Soldiers and Governments in Postpraetorian Africa

Abstract

Civil-military relations in African states, few years from their independence to the early 1990s, have generally operated on the praetorian mode, that is a hegemonic domination of the political sphere, after its unconstitutional appropriation, by men in uniform and the support of their institution. Hence the proliferation of illiberal and authoritarian regimes, some sultanist and predatory, as the archetypal form of politics throughout the continent for decades. The order of their appearance and the rhythm of their rotation, their respective sociological characteristics and ideological leanings have contributed to elongate the praetorian cycle, while giving its dynamic a ternary configuration, moderate at first, then radicalized, lastly “thermidorianized”. With the global decline of authoritarianism in the late 1980s/early 1990s and the political transitions that ensued, with their democratic promises, such a pattern of military relations to politics waned to become atypical. The Western-managerial one, the globally recognized appropriate norm, though on the rise, coexists with three other models: first, the Kemalist, former praetorian leaders who had presided over autocratic regimes, or officers (in active service or not) who have ousted a problematical civilian government, take it over but with a mandate having all the constitutional trappings; second, the military, normally quartered in barracks, intervene, but in a minimally intrusive way, to censor, generally in the name of democracy and good governance, an administration that is turning illiberal, incompetent or unpopular and possibly have it replaced by a new one; lastly, in a context of civil war and collapsing statal authority, the armed forces disintegrate into rival, and sometimes gangsterized, groups fighting one another, often in conjunction with political or insurgent factions competing for power.

Michel Louis Martin—Emeritus Professor.

Introduction

Civil-military relations in African states, few years from their independence to the early 1990s, have generally operated on the praetorian mode, that is a hegemonic domination of the political sphere, after its unconstitutional appropriation, by men in uniform and the support of their institution. Hence the proliferation of illiberal and authoritarian regimes, some sultanist and predatory, as the archetypal form of politics throughout the continent for decades.¹ Reasons at the origin of such a situation are numerous, among which corporate issues stand out, in other words, all factors linked to the military establishment and its members, often exacerbated by a context of societal volatility due to poor leadership, economic stagnation, and identitarist tensions. The politicization of the armed forces induced by the logic of the occupation of the seats of power, led, through coups, displacements, plots, and so on, to a process of an “elite circulation” by which various strata of the military hierarchy (sometimes to subaltern ranks) alternated at the core of the governing apparatus. The order of their appearance and the rhythm of their rotation, their respective sociological characteristics and ideological leanings have contributed to elongate the praetorian cycle, while giving its dynamic a ternary configuration, moderate at first, then radicalized (quite so when fuelled by Marxian ideologies), lastly “thermidorianized” (Martin 1989, 1995).

With the global decline of authoritarianism in the late 1980s/early 1990s and the political transitions that ensued, with their democratic promises, such a pattern of military relations to politics waned to become atypical. Not only has it turned out to be politically unacceptable, but also deemed as suffering of systemic inadaptation²; past experiences have demonstrated that members of the military have proven inadequate rulers and mediocre developers, while their too long immersion in politics affected the whole institution cohesion and morale to the point of endangering its functionality.

In Latin America and Asia, postauthoritarian civil-military relations have evolved generally as to approach or conform to the dominant Western-managerial model. This implies the political neutralization and subordination of the armed forces, henceforth confined to their primary functional mandate, that is external defence. The same trend followed in polities of Central and Eastern Europe just freed from Communist rule and its distinctive arrangements for controling the military.

From this viewpoint, Africa, where democratization was portrayed as “without end”,³ passing through more difficulties than elsewhere, remains a kind of an exception. If it could be hypothesized they would no longer—or rather rarely—assume the crude autocratic/coercive praetorian outlook of before, it is to be observed that soldiers-government interactions have not yet standardized and still operate (at least for what concerns the French-speaking area) in a somewhat heterogeneous fashion, with four dominant types, whose labelling is termed here in a rough empirical way. The Western-managerial one, the globally recognized appropriate norm, though on the rise, coexists with three other models: first, in a way that could be named Kemalist, former praetorian leaders who had presided over autocratic regimes, or, as today, officers (in active service or not) who have ousted a problematical civilian government, take it over but with a mandate having all the constitutional trappings; second, the military, normally quartered in barracks, intervene, but in a minimally intrusive way, to censor, generally in the name of democracy and good governance, an administration that is turning illiberal, incompetent or unpopular and possibly have it replaced by a new one; lastly, in a context of civil war and collapsing statal authority, the armed forces, often fragilized, disintegrate into rival, and sometimes gangsterized, groups fighting one another, often in conjunction with political or insurgent factions competing for power.

