The three countries led by military junts from coup d’etats were suspended from these bodies for not having respected their commitments to quickly keep elections.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
They decided to unite their forces. Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea called on Thursday, February 9, in a common declaration to the lifting of their suspension of the Economic Community of West African States (Cédéao) and the African Union (UA ).
These three countries, led by military juntas from coups, “agreed to pool their efforts and undertake common initiatives for the lifting of suspension measures and other restrictions” taken by the Cédéao and ‘UA, indicates this declaration written after a meeting of their foreign ministers in Ouagadougou.
They had been suspended from these two organizations after taking power by soldiers following coups, twice in 2020 and 2021 in Mali, 2021 in Guinea and twice in 2022 in Burkina Faso.
Faced with the refusal of these different junts to organize elections quickly to return power to civilians, the Cédéao has multiplied the summits, the missions and the pressures to shorten the so -called “transition” periods in these countries. Mali and Guinea had also been subjected to other sanctions, partly raised since.
threat jihadist
Today, the three junts highlight the jihadist threat to support their request for reinstatement in African regional bodies. “As part of the fight against insecurity in the Sahelo-Saharan band”, the three ministers “noted the need to combine their efforts and those of the countries of the sub-region and the region to cope with this scourge “, Specifies the declaration, read by the head of Burkinabé diplomacy, Olivia Rouamba.
Mrs. Rouamba, Malian Abdoulaye Diop and the Guinean Morissanda Kouyaté also deplore “mechanically imposed sanctions which do not take into account the deep and complex causes of political changes”. These sanctions “affect populations already bruised by insecurity and political instabilities, deprive the Cédéao and the AU of the contribution of the three countries necessary to meet major challenges, and infringe on sub-regional and African solidarity that constitutes The cardinal principle of integration, regional and continental cooperation “.
They call for “concrete and consistent technical support for securing efforts and to support the process of returning to a constitutional order”. According to Mr. Kouyaté, “we already belong to instances, the Cédéao and the African Union, we are not going to reinvent the wheel”.
rapprochement with Russia
The Ouagadougou meeting intervened two days after the visit Tuesday in Mali of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, who promised his aid “to the Sahelo-Saharan region and even in the countryside of the Gulf of Guinea”.
The series of coups in Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso, and the instability of the Sahel plagued by jihadist violence, despite the deployment of international forces, has made the bed of the Russian presence.
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The Two countries have come closer to Russia. According to the Westerners, mercenaries of the Russian group Wagner are deployed in Mali, which Bamako denies which only recognizes the presence of Russian instructors.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Burkinabé head of state, also denied the presence of Wagner mercenaries in Burkina, saying that “our Wagner is the VDP”, volunteers for the defense of the fatherland, the civilian auxiliaries army.
Like Mali, Burkina Faso has just asked for the departure of the 400 members of the French forces of its territory, without considering the breakdown of diplomatic relations with France. The former colonial power in the region is the subject of virulent denigration campaigns in these countries.