MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th August, 2023) Niger's former colonial ruler France and its US and German backers will not risk launching a military operation in the western African country even as last week's ouster of a Western-backed president threatens to weaken their control of the vast Sahel region, German geopolitical expert Armin-Paulus Hampel told Sputnik on Friday.
France, the European Union and the United States have demanded that coup leaders reinstate Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum who was toppled by his own elite guard last week. The Nigerien capital of Niamey has been awash in rallies staged in support of the junta, which Bazoum claims was helped to power by Russia. Moscow has been calling for the restoration of Niger's constitutional order.
Hampel, a former German lawmaker and foreign affairs spokesperson for the far-right AfD faction in the Federal parliament, said France and the US, backed by German armed forces, would likely try to oust the rebel military indirectly, including through the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has threatened military action against Niger if it does not reinstate Bazoum.
"I am pretty sure France will not intervene in Niger militarily, though Paris is now actively trying to organize indirectly the ousting of the junta in Niamey, with the help of several other former colonies of West Africa," Hampel said.
He suggested that the US never wanted to have an active military intervention in the Sahel despite having about 1,000 troops at several Niger bases and the US embassy in Niamey. Germany and France have about 1,500 troops between them in the country.
"They have some 800 soldiers and technicians in the massive new US airbase of Agadez, a hub for their drone operations and they are also on the Niamey air base with air force personnel. They are the eyes and ears of the US and the West in the huge Sahel and West Africa, half the size of Europe," Hampel said.
The expert said that France and the US must have played a very active role in having ECOWAS issue Niger's junta with an ultimatum that it relinquish power but he argued that the West's "proxies" in western Africa were unlikely to take any broad military action � beyond imposing sanctions on the impoverished nation, which depends on its neighbors for essentials.
"Nigeria has already cut electricity to Niger, so the situation could worsen but it won't reach a military large-scale conflict level. The ECOWAS countries are not keen on it, and even the West have enough on their shoulders now, without having to deal at the same time with the Islamists in the region and fight against the government of Niger, that has by the way, the support of its people," Hampel said.
Commenting on Bazoum's accusations that the Wagner Group private military company was involved in the coup, the German expert said that Russia was as interested in routing Islamists the likes of al-Qaeda (banned in Russia as a terrorist organization) in the Sahel as was the West but claimed that France's Primary concern was its shrinking colonial empire.
"The enemy for the West and the local governments are the Islamists, more and more active in the region. Russia also considers Al Qaida and the other Islamist factions in the region as the enemy and the Wagner Group is fighting them in the countries that have expelled the French army: Mali and Burkina Faso for the moment," he argued.
The fact that Bazoum's claims appeared in the Washington Post, the "voice of the Biden administration," suggest that they were inspired by the president's American and French allies, Hampel� also said.
"The deposed president of Niger accuses Russia of being the instigator of the putsch in Niamey and fears that the whole of the central Sahel region could come under Russian influence... Joe Biden would not say it more clearly! Bazoum is clearly 'his Master's voice'," he opined.