Caveats are in order should such a parsimonious and ideal-typified taxonomy, constructed here as for didactic purpose, be presumed cogent. Primo, it is derived from a simplified conception of military relations to politics, which focuses on the upper tier of a larger spectrum of interactions: intrusion on the political scene mirroring (ex ante or ex post) a sufficiently collective will from the military to impact the political system.⁴ Secondo, it is built on cases from North- and Sub-Saharan French-speaking Africa, (with an emphasis on countries of French colonial succession), that is more than twenty often diverse illustrations, that would have demanded more care to be adequately matched, in any case that precludes a broader comparative validity for elsewhere on the continent.

Tertio, though the typology is constructed on the basis of examples that do not seem too equivocal and present some stability over time, the necessity to take into account the inevitable shifts from one model to another (simply because the time span of the period under study here covers more than two decades and half⁵) complexifies the overall picture; not to mention those ambiguous cases impossible to ascertain with precision as they display traits characterizing two, if not three models, and might introduce some confusion about which category they belongs to in the end. In other words, the models are treated as mutually exclusive for analytical purposes only. Quarto, the typology does suggest a historical or developmental evolution. The praetorian model is excluded because, as alluded, it is supposed to be dated for the period under consideration here (Clark 2011); yet take-overs as in Guinea in December 2008 (by Captain Moussa Dadis Camara), which led to the postponing of a possibly liberal political transition, show that a return to an autocratic praetorian rule is always possible. The Western-managerial pattern is expected to become dominant should democratic standards of political governance be prevalent, with the Kemalist one phasing out, at least in its old fashioned forms, and the disarticulation model as purely situational. If the «light footprint» regulatory model could also be viewed as transitional, it might persist and coexist with the Western-managerial.

Lastly, assuming the relevance of such a classification, it is not sure that all the cases examined here would have been distributed in the same way it has been done here, had they been more comprehensively assessed and had the complexity of the events and proceedings which they were interpreted from been rendered in a less sketchly way as they are here. They would have deserved deeper scrutiny, and not be approached on the basis of only few distinctive and shared features, which ignored national specificities and disregarded the causes of their production.

The Western-Managerial Model

Also defined as democratic or liberal in other more politically mature settings, this type of civil-military nexus has first thrived in Western Europe. It is characterized by the institutionalized compliance to a civilian elected leadership of a separate professionalized military converted to political and ideological neutrality.⁶ If it is far from being the norm at present in French-speaking Africa, nevertheless it tends to expand. A few cases, approximating the Western-managerial model, are worth mentioning as good illustrations, though with some variations and not always in a political context that could be considered as fully democratized.

Four are perennial: Senegal, first, which, since independence, has known a continuous nearly-liberal functioning; Morocco, secondly, where the successive monarchs have been able to enjoy a legitimacy mixing religious considerations and a capacity to preserve national integrity; Cameroon and Gabon, lastly, which were and are ruled in a highly tutelary context, but where the military always remains contained. It is worth noting that the Ivory Coast has belonged to that group during President Félix Houphouet-Boigny thirty-three-year tenure, before things, as to be seen, change completely.⁷

For the other instances, it is only after postpraetorian political transitions, and not always easy ones, that the Western-managerial model seems to take root, as in Rwanda,⁸ and less so in Burundi (Jowell 2014; Wilén 2016),⁹ after the stabilization that followed in the early 2000s the dramatic episodes of civil war, and as in Benin which, after having gone through the full praetorian cycle, began to democratize, not without uncertainty at first, but quite firmly after 2006 (Banégas 2003; Gisselquist 2008). Other cases could be entered, such as Chad and Algeria, but the evolution is still recent, and over the period considered they primarily belong to other models and are dealt with here from a different perspective.¹⁰

