Putsched out: Niger’s coup d’état

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Hello, and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Ora Ogumbi. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Britain's capital, London, has been in the vanguard of cities that tackle rampant pollution by hitting drivers where it hurts their wallets. But the latest wheeze, or rather the latest attempt to reduce wheezing, has become troublingly politicized.

And for 12,000 years, the world has been in a geological epoch called the Holocene. But scientists reckon that humans have affected the planet so much that a new one, the Anthropocene, is called for. And deep in a lake, they found the telltale spot to prove it. But first, In Niger, there's a crisis developing that could destabilize the whole of West Africa. It began on Wednesday when the country's democratically elected president, Mohammed Bazoum, was shot in his palace by the very men hired to protect him. By Friday, the power grab was in full swing. The country's constitution was suspended and all former institutions were dissolved. Military officers in the capital declared General Abdurahman Chiani, also known by his first name, Omar, as the new head of state. The general said that his actions were motivated by a desire to preserve the state, not destroy it, and called on the international community to cooperate with the new regime. But his request has fallen on deaf ears. On Sunday, leaders from the region issued sanctions and threatened more direct action in Niger. Meanwhile, the US and Western allies have begun cutting off aid.

Our economic and security partnership with Niger, which is significant hundreds of millions of dollars, depends on the continuation of the democratic governance and constitutional order that has been disrupted by much is at stake.

Niger is home to some 26 million people and for years has been the only true Western ally in a region wracked by poverty, violence and jihadist insurgency.

Last month, I was actually traveling in Niger, both in the capital, Niamey, and then in some of the regions that are more hit by jihadist violence.

Kinley Salmon is the Economist's Africa correspondent.

I met with refugees that have come over the border from Mali that's also badly hit and internally displaced people within Niger. So the country was already in a difficult place and perhaps the last thing it needed was more upheaval. But alas, the coup that has been carried out late last week may only make all of this much worse.

So let's start with the coup. How did we get here?

Well, much like the juntas in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, General Chani claimed to be trying to essentially save the country from security trouble with the jihadists, and also he mentioned, from economic troubles. He claimed that Mr. Bazoum's approach to jihadists who are linked to Al Qaeda in Islamic State and have been wreaking havoc across both Niger and much of Mali and Burkina Faso for sort of almost a decade. He said all of that's really been a failure. He complained of the president's decision to free some jihadist fighters, and he said Mr. Bazoum hadn't allowed any sort of serious joint operations with Burkina Faso and Mali.

And is that a fair claim?

Frankly, it isn't. Mr. Bazoum's campaign against the jihadists had been really the most successful in the entire region. In the first six months of this year, deaths from the conflict in Niger fell to their lowest levels compared to any similar six month period since 2018. And so Mr. Bazoom really had been making some progress with his approach. So really the most plausible explanation for the putsch is a lust for personal power among the soldiers and perhaps some discord among political bigwigs. General Chani was reportedly at least in line to be sacked by Mr. Bazoom, and that may have been a precipitating factor in moving against the. So it really seems that Mr. Bazum's biggest problem wasn't so much his failing approach to jihadism, which was actually having some results, but his failure to bring along enough of the army top brass with him in his strategy.

And Kinley, these coups have become something of a trend in the region, right?

Yeah, sadly, very much so. I mean, in Mali, soldiers seized power there from civilians in 2020. In Burkina Faso, there were two coups last year, first in January, followed up, then in September. And both juntas in those countries have then sort of pushed out and subsequently heavily scapegoated French forces which have been in the region for some time at the invitation, one should say, of those governments initially trying to help fight the jihadists. You know, Mali has gone so far as to bring in mercenaries from Russia's now notorious Wagner group. All this sort of fits into this very worrying trend of the region, unknown often as the Sahel really being battered by these jihadists. It looks to me vanishingly unlikely that the new Nigerien hunter will improve security. It's also worth noting that Niger was the last solid Western ally in the region. It hosts about 1500 French soldiers who are still helping the Nigerians to fight the jihadists. And the Americans have some thousand military personnel there too, particularly on a couple of drone bases. So if this coup sticks, as it certainly currently looks like it is, this will be the sixth successful coup in West Africa in less than three years. This is a continuation of a trend, but also a continuation of sort of worrying reverses for Western foreign policy in the region.

And you say if this sticks, I mean, what could change? Should we expect some outside intervention?

