Benin’s Failed Coup Reveals Deepening Fault Lines in Africa

The failure of an attempt by soldiers in the West African nation of Benin last week to oust outgoing President Patrice Talon was more than just big news in a small country that most people outside Africa would have difficulty locating on a map.

Far from being merely a domestic event, the attempted coup in Benin briefly put the entire geopolitical situation of the region under a magnifying glass, exposing deep fault lines in a part of Africa that has recently become increasingly unstable.

The failure of an attempt by soldiers in the West African nation of Benin last week to oust outgoing President Patrice Talon was more than just big news in a small country that most people outside Africa would have difficulty locating on a map.

Far from being merely a domestic event, the attempted coup in Benin briefly put the entire geopolitical situation of the region under a magnifying glass, exposing deep fault lines in a part of Africa that has recently become increasingly unstable.

Talon’s government was barely saved by a complex multinational intervention that included the dispatch of troops by members of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS. ECOWAS’ participation was led by Nigeria, Benin’s giant neighbor to the east and the most populous country in Africa. Nigeria sent elements of its air force to bomb rebel positions and support the mobilization of pro-government forces.

But in the background looms France, which was recently forced into a long-term but ignominious withdrawal from several of its former colonies in West Africa due to a combination of intense dissatisfaction with its continuing control of the region and anger at the failure of its long-term efforts to repel a variety of Islamist insurgencies through violent counterinsurgency tactics. Following a lead by Nigeria and ECOWAS, which came at the request of the Benin government during the coup attempt, Paris provided airlift and intelligence support to loyalist forces from a base in Ivory Coast.

Few things divide public opinion in West Africa more easily than France, and its mere intervention has drawn disapproval from many people. Those who did so paid little mind to the fact that Benin’s government was elected and Talon was willing to voluntarily leave office after his second term, an increasingly rare phenomenon in a region where one regime after another has rewritten constitutions in order to remain in power indefinitely. Rather than expressing support for one of West Africa’s remaining democracies, many critics have focused on the way Talon maneuvered throughout his rule to dramatically reduce the space for opposition politics in Benin. Bafflingly, many of these same critics seemed unmoved by the fact that the shadowy group of soldiers who sought to oust him made no commitments of their own on democracy or human rights.

Some of the criticism has gone further, suggesting that if Nigeria, whose democratic credentials are increasingly in question despite regular elections, is intervening in a small neighboring country that typically commands little attention among Nigerians, there must be an ulterior motive. As is often the case across West Africa, France was presented as the behind-the-scenes puppeteer. Because Nigeria had just signed a tax data-sharing agreement with France, these critics claimed that aiding the intervention in Benin was the price Paris extracted for doing business with it.

As if these complications were not enough, as the Nigerian intervention on behalf of Talon was still underway, Burkina Faso, Benin’s neighbor to the northwest, temporarily detained a Nigerian military transport plane that had made an unscheduled landing on its territory. Burkina Faso is one of three Sahel countries, along with Mali and Niger, in a new political bloc known as the Alliance of Sahel States, which has been at the forefront of efforts to reduce France’s influence in the region. Each of these three countries recently called on Paris to withdraw its counter-insurgency forces from its territory, despite the fact that the three countries are at the center of recent attacks by armed Islamist groups. (Both have also seen successful coups in the past five years and, as a result, have been run by the military.)

Although they are landlocked and among the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States in January. They insisted that by banding together, they would be more successful in defending their territories and developing their countries than under previous arrangements, whether those entailed working with France or allying with a broader group of West African states.

If by reading this article you get the impression of a very turbulent and increasingly divided region, one would be right. However, there is much more to consider here than assessments that range from profound pessimism to downright cynicism. Nigeria, for example, has a wide range of private motivations that seem sufficient to explain why its government, which often gives the impression of lethargy, took action in its neighbour.

France seems to be the least of the problems facing Nigeria. Nigeria itself suffers seriously from a complex of Islamist insurgencies and local bandit groups. The West African giant has also recently come under pressure from the Trump administration, which has falsely claimed that an anti-Christian genocide is taking place in the country, and Washington has hinted at strong, if quite vague, retaliatory measures to protect this part of the Nigerian population.

But even with this in mind, looking beyond Nigeria’s borders to explain its intervention in Benin is not necessary. Watching Benin succumb to a destabilizing military takeover would have been completely unattractive in itself. A successful coup nearby could easily have entrenched insurgencies in Nigeria. It would also have left Nigeria surrounded on all sides by military-run states, including regional states to its north, and corrupt and undemocratic Cameroon to the east.

Westerners and others who monitor African affairs often pay little attention to the complexities of national politics on the continent, reducing almost everything to narratives about race or “tribe” and the dominance of what many journalists euphemistically refer to as “big men,” or autocrats and dictators. This is for our loss. African politics is more like politics elsewhere than it is different – ​​a fact that should become more apparent as the vaunted Western democracies, including the United States, veer toward authoritarianism and familial corruption.

Moreover, Africa is full of geopolitics that comes to the fore in any number of places. Witness the Sudanese civil war, where financially interested external sponsors, such as the United Arab Emirates, support one side or the other. Consider the competition between the United States and China in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea, where the two powers are fighting over access to strategic minerals and control of transportation networks.

Consider also the protracted violence and instability in the eastern regions of Congo, where Uganda, and especially Rwanda, have long supported proxy armies that facilitate their control of highly lucrative natural resources. Here lies the proof, if any were needed, that geopolitics in Africa is not necessarily primarily driven by external forces.

I first became aware of this inward-focused, largely self-motivated geopolitical game in Africa long ago while covering what I and others conceived as “World War I” on the continent. This massive conflict erupted in the late 1990s amid Rwanda’s attempt to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator of Zaire (later renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and later to oust his successor, Laurent Kabila. Rwanda’s struggle for wealth and regional advantage has attracted a wide range of other African players, including Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

But Nigeria’s intervention to quell the recent coup attempt in Benin takes me back to other conflicts I covered during that same era, specifically the brutal civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In each of these cases, Nigeria, even though it was then under the worst military dictatorship in its history, deployed forces under the banner of ECOWAS to stave off the takeover of national capitals by rebel forces.

The behavior of Nigerian forces has not always been ideal, but they have helped save each of these small countries – and perhaps their neighbors as well – from bleak future prospects if rebel forces are allowed to control the region.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the African continent today is Nigeria itself. Since independence, the country has largely underperformed relative to its potential, lagging behind many of its neighbors in generating wealth and providing electricity, education, and health care. With few exceptions, its governments were ineffective and lacked true national purpose, and its elites were stuck in self-actualization and largely disconnected from the rest of the country.

Intervention in Benin by itself will in no way change Nigeria’s course. But a serious national security policy, including deep engagement and shared commitments with neighbors, is an inevitable step on the path toward developing a true sense of national purpose. If Nigeria takes a small step in this direction while helping to stabilize its neighbour, Africa could benefit entirely.