Military juntas from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have recently met to strengthen the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES), pledging security and political collaborations, which some analysts describe as an attempt to legitimize their grip on power.

In his first foreign trip since the July coup that brought him into power, Niger’s junta leader, General Abdourahmane Tchiani held separate meetings last week (23 November) with his counterparts from Burkina Faso and Mali. During their meetings, leaders from the three West African nations pledged security and political collaborations under the AES that was announced in September as a measure to help fight the extremist violence they each struggle with and across the Sahel. Gen. Tchiani told reporters he views the alliance as providing a “path of sovereignty” for the countries and for their citizens that they can fulfill “the objective of making this area of the Sahel, not an area of insecurity, but an area of prosperity.”

However, according to Nate Allen, an associate professor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, in reality, the partnership “is in part an effort to entrench and legitimize (their) military governments” more than to tackle the violent extremism which they have limited capacity to fight. In fact, experts say that the series of recent coups d’états and the associated political instability may have a negative impact on the fight against terrorism and violent extremism in the Western Sahel. But Gen. Tchiani has again partly blamed the escalating violence on foreign powers, repeating claims his government has often made against France and against West Africa’s regional bloc of ECOWAS.