It should be remarked that the perennity, or the return of civilian rule, as well as the garrisoning and the control of armed forces confined to defence missions, has not prevented episodes of organizational restlessness, sometimes politicized, by members of uniformed personnels, if not the whole institutions. In Senegal, late 1962, the gendarmerie backed Prime Minister Mamadou Dia, against President Léopold S. Senghor, try to close the Parliament; in 1968 the Army chief refused to use fire at rebelling students; in December 2001, Senegalese soldiers returning from service with UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo mutinied until paid. In Cameroon, President Paul Biya used the rumour of a military plot to replace Prime Minister Maigari in 1983, while, a year later, a group of officers from the North, headed by Colonel Ibrahim Saleh, tried vainly to topple the regime, leading to a harsh repression.¹¹ In Gabon, an intervention by French troops was necessary to reinstate President Léon Mba deposed by a military coup in February 1964, and Omar Bongo, who succeeded him in 1967, had learnt the lesson by setting a tight control on an armed force maintained small; in 1985, he pretexted a military plot to sentence to death Captain Mandza Ngokouta. Benin, under Nicephore Soglo presidency, witnessed two alleged military plots, in 1992 conducted by Captain Pascal Tawes and in 1995 led by Colonels Soulé Dankoro and Maurice Kouandété, the latter a figure of the past military rule (Kouyami et al. 2011). Yet, none of these actions did seriously challenge the civilian leadership, as in Morocco with two critical attempts. In 1971, cadets of the Royal NCOs School, mobilized by a few senior officers, attacked Skhirat palace during a reception to kill Hassan II, and, the following year, six Northrop-F5 of the air force tried to shoot down the king’s plane on his return from France in an operation directed by the ministry of Defense Major-general Oufkir; in both cases, the sovereign’s capacity to react swiftly insured the throne more standing and legitimacy. Generally, all these actions resulted in a better civilian grip over the armed forces.

Several factors—political, organizational and geopolitical—account for the persistence of the Western-managerial model and civilian leaders’ capacity to maintain their supremacy. From the system side, the prestige or the shrewdness, in any case the statesmanship of successive heads of state played an important part: Senghor then Abdou Diouf in Senegal (Seck 2005; Sidibé 2006), Mohammed V then Hassan II in Morocco (Turquoi 2001), Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya in Cameroon, Léon M’Ba then Omar Bongo in Gabon, all were capable to mobilize governmental resources (even coercive) to consolidate their authority while reinforcing the regime legitimacy that benefited their successors up to present time. The same could be said of Nicéphore Soglo (1992–1996) and later, after Colonel Mathieu Kérékou’s mandate Kemalist style, of Thomas Boni Yayi until end of 2015 (Aïvo 2010), of Paul Kagame in Rwanda (Reyntjens 2006), and of Domitien Ndayizaye succeeded by Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi (Peterson 2006). All were able to insure a proper institutionnalized reach of the state, though not always in a fully liberal-democratic setting as the Western-managerial model of civil-military relations generically supposes; often it is in an electoral authoritarian setting, as shown by Cameroun or Gabon, among others (Ngolet 2000; Mouangue Kobila 2010; Pigeaud 2011).

It ought be noted further that the dominion of civilian leaders’ over the defence sector as well as the political neutrality from uniformed personnel are being enforced by a thorough legal formalization, from ordinary regulations, disciplinary codes, statutes, and so on, to the most fundamental texts, such as electoral codes and above all the constitution. This process of constitutionalization which sometimes go into great details¹² has certainly contributed to the stabilization, if not a harmonization of civil-military relations along the Western model. Undoubtedly, moreover, the spectacle of the generally negative consequences induced by the excesses of military activism in neighboring countries has served as a deterrent.

Interestingly, civilian supremacy and military political neutrality, as principles, are not supposed to denote a marginalization, not even a neglect of members of the military on the part of the governing class. The dismissive treatment of the armed forces often observed elsewhere or in the past, in the shape of delayed salaries, politicized promotions, deficient equipments, of also interferences with professional autonomy or meddling in the organizational functioning, and all issues generally considered as internal, are avoided. It ought be noted that neither does the requirement of civilian supremacy and of political neutrality means that military personnel has to be unconcerned with the state’s affairs and kept in the ignorance of all choices, especially those regarding defence, made by political authorities. These actually are careful to avoid that it be so and even associate key military personnel to the implementation of their policies, for example through inclusion in administrative functions, at least to get their backing for keeping public peace.¹³ In Burundi, quite interestingly, the constitution goes as far as to specify that members of the defense sector have the right to be informed about the socio-political life and to receive a civic education.

