The leaders of Mali’s coup last August do it again
The detention of the president and prime minister is another disaster for the countryMALI, SAYS Kevin, a 32-year-old teacher in Bamako, the capital, “has absolutely no future.” “Malians don’t deserve this,” he adds. “It’s political chaos.” The evening before, on May 24th, soldiers detained Bah Ndaw, the president, (pictured) and Moctar Ouane, the prime minister, and took them to a military camp outside Bamako. Just last September the pair had been appointed to lead a transition to elections, after a group of soldiers led by Assimi Goïta staged a coup to depose Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, then the president. Less than a year later Colonel Goïta, since installed as vice-president, has turned on them. He claimed that they had not respected the transitional charter and did not consult him about a cabinet reshuffle. Therefore, he declared, they had been stripped of their powers.Mali cannot afford more political chaos. It is at the heart of a fight against jihadists linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State who threaten wide swathes of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. France has been there in force since 2013 and now has 5,100 troops in the region fighting terrorists. More than 13,000 United Nations peacekeepers, including 300 British soldiers, also patrol in Mali. The EU has a large mission training the Malian army, too. Despite this, violence has been increasing sharply since 2016. Last year the conflict in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger claimed about 6,200 lives.Yet Malian politics have long been rocky. Before the coup last August Mr Keïta faced prolonged street protests, led by an opposition alliance called the M5-RFP and a charismatic imam, Mahmoud Dicko. Some protesters welcomed the subsequent coup and hoped the army might clean up politics before handing over to civilians. After much wrangling between the junta and ECOWAS, a regional bloc, an 18-month transition to elections was agreed, along with a nominally civilian-led transition government headed by Mr Ndaw, a retired colonel and former minister of defence. Colonel Goïta became vice-president. The junta also took four of the plum cabinet jobs including both minister of defence and minister of security. The M5-RFP gained little.The transition had not been going well. Bamako’s political classes are frustrated at how military men dominate the transitional government. Some grumble that the armed forces have begun to colonise the rest of the state, too. Ornella Moderan, in Bamako for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a think-tank, points out that a military doctor was installed as the head of one of Bamako’s largest hospitals. Meanwhile progress on reforms and preparation for the election have been sluggish. And in mid-May the main trade union in the country went on strike. Amid pressure from the M5-RFP to change the government and start afresh, Mr Ouane resigned on May 14th along with his transitional government. Mr Ndaw immediately reappointed him and consultations began to establish a new more inclusive government. On May 24th, a few hours before the detention of the president and prime minister, it was announced.The changes were not dramatic. The army retained control of the same number of ministries, including defence and security. But different men in uniform were put into those jobs, replacing two members of the junta, Colonel Sadio Camara and Colonel Modibo Kone. That seems to have provoked the arrival a few hours later of soldiers at Mr Ndaw’s and Mr Ouane’s houses. As The Economist published this article the two men were still being held. The African Union and ECOWAS called for their “immediate and unconditional release”, while President Emmanuel Macron of France declared it “a coup d’état within a coup d’état” and warned of possible targeted sanctions.The implications for Mali are grim. The transitional government’s civilian credentials were always dubious. But ECOWAS and the West swallowed them. They are now untenable. Even if Colonel Goïta declines to take on the transitional presidency himself, he is clearly in charge. Some reports suggest the M5-RFP is negotiating with the junta to get a prime minister to its liking. But no matter who are designated prime minister and president, the threat from men with guns will hang over them. That will further complicate reforms. The junta members’ willingness to disrupt the transition in order to hold onto plum jobs also reveals their true priorities: themselves.Outsiders must shoulder some blame, too. The leaders of the latest putsch were probably emboldened by the willingness of ECOWAS and the West to pretend that the military-dominated transitional government was in fact largely civilian, and to acquiesce in an 18-month transition despite ECOWAS’s initial demand for elections in 12 months. The sense of impunity was probably heightened by the tepid response from the African Union and France to a coup in nearby Chad last month, where the constitution was ignored after the death of the long-serving president, Idriss Déby.Rolling coups also hamper the fight against jihadists. A French military spokesman says this is “a political episode” and that for now it does not affect operations. But the turmoil in Bamako will not go unnoticed among jihadists. JNIM, an al-Qaeda linked group which operates across much of the Sahel, is not just a terrorist group. It also represents an alternative political offer, says Yvan Guichaoua of the University of Kent. He adds that JNIM can only benefit from the perpetual machinations in the capital. And with the Malian military leadership squabbling over power in Bamako, “who is actually fighting on the ground?” asks Ms Moderan of the ISS. In 2012 an earlier coup and the chaos that ensued saw separatists and jihadists sweep towards Bamako, precipitating the initial French military intervention the following year.The 18-month transition period since the coup in August 2020 was meant to end with elections in February 2022. Confirming that time frame will be a priority for an ECOWAS delegation that arrived in the country on May 24th and 25th. And Colonel Goïta himself claimed in his statement that those elections will go ahead as planned. But after staging two coups within nine months, few will take him at his word.