Humility, pragmatism, commitment and coherence will be required if the EU is to learn the lessons from the failure of its Sahel strategy, according to experts heard on Tuesday 23 January by the European Parliament’s Committees on Foreign Affairs, Development and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence as part of the ongoing debate on adapting the EU’s 2021 integrated strategy for the Sahel to the new situation (see EUROPE 13311/5).
Six successive coups d'état and “the lamentable failure of police and security force training”, denounced by Michael Gahler (EPP, German) and Javier Nart (Renew Europe, Spanish) in particular, were on everyone’s mind, but experts and MEPs reiterated the strategic importance of the region for the EU.
Ulf Laessing, director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation’s regional programme for the Sahel in Mali, was surprised to have been invited to talk about this strategy, “as there has been little strategy in recent times. The EU has lost its influence”. Deploring this situation, he said: “It’s time for a fresh start”, while avoiding “lessons in democracy”, something that neither Russia, China nor Iran, where the Prime Minister of Niger recently visited, are doing.
He pointed out that before the coup in Niger, “hundreds of millions of euros were spent without coordination” and that after the coup, “the EU and France, in particular, found it hard to accept the new reality”, relying on ECOWAS to reinstate Mohamed Bazoum while the United States stayed behind, showing a “pragmatism that the EU lacked”.
Observing also that the EU did not want to talk to Niger, but had renewed its cooperation with Chad, he said: “Be consistent! Practise Realpolitik. If we don’t get involved, the void will quickly be filled.”
If, in Mali, the conflict has been perceived as a conflict with Paris, “where are the other EU countries?” he asked, inviting those countries to seize their “chance to play a bigger role”.
Gilles Olakounlé Yabi, Executive Director of the West Africa Citizen Think Tank (WATHI) and non-resident researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (based in Senegal), spoke of “a stronger aspiration in the Sahel countries to better defend their interests in the short, medium and long term, to live in peace and security without feeling dominated” – an “aspiration for greater sovereignty [that] is understandable”.
He announced: “France’s involvement in Mali since 2012 has not restored security. We don’t know what would have happened without intervention. The intervention carried out by France and its partners is not a success”, adding that the countries involved and the EU were perceived as “aligned with France’s position”, whose communication was “indelicate”.
In his view, the relationship to be built should, of course, be based on dialogue and shared values, as set out in the 2021 strategy, “but also on converging and non-converging economic interests”.
Élie Tenenbaum, Director of the Centre for Security Studies at the French Institute of International Relations, called for a stronger link between humanitarian aid, peace and security, with long-term investment – particularly in education.
Nathalie Loiseau (Renew Europe, French), chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, said that she did not see “how democracy can be dispensed with”.
The representative of the European External Action Service assured us that, with a view to adapting the EU’s action, his service was working to “show humility and (to) observe over time in order to make a proper diagnosis” and, if the root causes of instability in the central Sahel need to be tackled, “the priorities of the 2021 integrated strategy remain. It’s the ‘how’ that we need to think about”. The coastal states of West Africa are “extremely important”, he added. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)