Africa’s coup belt spans the continent: a line of six nations crossing 3,500 miles, from coast to coast, that has grow to be the longest hall of army rule on Earth.

This previous week’s military takeover in the West African nation of Niger toppled the ultimate domino in a band throughout the girth of Africa, from Guinea within the west to Sudan within the east, now managed by juntas that got here to energy in a coup — all but one in the past two years.

The final chief to fall was Niger’s Mohamed Bazoum, a democratically elected American ally who disappeared on Wednesday when his personal guards detained him on the presidential palace within the capital, Niamey. His safety chief now claims to be working the nation.

“We have decided to intervene,” Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, Niger’s new self-appointed ruler, stated in a televised deal with on Friday.

The coup immediately reverberated far past Niger, a sprawling and impoverished nation in one of many world’s hardest neighborhoods. African leaders sounded the alarm over the most recent blow to democracy on a continent the place many years of hard-won advances are slipping away.

“Africa has suffered a serious setback,” Kenya’s president, William Ruto, stated on Friday.

For the United States and its allies, the coup raised pressing questions in regards to the struggle towards Islamist militants within the Sahel, the huge semiarid area the place teams linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are gaining floor at an alarming tempo, transferring from the desert towards the ocean. Much of the Sahel overlaps with Africa’s newly shaped, coast-to-coast coup belt.

“I’m very worried that Sahelian Africa is going to melt down,” stated Paul Collier, a professor of economics and public coverage at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government.

The Sahel has surpassed the Middle East and South Asia to grow to be the worldwide epicenter of jihadist violence, accounting for 43 p.c of 6,701 deaths in 2022, up from 1 p.c in 2007, in accordance with the Global Terrorism Index, an annual research by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Until this previous week, Niger was the cornerstone of the Pentagon’s regional technique. At least 1,100 American troops are stationed within the nation, the place the U.S. army built drone bases in Niamey and the northern metropolis of Agadez, one at a price of $110 million. Now, all of that’s in jeopardy.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, talking at a news convention in Australia, warned on Saturday that the United States might finish its monetary help and safety cooperation for Niger if Mr. Bazoum weren’t reinstated as president. Though officers say the United States could be reluctant to go that far, Mr. Blinken was unequivocal.

“The very significant assistance that we have in place — that is making a material difference in the lives of the people of Niger — is clearly in jeopardy,” he stated. “And we’ve communicated that as clearly as we possibly can to those responsible for disrupting the constitutional order.”

Any American withdrawal might open a door to Russia.

The sight of Russian flags being waved by coup supporters in Niamey this previous week echoed related scenes after a coup in neighboring Burkina Faso final yr. The flags don’t imply the Kremlin was behind the coup, analysts say. But they do symbolize how Russia has positioned itself because the torch bearer of anti-Western, and particularly anti-French, sentiment in a swath of Africa lately.

But if the coup belt has grow to be a theater of geopolitical maneuvering, the coups themselves are rooted in an explosive mixture of native components, consultants say.

In Guinea, the coup leaders justified their actions by citing public anger at widespread corruption; in Mali and Burkina Faso, they claimed to have a solution to the tide of Islamist militancy plaguing their nations.

In reality, rebel violence has unfold beneath the army juntas, accelerating the spiral of instability.

In Burkina Faso, assaults as soon as confined to the north of the nation have come nearer to the capital in latest months. In Mali, the place the army changed 5,000 French troops with about 1,000 Wagner mercenaries, civilian deaths have soared, in accordance with the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which tracks casualties.

Everywhere, weak states are an element. The Sahel has a few of the world’s poorest nations and the very best birthrates (Niger, the place a median girl has seven kids, tops the checklist). Their hovering populations of annoyed, jobless younger folks swell the ranks of the insurgents.

The youth bulge reveals up amongst coup-makers, too. Most of the latest takeovers have been led by males of their 30s or early 40s, on a continent the place the common chief is of their 60s. Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who was simply 34 when he seized energy in Burkina Faso final yr, is the world’s youngest head of state.

African nations have skilled 98 profitable coups since 1952, a latest United Nations report on coups in Africa discovered. Jonathan Powell, an affiliate professor on the University of Central Florida, stated probably the most coups had occurred in Sudan, the place the most recent takeover, in 2021, seeded an explosive army feud that just lately grew into full-scale conflict.

The takeovers dipped to their lowest degree within the decade as much as 2017, a interval that included the Arab Spring and the ouster of longtime autocrats like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Then the pendulum swung laborious in the other way.

In Chad, seizing energy is a household custom. The nation’s ruler, Mahamat Idriss Déby, took over in 2021 after his father, who had come to energy in a 1990 coup, was killed in a battle.

Niger appeared completely different.

Despite a protracted historical past of coups, the desert-dominated nation of 25 million folks appeared to be on a path to stability beneath Mr. Bazoum, who was elected president in 2021.

He was making progress towards the militants, appeared to benefit from the help of the armed forces and was celebrated by influential Westerners. Onstage with Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates at a chat final October, the smiling Mr. Bazoum was introduced as a “gender warrior” for selling the training of ladies and a discount within the birthrate.

But then a private issue struck: tensions with the top of the presidential guard, General Tchiani, that appear to have initiated this previous week’s mutiny, stated Dr. Issaka Okay. Souaré, the writer of a book on coups in West Africa.

Sometimes, Dr. Souaré added, coups merely come like swallows.

“There’s a contagion effect,” he stated. “You see your colleagues in neighboring countries have toppled the civilians, and now the red carpet is rolled under your feet. You want the same.”

Reporting was contributed by Eric Schmitt and Michael D. Shear from Washington, Paul Sonne from Berlin, and Damien Cave from Brisbane, Australia.