Maybe so of course this has garnered a lot of reaction outside of Niger, the Economic Community of West African States, which is a 15 member regional bloc. They met on Sunday to sort of discuss how to respond. And they've come to quite a forceful position. They demand the immediate release and reinstatement of President Bazoom. And they've added that in the event the authorities demands are not met within one week that they will take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order. And they've added the really rather striking claim that such measures may include the use of force. It's not unheard of. I mean, ECOWAS has intervened in the past when constitutional order has been disrupted in the region. The most recent case was in the Gambia. But intervening militarily in Niger would be extraordinarily difficult. It's a vast country, its army is far from incompetent, and plenty of those who'd be trying to run this intervention have got security problems at home that this might distract them from. So it looks like a very bold claim to make, but I think it's really quite uncertain whether they will be able to follow through. But they're clearly hoping that the threat to do so might shift some attitudes within the Nigerian armed forces. Ecowas went on and also announced in addition to that, economic sanctions, a halt to energy transactions. So they really are trying to put some serious pressure on the soldiers that have taken over.

So that covers the regional response. But what about the reaction outside of the continent?

Well, there's been a lot happening there too. I mean, France, the former colonial power, of course, still with soldiers in Niger, they've said they'll back sanctions and they've also said they will react strongly to any attacks on their nationals. This came after the junta had called for protests against any possible intervention. And those then happened outside the French Embassy. They got to become quite violent, including attempts to set fire to the entrance of the embassy of France in Niamey. You know, the junta seems to be moving to further scapegoat the French. Just this morning they've claimed that a member of Mr. Bazoum's inner circle, his former foreign minister, has met with the French and signed authorizations for French airstrikes in Niamey. They haven't provided any evidence for this and frankly that would be a very surprising escalation and quite unlikely. But it shows just how much the junta is willing to position itself against France in an attempt to rally the streets. So the French are already being pulled into this very heavily. The European Union have also said that they will suspend budgetary support. The Americans have threatened to do the same. And this will have a real impact. Nigeria is one of the poorest countries in the world. It receives close to $2 billion a year in official development assistance according to the World Bank. And of course, alongside all of this is concern about whether Niger may ally itself more closely with Russia, as neighbouring Mali has done very clearly. And Burkina Faso has been edging towards as well.

And so Kinley, in your view, will this coup stick? Do you think General Chiani will stay in power?

Well, you know, it remains to be seen just how much popular support General Chani commands, notably on Wednesday last week when the coup was just getting underway. But it was a bit unclear what was really happening. Hundreds of protests gathered in chanting no coup d' etat. And they marched towards the presidential palace where President Bazoom was thought to be held. But the next day we saw different sets of supporters come out and that's happened again on Sunday. You know, people waving Russian flags and so kind of popular support seems to be cutting in different directions. I think it's worth saying that many people put hope still in the fact that President Bazoom is yet to formally resign, that the junta hasn't managed to sort of brandish a signed resignation letter from him at all. But even if Mr. Bazoom did regain control, and that would really require a chunk of the armed forces coming back to his side, there's just no doubt that his army will be badly divided, which means risks of further fighting within the army down the line and probably above all, real distraction from dealing with the Jaharis problem, which is only likely to get Worse.

Kinley, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

In 1952, newsreels from London showed haunting scenes. Shrouded streets, trains appearing like ghosts from the gloom, sightless pedestrians wandering to and fro.

This is the worst fog in London's history.

Even the traditional fog flares do little.

Against the smoke laden blanket 500ft thick.

With transportation crippled, even members of Parliament.

Sleep at their desks. What the locals called a pea soup fog was caused by pollution emanating from domestic fireplaces, from factories, from steam powered trains. While things are better today, London's air still isn't clean. And in the modern era, it's motor vehicles that are driving the problem. Reducing smog and lengthening people's lives in the process should be a no brainer. But efforts to do so are meeting with serious political resistance.

So London's air is pretty filthy.

Tom Sasse is the Economist's written public policy editor.

It's estimated to kill about 4,000 Londoners every year, and that's associated with high concentrations of nitrogen oxide and small particulates in the air. Sadiq Khan, the city's Labour mayor, has made it his number one issue to tackle that, but that's starting to cause a bit of a backlash.

So what is it that Mr. Kahn is proposing?

