The President of Niger claimed to have released several terrorist leaders in the past three months and to dialogue with them. A solution to reach peace agreements?
This Friday, Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum announced that he had been "advised to release prisoners" from nine terrorist leaders. The head of state then “received them at the palace of the presidency” with the aim of starting peace negotiations. Who advised Bazoum to release these terrorists so far detained in the prisons of Kollo and Koutoukalé? Nothing filters at the moment.
But what we can understand from the Head of State's speech is a certain impotence. “I spare no means. (…) I manage as best I can, “simply said the president of Niger, who is suffering from the situation.
Be that as it may, these releases send strong messages: since the start of the 1995 terrorist attacks in Niger, "these releases are the first of their kind publicly disclosed in the context of the search for and restoration of peace", affirms the Presidency.
In Niger, but also in Mali or Burkina Faso, the authorities have been considering this type of operation for several months now. Part of the population believes that a dialogue must be initiated with the various terrorist organizations in order to consider peace agreements. But the Western powers, including France, have regularly opposed it.
Bazoum, for his part, acted rather discreetly. Indeed, we learn that the releases in question took place during the “last three months”. Among those released, “members of movements including Boko Haram”, while other groups, such as the Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap) and al-Qaeda continue to sow terror everywhere.
Dialogue and pursue military operations
The Nigerian president assumes his position. He wants, he explains, to understand his young people who allow themselves to be recruited. “Since I came to head of state, I said to myself: 'These young people who are involved in terrorism, what do they want?'. I decided to approach them, I looked for the biological parent of each of them, he explains. I sent them emissaries”.
A dialogue at the source then. But Mohamed Bazoum accompanies this dialogue with military operations, which are continuing in Niger: the soldiers continue to act “permanently”, he assures us.
For International Crisis Group, the dialogue with the terrorists should have been initiated a long time ago. "The strategy that favors a disproportionate military option on the border between Niger and Mali poses a risk to the region: that of creating a new hotbed of insurrection," notes the think tank.
In June 2018, International Crisis Group estimated that, to prevent a new hotbed of insurgency from developing in the Sahel, "the Nigerien government and its Western partners should leave the restrictive framework of the fight against terrorism and subordinate military action to a more political approach, including by engaging in dialogue with insurgents of all persuasions".
Dialogue initiatives, the organization concluded, “appear to be the only reasonable way to limit the spread of jihadist insurgencies”. While adding that “these initiatives do not exclude the use of military tools”.