For obvious reasons, it is indeed difficult to follow and evaluate with accuracy the nature of the interactions between the military and politicians in the Western-managerial model as it operates in Africa, but rumours are not without significance. In Senegal, for example, the military seems to have agreed to prevent any possible contesting of the 2000 presidential elections even if, as they eventually did, they were to be won by the candidate opposed to the ruling Socialist party in power for forty years.¹⁴ In Morocco, the tradition inaugurated by Mohammed V to place the designated heir at the head of the armed forces is obviously aimed at insuring him the valuable, at the same time, unchallenged, support once on the throne.¹⁵

To consider a more organizational dimension, it is observed that, in general, the role of the military is chiefly defined around missions linked to external defence. These should ideally imply, to be properly fulfilled, that be kept a committed defense administration appropriatedly budgeted and supervised, adequate and rationally acquired equipment levels, interoperable troops and rank-structures, chains of command free from clientelist or external pollution, which is not always the case. But, and in that regard security sector reform and defence institution building programs helped, the level of professionalization, without being achieved yet, has reached a point that has contributed to feed an ethic of public service, a feeling of self-purpose and self-esteem among members of at least the mainstream units.¹⁶

In some cases, geopolitics facilitates these processes, notably a heightened sense of national identification. In Senegal and Morocco, the forces have felt valued by their involvement on external theaters placed in the sphere of influence if not the direct sovereignty of the country (e.g. Guinea-Bissau and Casamance for Senegal, Western Sahara for Morocco). Moreover, recurring tensions between Senegal and Mauritania on the one hand, Morocco and Algeria on the other, offered opportunities to fulfill military and combat role-expectations. The pressing necessity for most states in the region to be more implicated in the management of the heightened and complex conflictuality afflicting the whole continent also creates occasions for participation (indeed not in the role of leading responders and more in simple dissuasive deployment) to peacekeeping multilateral forces that were set up through the United Nations, then the African Union and various other regional economic communities¹⁷; for example with the Economic Community of West African States Cease-fire Monitoring Group, or involvement in operations under the aegis of the United Nations, as during the Gulf War in 1991 and more recently Darfur, where 3500 men of the Rwandese forces serve in UN and AU missions, or nowadays in combatting, mounting terrorist threats in the Sahel region (Ngoupandé 2003; Mentan 2004). Obviously, this increasing exposure to other military institutions, sometimes among the most modernized ones, helped to instill or reinforce a more professionally conformed behavior among members of the troops concerned (Olonisakin 2003), not to mention the financial and material returns.¹⁸

These states have therefore been able, not without success, to implement objective and subjective forms of political control of the military,¹⁹ putting at the same time emphasis on factors of a professional nature, while eschewing isolation of the military from the rest of the nation, by associating them to socio-political evolutions. That being said, civilian rulers remain watchful of the military, witnessing a lingering feeling about the potential danger it could constitute, or a residual distrust born from the time when soldiers were meddling in politics. This explains in part schemes aimed at upkeeping well-attended special forces (such as gendarmeries) together with other intelligence operatives, admittedly to quell particularly trying opposition technically out of the reach of regular forces, but also to deter any manifestation of hostility from the latter.²⁰ Others are meant at formatting with great care and parsimony troop-levels, even at controlling, if not restricting access to armaments and their use.

Lastly, need to be mentioned those external factors which have encouraged, or are favoring the trend or its consolidation. France’s influence, however open to criticisms, has its part. Regarding Senegal, now Benin, it helped keeping these rather promising democratic experiments their exemplary character. For Cameroon and Gabon, it derived from the awareness that there are important economic stakes given their natural resources, especially oil; an influence that continues, at least because France is a key security purveyor for the region, and that these assets are more threatened today, due to local insurgencies and terrorist challenges (Notin 2014). In addition, the increasing role of the international community, notably via regional organizations, such as the AU, the ECoWAS, and other Francophone agencies, as custodians of constitutional civilian legality, as also active sponsors of the reform of security sectors, is instilling the idea of a consubstantiality of the Western-managerial pattern with democratic consolidation.²¹

As pointed out the number of cases of civil-military relations organized along this model in Africa, with a politically neutral military subordinated to an elected if not a fully democratic regime, is still small, even though slowly increasing. At some point, countries, as Mali and Niger, gave the impression to enter the model for a brief period of time, but shifted afterwards toward another one. Others, such as Chad, with a thorough constitutional framing of the defence forces’ responsibilities and place, as well as noteworthy implication in regional conflicts management, is seeing its civil-military stabilize around a model approximating the Western-managerial, but with a politically hybrid regime. Post-Ben Ali Tunisia, after the constitutional reform of 2014, is a promising case. On the other hand, looming social discontent in Burundi about the regime could lead the military to get politically involved again. But for the time being, the other types of civil-military relations indeed still loom large.

