There is no doubt that the surprise of this 62th summit of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States: the creation of a new “intervention force against terrorism and unconstitutional changes in the sub-region”, as clarified at the microphone of our colleagues from RFI, Omar Alieu Touray, the president of the ECOWAS commission.
ECOMOG, armed arm of ECOWAS
At the end of the summit, which ended this Sunday, December 4 in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, the heads of state and government therefore adopted a project to create a regional force whose outlines are not known. for the moment. An initiative that pushes to question the ECOWAS integration project. Launched on May 28, 1975, this organization originally aimed at a sub-regional economic and monetary union.
At the initiative of this project, two heads of state in office at the time: Nigerian President Yakubu Gowon and his Togolese counterpart Gnanssingbé Eyadéma. As early as 1972, they proposed the creation of a regional economic integration zone. The objective is then to create an economic bloc larger than the West African Customs Union, founded in 1959 by the countries of the Council of the Entente (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger and Togo) and Mali.
The proliferation of political crises in West Africa has prompted ECOWAS to considerably expand its fields of competence.
The conclusion of the non-aggression treaty in 1978 and that of the mutual assistance protocol in 1981 are the prerequisites for the establishment of a regional policy of collective security. It was in 1990, after the start of the civil war in Liberia, that the ECOMOG, Economic Community of West African States Cease-fire Monitoring Group, was created. the ECOWAS armed force. A force whose objectives are: the supervision of ceasefires, the maintenance of peace like the blue helmets of the United Nations, the preventive deployment in conflict zones or the disarmament of non-regular armed forces . From its inception, ECOMOG was led by Nigeria, which also provided most of the personnel, equipment and funding.
While it had a few hundred men at the time of its creation, ECOMOG’s manpower numbered up to 20,000 soldiers in 1994. Moreover, it was deployed in Sierra Leone in 1997, before the arrival of troops organizations in this country, which has also been ravaged by a deadly civil war. The following year, it was at the request of the late Bissau-Guinean President João Bernardo Vieira, faced with a rebellion led by the late General Ansoumane Mané, that ECOMOG was sent to Guinea-Bissau.
After contributing to the return of peace to Liberia, and despite accusations of bias and violence against the population, ECOMOG left Liberia in 1999. It was then deployed in Côte d’Ivoire. After the Marcoussis agreements, concluded in 2003, ECOMOG soldiers were integrated the following year into UNOCI, the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire.
Lack of funding for ECOWAS forces
The “white helmets” of ECOMOG, as they are called, have therefore already intervened on several occasions in the sub-region over the past decades. This is undoubtedly what prompted ECOWAS to institutionalize its security policy in 1999. Four years later, in May 2003, the Security Committee of the Economic Community of West African States created a force rapid reaction military force, in order to remedy the conflicts in the region.
It is then a question for each member country, to make available to this force, a brigade of about 500 men, trained in peacekeeping operations, as well as police officers and civilian personnel. Unfortunately, the lack of funding makes it difficult to set up this force. After the coup d’etat of March 22, 2012, against the late Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré, and the lightning advance of the Tuareg rebellion and the jihadists, the heads of state of ECOWAS, meeting in Dakar, decided to immediate place of the waiting force.
A donor conference is organized in January 2013, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to raise funds. The African Union and the European Union are contributing $450 million for the deployment of around 7,000 soldiers. However, all these efforts were not enough to stop the jihadist threat. But above all, ECOWAS is now faced with complex crises such as the Sahelian crisis and that of the Lake Chad basin. Furthermore, over the years, ECOWAS interventions have highlighted a lack of military means and diplomatic mobilization capacities.
In an article published in July 2016, the International Crisis Group was already sounding the alarm: « […] the West African regional organization should carry out a review of all the dimensions of its standby force, its armed wing which took over from Ecomog in 2004. This concerns not only doctrine and operational procedures, but also funding, knowing that this force suffers from a recurring lack of resources. »
We must strengthen the joint force of the G5 Sahel. It must be given all the necessary means and allowed to deploy […]
Ramadan Zakaria Ousman, founder of the Chadian Center for Strategic Studies and Prospective Research
Others worry about the replication of what already exists, citing for example the G5 Sahel joint force, created in 2017 to respond to the expansion of armed and violent extremist groups, as well as the deterioration of the situation. security in the region. ” In my opinion, says Professor Ramadan Zakaria Ousman, founder of the Chadian Center for Strategic Studies and Prospective Research, the joint force of the G5 Sahel must be strengthened; You have to give it all the necessary means and allow it to unfold, allow it to form a kind of dike, rather than creating something new only to realize later that it doesn’t work. And then we don’t have the necessary resources. » The G5 Sahel is indeed struggling to function. According to Professor Ramadan Zakaria Ousman who has worked on the issue, some countries are two or three years behind on their statutory contributions.
The financial question is all the more important as Omar Alieu Touray, the president of the ECOWAS commission, declared at the microphone of our colleagues from RFI: ” For that strength [la nouvelle force de la CEDEAO, NDLR], Heads of State have decided not to depend on voluntary funding, because so far we have seen that voluntary funding never comes. We are going to look at how to finance the force with our own resources. »