Senegal coup presents another opportunity for Moscow

Another one bites the dust? The “coup belt” in the Sahel has another member – Senegal – and so Russia has another opportunity to insert itself into the region.

Senegalese President Macky Sall has conducted a de facto institutional coup. Presidential elections were scheduled for 25 Feb  – and now they are not. They are delayed. Indefinitely. The Senegalese constitution only allows two terms in office, but Sall argues that this does not apply to him as the law was made during his first term. Nevertheless, he’d said he would not seek to remain in power and would stand down this April. However, now he has sorrowfully explained that some of those who might seek to replace him are disqualified from holding office and so, for the good of the country you understand, the election must be postponed until the Constitutional Council could clarify matters.

Street protests broke out immediately and were immediately quashed by the riot police as mobile internet services were taken down by the authorities along with a private TV channel. Parliament sat and dutifully passed a bill extending the President’s tenure by ten months. The result was perhaps helped by some opposition deputies being denied access to the building.

Enter Moscow? President Putin has been taking an interest in Sall following a lengthy “detailed” conversation with him in Sochi last June and then another at the Russia-Africa Summit in July. Prior to these meetings, Sall was lukewarm towards Russia, after them, he was positively glowing with pro-Moscow sentiments, even calling for sanctions on Russian wheat to be lifted, despite there being no such sanctions.

There are many common threads to the coup d’états in the Sahel and one of them is Russia. Russian troops and/or mercenary groups such as Wagner were involved in the coups in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. They have a presence in Chad and Sudan, and further south are active in Gabon and the Central African Republic. In all of these countries, Russia has a way in due to its history of supporting independence movements in the 1960s, cheerfully ignoring its own brutal colonial suppression of the subservient nations it controlled in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

If Russia can establish itself in Senegal, it could then either utilise the port in Dakar and others on the Atlantic coast to ship goods from landlocked Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. It would also seek to build a naval base which would significantly extend its sea power. These moves would probably be accompanied by the withdrawal of French troops from their own base. That would be a huge blow to France which is already having to move out of other Sahelian states following the coups of recent years, thus seriously weakening their counter-terrorism capabilities.

The 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has called on President Sall to “take steps urgently to restore the electoral calendar” in line with the constitution. However, ECOWAS has been relatively toothless in the face of the military coups in the region and is considerably weakened by the announcement last month by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger that they are leaving the bloc.

The die is not yet cast. Senegal was considered the most stable democracy in West Africa, had never before delayed a Presidential election, and has experienced three relatively peaceful handovers of power. It has a strong civil society and well-organized opposition parties.

However, the signs are not good. Unless opposition deputies are prevented from voting, Sall’s party does not command a majority in parliament. He has spent the last few years dismantling the checks and balances designed to prevent untrammelled power and his excuse to postpone the Presidential election looks flimsy. He knows that without reversing course, sanctions and ostracization may follow. However, if another security and economic partner is waiting in the wings, then he may gamble that he has little to lose. He might also learn a thing or two about holding on to power by steadily expropriating the levers of the state. Putin is a master of that.

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