The Kemalist Model

The term «Kemalist» suggests an analogy that is perhaps somewhat stretched for describing out of context a contemporary form of civil-military relations, based moreover upon criteria defined in too a narrow and discriminative manner.²² Here, it simply refers to a pattern of military linkage with politics, indeed reminiscent of what Turkey as known after World War I, that has become the dominant post-praetorian model in Africa, though possibly on the wane now. Having seized power with the unction, if not the backing of the military from the ranks of which he comes, a leader chooses to govern with a civilian apparatus over a hybrid or tutelary regime, though abiding by constitutionally, if not democratically, accepted standards. The promise of reforms, economic or political, the toleration of a modest and controlled opposition, and the organization of seemingly pluralist and open elections which he runs for after having swapped his uniform for plain-clothes, allows him to test this legitimacy before the public opinion and to expunge the Cesarist genesis of his political trajectory. While apparently restricted to its ordinary functions, the armed forces can always be instrumentalized or activated politically, if need be, though the possibility that it gets out of control remains.

Two sorts of situation subsumed that model in Africa. The first, the most common during the first half or so of the period considered, covers historical examples offered by those officers who have arrived in power and governed during the pretransitional praetorian phase, before they shed their authoritarian outlook to demonstrate they have dissociated themselves from their past and embrace a reformist-liberal stance to preside over reformed electoral regimes. In other words, they are those who successfully managed—without doubt, for their own profit at first—the political transition that had to be faced in the early 1990s. Sometimes, they assumed power for some time before a change occurs. In that case, the «renewed» leadership is coterminous with the praetorian moment, as in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Togo, Guinea, and Algeria, but it could also be discontinuous when ex-praetorian leaders returned to power only after having had to step down for a while in favour of civilians, as in Benin, the Republic of Congo, and Madagascar.

With time, this two-faceted and vintage version of the model is superseded by a second variety rather different, which for that matter could be labelled neo-Kemalist: the military intrusion on the political scene, led by men who had never been involved in past praetorian regimes, appears at first as simply coping momentarily with a political impasse arrived at by a civilian government without any intent to supplant of it, but their initiators, finally decide and striveo remain in power by running for a political mandate after constitutional normalcy is reinstated. This form of military relations to politics supposes a life-cycle shorter than historical cases and often with different political consequences. Mauritania again, Mali and Niger are among states that have experimented with this particular form of Kemalism. Tunisia is somewhat apart in this category, being the oldest and longest case.

Among historical instances of Kemalist civil-military relations Burkina Faso, Togo, and Algeria are the clearest ones. In the first two, the political evolution was until recently linked to the political career of presidents Blaise Compaoré and Gnassimbé Eyadéma (respectively captain and lieutenant-colonel when they took over). Both have enjoyed a surprising longevity as heads of state: the first since 1987, after the assassination of his comrade-in-arms Thomas Sankara; the second owned his accession to the presidency to a coup led in January 1967. With the transition era of the early 1990s, both also have sought to revive their legitimacy and renewed their mandate through general elections, held four consecutive times between 1991 and 2010 for Compaoré, five times between 1979 and 2002 for Eyadéma. However, though their political narratives aimed to prove their democratic conversion, the reduced room for manoeuver left to political opposants as well as their governing methods quickly compromised their credibility as liberals (Otayek et al. 1996; Sassou Attisso 2001). Compaoré, though eager to run for another mandate, had to resign in October 2014 under the pressure of the street and was replaced by a government of transition presided by Michel Kafando, after a short feud between the army chief of staff, General Honoré Traoré and Lieutenant-Colonel Yacouba Zida who set it up. As for Eyadéma, he died in February 2005 and it was his son who took over after being elected in April.