So London already has a ultra Low Emission zone, or ulez. That scheme makes the drivers of the most polluting vehicles pay around 12 pounds, or approximately $16 a day to drive in those areas. The ULEZ already covers inner London, an area of about 340 square miles, and Mr. Kahn is proposing to extend it to the whole of the rest of the city. So when that happens, it will triple in size, covering about 9 million residents.

And that sounds like a good idea if so many Londoners are dying from this bad air.

No.

Yeah, well, these sort of schemes are needed in cities around the world. As you say, air is killing people, but they've proved controversial. So those regulations will mean that it will be prohibitively expensive for drivers of those cars to be in those areas. I was speaking to some of those drivers and many felt that the ULEZ scheme had been rushed or sort of introduced without enough time for them to plan. And they're sort of having to sell their cars, but they don't feel like they've had enough time to adapt. And if you look around the world, these policies have been really successful and popular in the sort of inner cities where people have good public transport, fewer people rely on cars. But recent electoral results indicate that this may not be the case. In a city's outer ring.

What do you mean by that? What electoral results are we talking about?

So in the uk, there was three by elections. The National Conservative Party, which is in government, is languishing in the polls and they were expected to do pretty badly. And indeed, in two of them they were mauled. But there was one in London, in North West London, in Uxbridge and West Ruislip, which is the seat that Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister, used to hold. And in that seat they held on narrowly, and that was broadly because of the Ulez policy, which proved very controversial and stopped Labour from taking that seat.

Why would it be a particular issue there?

Because in that part of outer London, a lot of people rely on the car. So it's actually the second most car dependent borough in London. I was out there reporting, and the borough is sort of crisscrossed by big roads, there's pretty bad public transport. So the Tories were able to sort of go very heavily on the Ulez policy and that was the reason the Labour candidate didn't quite come through.

So instead of a question of health or otherwise, this has become a question of Labour or Conservative policies now?

To an extent, yes, it is a health policy and it's become heavily politicized. So the Conservatives are actually looking to make these sort of environmental policies a big way of attacking the Labour Party. It's been caught up with just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, which are big protest groups here in the uk, and the Conservatives are trying to paint a picture in which labor is sort of associated with that kind of environmental activism. But actually, if you looked on the ground, the issue was much more about simple kind of costs and voters feel like they're going to have to pay these taxes and they weren't prepared to do that.

So if that's what the Conservatives make of it, what does the Labour Party make of losing in that seat?

So the recriminations in the Labour Party were pretty rapid. You saw a bunch of Labour MPs, came out pretty quickly and criticised the sort of policy on Ulez and said it was poorly planned, poorly communicated.

But that result in Uxbridge demonstrates there is never any reason to be complacent and never a reason to rest on our laurels.

So Keir Starmer, the party's leader, sort of used it as a way to suggest that the party needs to show some discipline before the general election and get rid of any policies that might be controversial, particularly with suburban voters, which he seemed to be particularly worried about.

That in an election policy matters. And we are doing something very wrong. If policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet. We've got to face up to that and to learn the lessons.

And Labour's now having a discussion about where they land on this US policy going forward. So there's some pressure on Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor, to sort of tweak the policy or try and support people a bit more in adapting to it.

But politicized it may be. This dirty air question, this health policy question isn't going to go away.

No, that's right. Cities across the uk, across the world are going to have to deal with this poisonous air. And there's some controversy in other places like Manchester and Bristol, which are also trying to introduce them. But actually, pretty much everyone's going to have to get on with this and do it and find ways of compensating those car drivers that are badly affected. The effort by the Conservatives to sort of make it a controversial issue more widely on Green policies, I think is probably unlikely to be hugely successful. You know, the British public is pretty strongly supportive of stronger action on climate change. They can see that the world is burning, some of them quite literally from their sun loungers. And actually there's not very many other examples, apart from the Ulez, where the costs are going to be so directly felt by voters in the next few years.

Thanks very much for your time, Tom.

Thanks.

Sometimes the start of something is easy to see or hear.

4, 3, 2, 1, 0.

When it comes to the history of the Earth, it's not so clear cut how to define when geological eras and periods and epochs begin or end. Sometimes the answer lies in what happens with the dominant life forms of the time. And for a while now, scientists have been speculating that humans have propelled the world into a new epoch.

Looking at the history of the planet can be a humbling experience. Humans have been around for 200,000 years, but that's the blink of an eye compared to the Earth's 4.6 billion year lifespan.

