amadou Abdramane, spokesman for Niger’s junta, read from the statement in a televised address. ECOWAS, he said, had turned away from “the ideals of its founding fathers” and failed to support the three countries, which are wracked by Islamist insurgencies, in their “existential fight against terrorism and insecurity.”
The three countries formed a mutual defense pact in September. But Sunday’s announcement marked an escalation in tensions that soared last year following a military coup in Niger — the last of the three countries to lose their democratic governments.
The first was Mali, where mutinous soldiers seized power in 2020 and again in 2021, when a military officer ousted the original coup leader. Neighboring Burkina Faso followed a similar pattern, with two military coups in 2022.
The July coup in Niger — a key security partner of the West — came as a shock to many in the region and internationally and was met with a sharp rebuke by ECOWAS, which imposed sanctions and later threatened to invade to restore the elected president.
The statement Sunday criticized ECOWAS for the sanctions, which the juntas called “illegitimate, inhumane and irresponsible.” The trade restrictions, the statement said, had “further weakened populations already bruised by years of violence.”
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