The case of Algeria is interesting. Given its will to preserve the benefits of the revolution for independence, given its secular tradition and its concern for economic and social development, the military has long played a decisive role (though not always with positive results) in terms of state-building, to a great extent in a truly Kemalist manner. The process, commenced with Colonel Houari Boumediene’s eight years of preatorian rule (after he had supplanted Ahmed Ben Bella in June 1965), was continued by his successor Colonel Chadli Bendjedid, designed to be elected president in February 1979 (with the unction of a military caucus of high-ranking officers). During two more mandates (obtained first in January 1983, then again in December 1988), Bendjedid engaged a process of liberalization, introducing notably more political pluralism, which gave the Islamists the opportunity to emerge as the dominant force, an evolution seen as a threat to be stopped by influential members of the military hierarchy. Bendjedid stepped down in 1992 and after two years of institutional vacuum in a climate of civil war, General Liamine Zeroual, Defence minister in 1993, was first appointed to govern in January 1994 by the State High Committee which ran the country after the electoral process was interrupted in 1992 (Tahi 1995). Zeroual organized the presidential elections in which he ran to triumph in November 1995, until his resignation in 1999, after which the country returned to civilian rule with Abdelaziz Bouteflika, elected president in April (to be reelected in 2004, 2009 and 2014), though with the military close to the political scene (Werenfels 2007). In Algeria, thence, the Kemalist period lasted for a while, though in a discontinuous way, and with a more neo-Kemalist form with Zeroual.

In Mauritania and Guinea, the time-length in power of the leaders was shorter. To the early 1990s, the time of transition, Mauritania experienced five coups and numerous plots since the overthrow in 1978 of the father of independence, Moktar Ould Daddah. It was Colonel Maaouiya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, formerly the army chief of staff and Premier, at the head of the country since the 1984 coup, who had to measure up with the expected liberal transition, that he eventually organized, sustaining his legitimacy through universal suffrage by candidating to the presidential elections of 1992 and again in 1997 during which the opposition was allowed to compete, better the first than the second time.²³ But Taya’s rule became increasingly authoritarian and he was displaced by a provisory military government in August 2005, determined to restore the constitutional civilian normality, marking the end to this Kemalist experiment (Ould Hamed Salem 1999; Antil 2005).²⁴ In Guinea, General Lansana Conté who took over after the death of Sekou Touré in 1984 had, as elsewhere, to liberalize the country in the early 1990s and organized multipartisan elections which he ran for to be elected in 1993, in 1998, and again in 2003 (after having doctored the fundamental law) to stay in place until his death in 2008, in an atmosphere of mounting opposition (Camara 2000; Picard and Moudoud 2010). In both countries, as to be seen, civil-military relations changed modes afterward.

In Benin, Madagascar, and the Republic of Congo, the Kemalist path is slightly different from the five cases just examined in which power remains continuously in the same hands from the praetorian period to the ensuing phase. Colonel Mathieu Kérékou in Cotonou, Admiral Didier Ratsiraka in Tananarive and Colonel Denis Sassou-Nguesso in Brazzaville reigned over an authoritarian regime, of a marxist hue moreover, but failed to successfully make the transition. After having incurred their people’s disfavour, they were obliged to step down before they could compete again with success to the next electoral round and returned to power. Thus, after having governed from 1972 to 1991, Kérékou who has organized a national forum (the first in Africa) to deal with mounting democratic demands, had to accept the results of the following elections which gave the majority to a civilian, Nicéphore Soglo, in March 1991. Ratsiraka who had presided over the socialist republic since 1975 reluctantly consented to a civilian transition in 1991 and relinquished power to Albert Zafy. He had to wait the 1996 elections to win over his adversary (who had been impeached some time earlier) and become again head of state (Ramasy 2012). In the Republic of Congo, Sassou-Nguesso, Defence minister in the military marxist government set up by Colonel Marien Ngouabi in 1968, took it over in 1979. Later in 1991, he organized the political transition but failed to be elected. In the context of the difficulties which followed and a three-year severe civil war with a completely disrupted civil-military relations (see infra), he proclaims himself head of the state in October 1997 with the support of the country and organized a return to some kind of political normalcy framed around a new constitution and new elections which brought him to the presidency in 2002 (Menga 1993; Clark 2008), that he still holds after having prevailed in the presidential elections held in March 2016, after another constitution was promulgated in 2015.

In this version, the Kemalist model of military relations to politics concerns leaders formerly involved in the praetorian phase, either in an immediate or in a discontinuous sequence. This explains, why, whatever the longevity of its actors, it is bound to end shortly, to make place nowadays to its more compact neo-Kemalist equivalent, which Niger, Mali, and again Mauritania are good examples of, and that pre-2010 Tunisia, longer in time, has prefigured.

