Look into root causes of mutiny, NGOs and opposition urge

Government troops snuffed out the last vestiges of a mutiny by soldiers in eastern Niger on 9 August, 10 days after it began, but civil society and opposition groups have called on the state to focus attention on the situation that led to the action in the first place. "The crushing of the mutiny in Diffa Region must not lead the government to draw the curtain on the precarious situation in which Niger’s soldiers live; they too are victims of the anti-social laws dictated by the Bretton Woods institutions," the Coordination des organisations de la société civile, a civil society umbrella, said in a communiqué on Sunday. On 31 May, soldiers in Diffa, N’Guigmi and N’Gourti, located in the east of the country, took over their barracks and detained various defence, security and civilian officials to press demands for improved living conditions, the payment of overdue allowances. According to the government, they also called for the dismissal of the chief of staff of the armed forces. However, loyal troops recaptured Diffa, 1500 km east of Niamey, on 3 August, and N’Guigmi, 130 km further east, on 6 August. On Friday, the Ministry of National Defence reported that loyalists had retaken N’Gourti, some 250 km east of Diffa, "without encountering any resistance". Civilian and military hostages taken by the mutineers were gradually released by them or freed as a result of the counter-offensive by loyal forces. The defence ministry said about 217 mutineers had been arrested, including 29 in Niamey, where an attempted mutiny was quickly put down on 5 August. Another 72 were missing. They were believed to be in Nigeria and the authorities in Niger have asked for their extradition. Two soldiers died during clashes in Diffa while two others were injured in Diffa and Niamey. The ministry said an investigation into the mutinies had been launched and would be conducted according to the law and the relevant military regulations. However, the umbrella organisation said the phenomenon of unrest in the military, which began in the early 1990s and has continued since then, "clearly shows the persistence of a deep malaise within the army which different regimes have been incapable of transforming into a republican institution that respects democratic order". "A challenging of established democratic rights cannot be ruled out completely in our country given the incapacity of the political authorities to assume their responsibilities towards citizens, including soldiers, but also their lack of political courage to begin a serious reform of the military institution and their propensity to prevent and to want to politicize any demonstration of dissatisfaction within the said institution," the NGOs added. It is in the interest of the nation to take "courageous reform measures towards transforming Niger’s armed forces into a republican institution respectful of democratic order," they said. According to military sources, privates in the military earn 24,000 CFA francs (about US $35) a month, which is equivalent to the price of a 100-kg bag of millet in Diffa Region. Soldiers also receive six bars of soap per quarter and a military uniform every six months. The Coordination des forces democratiques (CFD - Coordination of Democratic Forces, an opposition umbrella) called for in-depth reflection on the malaise within the army, criticizing what it saw as "a tradition of instrumentalisation of a fringe of the army by a certain political class which creates a harmful atmosphere and constitutes a factor of instability". Other factors of instability, it said, included corruption, favouritism, exclusion, the lack of independence of the judiciary and the wastage of the country’s scant resources. While the CFD condemned mutinies "as a means of making demands", it blamed the government for the soldiers’ uprising and rejected a call by parties within the ruling coalition for the mutineers to be tried by a military tribunal. In a statement to the media on 7 August, the Alliance des forces démocratiques had called on the government to set up as soon as possible "a martial court as prescribed by military regulations to try the soldiers guilty of rebelling against the state and their accomplices according to the rules of the army".