(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The last time a military junta seized power in Mali, in the spring of 2012, it lasted barely three weeks: International pressure, first from West African neighbors and then from the wider world, persuaded the coup’s leaders to return power to a civilian administration. But even in that short time, Tuareg rebels in the north capitalized on the political chaos in Bamako by grabbing large swaths of territory, effectively splitting the country in two.
The north became a haven for terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda’s North African franchise. It would take a French military intervention, followed by a larger United Nations force, to push back the Tuareg rebels and their Islamist fellow travelers. Eight years on, that task is far from complete.
Despite the presence of 15,000 UN peacekeepers, jihadist violence continues, not only in northern Mali, but also in its eastern neighbor, Burkina Faso. And a new menace now stalks the Sahel region: the Islamic State.
With a new coup in Mali, the world can only hope events move even more quickly in Bamako than they did in 2012, but much more slowly in the north. As before, it will fall to Mali’s neighbors — specifically, the Economic Community of West African States, known as Ecowas — to broker a political resolution of the crisis. African forces, which make up the largest component of the UN presence, will also bear much of the burden of stanching the Islamist resurgence.
The new junta has promised a transition to democracy, without offering a timeline. Ecowas is unimpressed: It has denounced the coup, called for sanctions against its leaders and demanded the restoration of the constitutional order. Member states have closed their borders to Mali and suspended trade.
This brand of diplomatic hardball brought the 2012 coup leaders to the table. Much will depend on whether Ecowas presses for the reinstatement of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who was forced to resign by the junta. Eight years ago, the group pressured his predecessor, Amadou Toumani Toure, to resign, which then allowed the coup leaders to back down and hand power to a transitional administration under the president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traore.
But that solution may not work this time. A powerful alliance of opposition groups, led by the conservative cleric Mahmoud Dicko, will demand a say in the succession. The group, known collectively as the M5-RFP, the French acronym for “June 5 Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces,” has been leading protests in Bamako all summer long.
M5-RFP is unlikely to go along with a transitional government led by the current president of the National Assembly, Moussa Timbine, a Keita acolyte whose election to the assembly was among those denounced by opposition groups as fraudulent. They have already rejected a previous Ecowas proposal for a unified government. Nor will they tolerate a repeat of the 15-month interregnum between the end of the 2012 coup and elections in 2013.
But the unity of the opposition groups gives Ecowas something to work with. For now, the regional bloc will likely not have to reprise its 2017 intervention in Gambia, when member states mustered troops to persuade President Yahya Jammeh to cede power. Nor is France keen to play a major role in resolving the crisis in Bamako: President Emmanuel Macron, after a quick round of calls to the leaders of neighboring states, said he would support Ecowas’s efforts.
Macron has tended to view Mali primarily as a counterterrorism challenge, but the coup should serve as a lesson — one all too familiar to American presidents — that the failure to address political problems undermines all other agendas. The French leader can only hope that the Ecowas leadership can find a solution before matters get any worse in Bamako and the jihadists feel emboldened elsewhere.
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Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus on the Middle East and Africa.
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