Kerrian Richmond Jones is the Economist's international economics correspondent.

We've seen almost none of its greatest dramas. Think meteorite strikes, life crawling out of water onto land, dinosaurs and mass extinctions. But geologists now think that humanity's impact could rival these great dramas and perhaps even exceed it. They've been on the hunt for places to prove so well.

What do geologists have to do with it?

The history of the planet is measured in geological time. And the first thing to understand is that it works differently from historians idea of time. It's bookended by rocks rather than dates. New units are marked by slabs that show some grand change in the Earth's history. For instance, currently we're in the Holocene epoch, which has lasted for about 12,000 years and started at the end of the last ice age, when the world started to get warmer and the ice sheets retreated. But in 2000, Paul Creutzen, a Dutch chemist, argued that a new epoch should be declared, called the Anthropocene. We might not have been around for long, but our activity has made its mark on the Earth's rocks. Air, water, enough to rival an ice age. And in 2016, the International Union of Geological Sciences, a bit like a governing council for geologists, decided that these impacts were big enough to confirm that the Anthropocene existed.

But.

But only in theory.

So when you say impact that might mark a new epoch, what kind of signs are we talking about?

Let's start with carbon dioxide levels, because people think about that as the biggest contributor to climate change. Humans have added about 50% to the volume of the stuff in the atmosphere in the last 150 years. That means that little CO2 bubbles will eventually show up in ice sheets. The start of the next ice age is at least 50,000 years behind schedule already. But the list is a lot longer as well. Across the world, oceans and rivers are awash with microplastics, which end up trapped between layers of sediments. Eventually those will become rocks. Nitrogen fertilisers are common in soil and peat bogs. Now, globalization means more people traveling. That's redistributed plants and animals across the world. Think tropical pets, which have been illegally imported. A bit like Pablo Escobar breeding hippos in Colombia.

Or.

Or maybe the pine cone that you put in your pocket at the end of your holiday and take to the airport. We're also in the middle of a mass extinction. There's a good chance that the impacts of Columbia's hippos, which are currently running rampant as they've got no natural predator, will show up in the area's fossil record thousands and thousands of years in the future.

So it seems pretty clear cut. There's plenty of proof then, that humans are already responsible for a new geological era?

Absolutely. But remember, because geologists mark their timelines with rocks and not dates, pointing out the impact of people on the planet in a general way is just not quite enough. They need to nail it down to one environmental change at one place, at one time. Then they can declare the beginning of the Anthropocene. In 2016, the search began. Scientists have spent the last decade scouring 12 sites from across the world, from the estuaries of San Francisco to the sediment beneath Vienna's main square. The goal is to find the perfect emblem of the new epoch.

And so we've cut the whole world down into a dozen places.

Is there the one we have now found? The one? Last month, geologists announced that the search was over. In Canada, just outside Toronto, they found a lake. Crawford Lake is a collapsed limestone cave. Each year, as its waters get warmer, chemicals left over from the collapse react to form white crystals. The crystals size and shape are super, super sensitive to their surroundings. A layer falls to the bottom each year, where it sits on last year's undisturbed sedimen. And so on, until, like rings on a tree, these sediments provide a perfect year by year account of humanity's impact on the Earth. There's pollen trapped between layers from the 13th century from indigenous farmers trying out farming methods. There's soot from European colonisers in the 19th century who set up a logging business in the area. But most importantly for the geologists, there's a huge uptick in plutonium just after 1945, when it became common, because nuclear weapons were first being used and tested. This spike in plutonium is what's being proposed as the primary marker for the new geological epoch.

So that's it. It's solved. We are in the Anthropocene and we can point to a place that shows.

Why not quite so. First of all, there's a little bit of disagreement whether plutonium is the right thing to be the marker. It's a really unstable element. It'll disappear from the rock record within millennia, unlike the markers from other ages, which are still visible to human geologists. So some people say that other chemicals, perhaps fly ash, which comes from burning fossil fuels, would be a better marker. It will stick around a lot longer. The other issue is that the Anthropocene hasn't quite arrived yet. There are several committees that need to approve Crawford Lake before a new epoch is official. The biggest of these is next summer in Korea. The Anthropocene might be the biggest news in Earth history for tens of thousands of years. But even geological time must wait for bureaucracy.

Kerry, and thanks very much for your time.

Thank you so much for having me.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastseconomist.com and if.

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