West African leaders launched an extraordinary summit to propose measures to help resolve a political crisis in Mali.
The virtual meeting of the 15 members of the ECOWAS regional bloc on Monday comes days after the unprecedented mediation efforts of the presidents of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal in Mali’s capital Bamako, they failed to end the impasse.
For weeks, Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has been in a tense clash with an opposition protest coalition known as the June 5 Movement that has been demanding his resignation.
After the one-day talks on Thursday, influential Muslim leader and protest activist Ibrahim Dicko told reporters that no progress had been made.
“Nothing moved for the movement,” he said.
For his part, Mahamadou Issoufou, President of Nigeria and current President of ECOWAS, told reporters: “We have decided to brief all heads of state during an extraordinary meeting on Monday, July 27.
“ECOWAS will take firm measures that will contribute to the resolution of the crisis.”
Led by Dicko under the umbrella of the June 5 Movement, a disparate alliance of political, social and civil society groups, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Bamako in recent weeks to demand Keita’s resignation.
Although dissatisfaction with the country’s economic problems, corruption and worsening security situation have been dormant for a time, the trigger for the current crisis was a decision by the Constitutional Court in April to annul the results of parliamentary polls for 31 seats, in a move that saw candidates with Keita’s party re-elected.
The protests turned violent earlier this month when three days of clashes between security forces and protesters killed 11 people. Several opposition leaders were also briefly detained.
A ECOWAS mission days before Bamako’s visit by the five West African leaders proposed establishing a national unity government that would include members of the opposition and civil society groups. He also suggested, among others, the appointment of new judges to the Constitutional Court, which had already been “de facto” dissolved by Keita in an attempt to calm the unrest.
But the proposals were rejected by the Movement on June 5, and the protest leaders insisted that Keita should go and called for accountability for the killings in the June 10-12 protests.
Regional leaders are eager to avoid further instability in Mali, a country of some 20 million people that has been affected by a conflict that started in 2012 and has since spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.
According to the United Nations, the attacks multiplied by five between 2016 and 2020, with 4,000 people killed in the three countries last year, up from about 770 in 2016. The fighting also forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes and led to the closure of thousands of schools.
In central Mali, a multitude of armed groups have been fighting for control as they exploit the poverty of marginalized communities and increase tensions between ethnic groups.
The presence of thousands of foreign troops has failed to curb the violence, while allegations of abuse and extrajudicial killings by Malian forces have perpetuated deep-seated mistrust and enmity in parts of the country with little government presence.
“The [regional] security concerns are real, “Moussa Dembele, president of the Dakar-based African Forum for Alternatives, told Al Jazeera.
“If the crisis persists, Mali is likely to descend into chaos, which will affect the morale of the military and weaken its fight against terrorist groups. In that case, there is a risk that neighboring countries, such as Senegal and Guinea, will do so. be affected, which in turn will affect other countries. “
But the group of experts from the Institute for Security Studies warned on Thursday that there was an “unfavorable prejudice” towards regional leaders amid suspicions that they were protecting their own interests.
“The search for solutions will have to take into account the need to improve the daily lives of Malians,” said the expert group.
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