Whether a bluff or a real warning, the France seems ready to offer assistance to a military intervention by West African states against the putschists in Niger. If the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is divided on the advisability or feasibility of an intervention, and in fact maintains doubts about its intentions, Paris assumes a hard line.
African military staffs have been ordered to rapidly deploy the ECOWAS "standby force". But the nature of any French support remains unclear. It all depends on the contours of the intervention, if it takes place, and the specific requests that would be expressed by ECOWAS. Support could be logistical, financial or perhaps even operational. Nothing seems a priori excluded, except to appear at the initiative.
"Of all the actors in this crisis, France is one of those who appear to be the most inclined to firmness," says Jean-Hervé Jézéquel, Sahel specialist at the ICG...
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