In that country, in 1987, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali deposed the historic leader, Habib Bourguiba, whose Premier he had just been nominated; the military, which he was linked to as Brigadier and head of national security, was only remotely associated to his accession to power, though pleased by the operation. His tenure as head of state benefited at first of the support of the nation, because modernizing reforms were engaged and his legitimacy searched for on the electoral register. He was subsequently confirmed by his successive victories to five presidential elections (since 1989 to that of 2009), though his rule has tended to harden until he was forced out of power in January 2011. The few officers originally involved in the coup, such as the chief of staff and the commander of the presidential guard, were removed and the armed forces served as any other groups as a political counterweight (Ware 1985; Camau and Geisser 2003).

In Niger, the democratic transition organized by Colonel Ali Saïbou who succeeded in 1987 Colonel Seyni Kountché (in place since 1974 after the coup against Hamani Diori) opened on civilian rule late 1992. But the cohabitation between President Mahamane Ousmane, elected in 1993, and the legislative majority formed after the elections of 1995, and headed by Premier Hama Amadou, led to a political paralysis, edging on conflict.²⁵ In January 1996, after a year of crisis, the military, under Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, then the Army chief of staff, felt to have to step in. The prime intention to simply help solving an institutional deadlock was not entirely clear as Baré finally ran for the presidency; he won in July 1996, followed by legislative elections that gave him a comfortable majority. Yet, his government turned gradually unpopular, and he was ousted in April 1999 by another coup, but staged according to what could be said censor style, which ended that brief neo-Kemalist experiment (Abdourhamane 1999).

In August 2008, Mauritania seemed to follow a similar pattern, testing that time a neo-Kemalist experiment when General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz overthrew the civilian government set up a year before, but soon to be confronted to a political and constitutional crisis. After having retired from the military, he decided to be a candidate in the newly organized elections that he won in July 2009 to run again successfully in June 2014 (Ciavolella and Fresia 2009; N’Diaye 2009a). The case of Mali is simpler: General Amadou Toumani Touré, who had in the past played a political role,²⁶ opted in 2002, after retirement, to compete for the presidency that he won to be reelected in 2007 (Wing 2008).

These regimes form an assorted lot but present a common profile. Their governance is generally hybrid, given a political process never completly liberalized and given the role reserved to military forces. Elections (and reelections) in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Togo and Tunisia were not illustrations of pluralistic procedures as the leaders ran without real competition in a plebiscitary context, which was not the case elsewhere. Their goal, hidden or not, was indeed about keeping competitors at bay but, above all, it was to extend their tenure by circumventing clauses introduced to limit the number of successive mandates. In the other cases, political alternations occurred, though it is not always quite sure whether military leaders did not plan or seek to arrange to prolong their mandate or were genuinely ready to step down, should the political climate be not any longer favorable to them.

Being in the background, the role of armed forces in this type of rule is not always easy to grasp. By some aspects, it resembles that of the Western-managerial, by others it diverges. It is sure that their members, officers especially, are aware that, given a not so remote praetorian past, the interest of the institution is to avoid meddling in politics and to content with, while savoring the presence of one of them at the helm, the business of defence, especially if opportunities for external missions are multiplying.²⁷ If the military is «to stay disconnected from political life», to quote Blaise Compoaré, it remains that when the regime is threatened by disorder or by a defying opposition—as it is likely to be the case overtime, given its hybrid nature—armed forces could be activated to back it up or replace powerless police forces. In Tunisia, the role of the army became omnipresent (after a long period of low-profile) when it appeared vital to quell Islamic fundamentalism. In Algeria, its collaboration to the point of collusion with the government was even more proeminent, often in its very backseat (Ghozali 2001; Addi 2002). In Togo, more than 2000 troops helped security forces to crush widespread demonstrations after Gnassingbé’s contested election to the presidency in April 2005.

But precisely because the military was a key instrumental resource for the regime’s stability and continuity, especially in political contexts liable to volatility, also because it was surreptitiously mistrusted by leaders who had an intimate understanding of that milieu, the latter’s main preoccupation was to anticipate and to prevent any possibility that agents in kaki become at their turn political principals. So technics of control diverge from those implemented in the Western-managerial model, because of their coup-proofing dimension. To that effect, objective means are often coupled with more subjective ones.

