West African leaders suspended Mali from the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS) at an extraordinary summit on Sunday and ended up reintroducing sanctions after a second nine-month military coup.
The coup had raised deep concerns about stability in the volatile Sahel region and warnings of new economic sanctions. Ten regional heads of state and three foreign ministers attended the summit in the Ghanaian capital Accra, with former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan as mediator in the crisis.
“The suspension from ECOWAS will take effect immediately until the end of February 2022, when they will be handed over to a democratically elected government,” Ghanaian Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey said after the meeting.
The final declaration called for the immediate appointment of a new civilian prime minister and the formation of an “inclusive” government. However, it did not announce sanctions they imposed after the coup last August when members temporarily closed their borders with locked Mali and stopped financial transactions. The declaration did not demand the resignation of the new caretaker President Assimi Goita. The army colonel, who led the coup in August as well as last week’s uprising, was declared president on Friday.
Goita had arrived in the Ghanaian capital Accra on Saturday for preliminary talks. Goita led the young army officers who overthrew Mali’s elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August last year due to perceived corruption and his failure to quell a bloody extremist uprising.
The statement from ECOWAS said that the head of the transitional government, the vice president and the prime minister should under no circumstances be candidates in the planned presidential election. “The date of February 27, 2022 already announced for the presidential election should be maintained absolutely,” it said.
There was no immediate response from Goita, who was present at the summit.
On Monday, soldiers detained Transitional President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane and released them on Thursday, saying they had resigned. The twin arrests triggered a diplomatic uproar and marked Mali’s second apparent coup within a year.
In a statement, ECOWAS condemned the arrests, saying the move was in breach of mediation measures taken since the August coup. The bloc demanded that the Malian authorities release the couple immediately. It also highlighted “strong and deep concern about the current crisis in Mali”, which it noted “comes halfway to the end of the agreed transition period, in the context of the security challenges posed by relentless terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic with its severe socio-economic effects. ”
The UN and the African Union (AU) have also condemned the rise to power. The UN Security Council has said that the departure of Ndaw and Ouane was forced, while the United States has already withdrawn its support from the security force.
As the junta returns to its former commitment to civilian political leaders, doubts have been raised about its other promises, including a promise to hold elections in early 2022. The junta said this week that it would continue to respect that timetable, but added that to change.
Five killed in new attacks
ECOWAS issued sanctions against Mali after the coup in August before lifting them when the transitional government was set up. The 15-nation bloc warned against reintroducing sanctions against the country, as well as the United States and the former colonial power France.
French leader Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche published on Sunday that Paris “could not stay next to a country where there is no longer democratic legitimacy or a transition.” He warned that France would withdraw its troops from Mali if the country deviated from radicalism under Goita’s leadership.
France has about 5,100 troops in the region during its anti-extremist operation Barkhane, which spans five countries in the Sahel – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. On Sunday, which underscores Mali’s chronic instability, suspected terrorists killed four civilians and a policeman in southern Mali, a region most previously spared from the country’s extremist unrest, a security official said on condition of anonymity. The unidentified men attacked a checkpoint near the city of Bougouni, about 100 kilometers from Mali’s borders of Ivory Coast and Guinea, before dawn, the official said. A local lawmaker confirmed the attack.
Mali is among the poorest countries in the world and the previous sanctions from ECOWAS have hit the country hard.
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