West African Leaders, the Current Juntas and Gambia in 2017

Economic Community of West African States leaders met in Accra, Ghana almost a fortnight ago and called the military leaders of Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso "recalcitrant". These leaders were being intransigent despite the regional body instructing that they handed over power to civilian governments after recent coups.

By the end of the summit, the group had imposed sanctions on the military junta of these countries, hoping to exact positive responses from them. This is a far cry from what the regional body did back in 2017 when the former leader of The Gambia, Yahya Jemmeh decided to hung unto power after he was defeated in a 2016 general elections. The sub-regional organization threatened and eventually invaded The Gambia. Why?

The Gambia was geographically vulnerable. Gambia is one of the countries with a special geography--with respect to location. It has only one neighbour. It is bordered to the North, East and South by Senegal. It only has an outlet through the Atlantic Ocean to the West. This presented ECOWAS with 'boasting right' to make those threats and back them up with an actual invasion on 19 January 2017. It was also a tiny country by sheer size.

With that, all that ECOWAS needed was an expressed consent of Senegal to invade Gambia. Senegal did exactly that and participated as well. It was "exciting" at the time. The first time a regional body was viably going to use force to enforce the results of an election in the sub region.

Again, The Gambia did not have any effective security force comparative to that that came from ECOWAS. In fact, Senegal alone had the military wherewithal to execute the operation--"all things being equal". Much of the security of Gambia was centred on internal order and intelligence gathering at the time. Equipment wise, the story was not any different.

There was a spontaneous unanimity among regional leaders to effect change in The Gambia. In 2017, there was barely any opposition among the member states of ECOWAS against its decision to invade the country. The possible reason being that, all the leaders in the sub-region were considered to be running civilian governments. This provided some moral right of some sort to invade for such invasion.

There was no vested foreign interests in The Gambia that became hindrance to the invasion. Gambia's economy is heavily dependent on tourism, peanut and fishing. These were not strategic enough to attract foreign impediments to a military operation that removed Yahya Jammeh. Even though the fomer leader had acquired properties in the US and had been hosted in the White House as president, Washington did not show known interest in keeping him in power.

Finally, Yahya Jammeh capitulated before any blood bath could result from the operation to remove him. Yes, some forces from Senegal, Nigeria, Togo, Mali and Ghana had entered the country, but there was virtually no combat. Yahya Jemmeh was given some "space" in Equitorial Guinea.

On the contrary; Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso do not satisfy any of the above conditions that existed in the case of The Gambia. They are huge countries with relatively potent and battle experienced armed forces. They border each other. One can move from Guinea through Mali to Burkina Faso without entering into another country. They are therefore depending on each other as sanctioned states. There are foreign interests in these states that make any military invasion arduous. Russia is vividly in Mali. I dare say there will be no unanimity among member states to invade any of these military-led states.

The Gambia was therefore threatened into submission because ECOWAS could do so. Not because the regional body wanted to set a precedent with which other situations could be dealt with. In the meantime the warnings are from a safe distance.

By: Fidel Amakye Owusu

Posted a version of this piece earlier on my Facebook wall.