BAMAKO, Mali
The military leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger on Saturday signed a mutual defense pact, ministerial delegations from the three Sahel countries announced in Mali's capital Bamako.
The Liptako-Gourma Charter
establishes the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Mali's junta leader Assimi
Goita posted on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter.
Its aim is to "establish
an architecture of collective defence and mutual assistance for the benefit of
our populations", he wrote.
The Liptako-Gourma region --
where the Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger borders meet -- has been ravaged by
jihadism in recent years.
"This alliance will be a
combination of military and economic efforts between the three countries",
Mali's Defence Minister Abdoulaye Diop told journalists.
"Our priority is the
fight against terrorism in the three countries."
A jihadist insurgency that
erupted in northern Mali in 2012 spread to Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.
All three countries have
undergone coups since 2020, most recently Niger, where soldiers in July
overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum.
The West African regional bloc
ECOWAS has threatened to intervene militarily in Niger over the coup.
Mali and Burkina Faso quickly
responded by saying that any such operation would be deemed a "declaration
of war" against them.
The charter signed on Saturday
binds the signatories to assist one another -- including militarily -- in the
event of an attack on any one of them.
"Any attack on the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more contracting parties shall
be considered as an aggression against the other parties and shall give rise to
a duty of assistance... including the use of armed force to restore and ensure
security", it states.
It also binds the three
countries to work to prevent or settle armed rebellions.
Mali has, in addition to
fighting jihadists linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, seen a
resumption of hostilities by predominantly Tuareg armed groups over the past
week.
The escalation risks testing
an already stretched army as well as the junta's claims that it has
successfully turned around a dire security situation.
The successionist groups had
in 2012 launched a rebellion before signing a peace agreement with the state in
2015. But that accord is now generally considered moribund.
The renewed military activity
by those armed groups has coincided with a series of deadly attacks attributed
mainly to the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist alliance Support Group for Islam and
Muslims (GSIM).
Mali's junta pushed out
France's anti-jihadist force in 2022 and the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSMA in
2023.
French troops have also been
pushed out of Burkina Faso, while Niger's coup leaders have renounced several
military cooperation agreements with France.
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