SNA (Galesburg) — Three military dictatorships in West Africa have announced a split with a major regional organization which they had helped cofound almost half a century ago, marking an increasingly bitter division in the region, with global implications.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—each of which has come under military rule since 2020—jointly declared their departure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. This organization was created in 1975 to promote economic integration among its fifteen member states, but has since gained political significance as well.

The joint statement noted “with great regret, bitterness, and disappointment” that ECOWAS “had drifted from the ideals of its founding fathers and the spirit of Pan-Africanism.” It went on to allege that ECOWAS had fallen “under the influence of foreign powers” and had “become a threat to its member states and their populations whose happiness it is supposed to promote.”

While the statement did not name the “foreign powers” concerned, this was a reference to both France (the former colonial ruler of all three states) and the United States. France had been deliberating a joint military operation together with ECOWAS into Niger, and the US government has become increasingly antagonistic toward the military regimes, especially since Mali and Burkina Faso started working with the Wagner Group, the Russian mercenaries.

For its part, ECOWAS had previously imposed a commercial no-fly zone on these states, as well as a freeze on all assets held in ECOWAS central banks. The United States, the European Union, and several other Western countries had suspended aid or applied sanctions, citing the military coups as justification.

Before this formal split, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger had formed a breakaway defensive pact last September which they call the “Alliance of Sahel States.”

The key grievance of these three West African regimes against ECOWAS is their belief that the organization failed to offered them support in their respective “existential” struggles against Islamist insurgencies, instead criticizing and sanctioning them at their time of greatest need.

In the language of the late January statement, ECOWAS had “adopted an irrational and unacceptable posture by imposing illegal, illegitimate, inhumane, and irresponsible sanctions in violation of its own regulations; all of which have further weakened the populations already devastated by years of violence imposed by instrumentalized and remote-controlled terrorist hordes.”

ECOWAS has so far refrained from acknowledging the three states’ withdrawal from the organization, issuing its own statement declaring that “Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger remain important members of the community and the authority remains committed to finding a negotiated solution to the political impasse.”

The foreign ministry of Nigeria, however, was sharper in its language, denouncing the regimes of the three breakaway states as “unelected leaders [who] engage in public posturing to deny their people the sovereign right to make fundamental choices over their freedom of movement, freedom to trade, and freedom to choose their own leaders.”

More broadly, these events are also related to the global decline of Western power. The members of the Alliance of Sahel States now feel that they can directly challenge Western policy preferences in West Africa. They are reaching out to nations such as Russia and Iran for additional arms supplies and other forms of support.

This fact is understood in Washington, though its response has been muted so far. A report by the Council on Foreign Relations asserted that “the division within ECOWAS is a significant opportunity for Russia, which has always been eager to undermine democracy by recruiting converts to its authoritarian model.”

This article was originally published on February 5, 2023, in the “Japan and the World” newsletter. Become a Shingetsu News supporter on Patreon and receive the newsletter by email each Monday morning.