There is first a focus on legalistic and constitutional norms, rather than on functional and professional devices. These norms go beyond standard assertions on civilian supremacy over the military as with the Western-managerial model (which supposes an ethic of complete neutrality), to denounce adamantly, often to the point of stigmatization, praetorian forms of political intrusion, which are moreover to be opposed with all possible means. The stipulation, most peculiar and potentially hazardous in its consequences, consists in inviting the population to desobey or resist any regime born from military usurpation, an act sometimes even criminalized. Benin and Togo’s fundamental laws go further and authorize the head of state to oppose a coup d’Etat by calling on foreign military assistance. Most constitutions repeatedly require from members of their armed forces, not only to be submitted to the civilian authority, but also to be apolitical, politically neutral, respectful of the republic, or yet absolutely neutral, to quote some of the formulations employed. Occasionally, provisions aimed at hindering any uniformed personnel to abuse their functions and their status during an electoral competition are also introduced. In Benin and Togo, any candidate of military origin to the presidency or the national assembly, must have resigned first from the ranks.²⁸ These provisions are detailed in electoral codes, party charters and disciplinary regulations, though with more or less clarity.²⁹

This form of control, secondly, operates together with more subjective schemes aimed at sustaining and bolstering the military’s loyalty to the regime and its leaders, that singularize the Kemalist model from the Western-managerial. The typical way is to shore up the standing of the armed forces and their personnel with better material conditions and appropriations. Frequently, this is done in a patrimonialist manner, that plays on favoritism, be it ethnic, regional or organizational, on providing access to all sorts of non military functions, on consenting commercial privileges, if not on sheer corruption. The higher echelons of the Togolese military were exemplary in this regard, with their large proportion of pampered officers coming from the president’s area (Toulabor 1999). Guinea and Algeria were good instances of indulged military institutions, oversized and overbudgeted, enjoying business monopolies, present in various sectors of the administration, military or not, national or local (Bah 2015; Daguzan 2012; Laribi 2007).

Coping with too an unaligned or restless military could also be obtained by dissuasive and coercive methods. They consist generally in the setting up of special or paramilitary units, independent from mainstream security forces, linked to or under the direct command of the head of state. Well equipped and well trained, properly salaried through special appropriations, they serve as a presidential protection circle but also as a network of intelligence operatives around the military personnel whose behavior could thus be scrutinized.³⁰

Such arrangements, it is obvious, were indeed efficient in the short run, but they were never free of various negative effects in the long term. The existence of autonomous and pampered security agencies, on the one hand, inevitably suscitates aggrieved resentment in military ranks that could turn willful, seditious if not mutinous, not to mention in addition the fact that these agencies are also liable to be tempted to play their own game.³¹ Clientelist strategies of control are even more consequential. They tend to mercantilize loyalties, by rising unceasing material expectations and generating an «extortionist» mentality, likely to turn into blackmailing and «racket» should the regime be in need of protection (Collier and Hoeffler 2006). Furthermore, they are detrimental to the social fabric of the institution. Interservice and interhierarchical jealousies develop, officer corps split as NCOs got alienated and troops undisciplined. Chains of command grow unclear and parasited from outside by patrons and other bigmen. Demoralization set in. As a result professional efficiency is impacted and the level of performance when engaged in operations, domestic or external, declines. Overfed but also weakened, the military grow edgy, less manageable, while, being perceived as in collusion with the powers, it sees its legitimacy eroding. That situation not only fuels risks of coup but fragilizes the capacities of the regime to meet opposition and protest on a large scale, a situation not uncommon with this type of regime.

Though Kemalist governance in general is never as autocratic and coercive as genuine praetorian rule or even as some civilian tutelary regimes, it cannot be defined as democratic and in various cases it is not at all. As noted, historical versions, especially the longest ones, appeared more exclusionary than more recent neo varieties, generally shorter in duration and more «civilianized» and less illiberal. The former began as authoritarian and have often opened only to serve the political interests of leaders not ready to step down. The neo-Kemalist version is instigated by younger generations of officers in a way more socialized to the liberal Geist. Yet whatever their forms, such regimes have started by a breach of constitutional legality and civilian rule, and even if they could tolerate a certain level of opposition, with the institutions supposed to channel it, such as parties and parliaments, their authority in the end remains based on their coercive capabilities and the military’s potential domestic role. They are hybrid systems, whose civilianized outlook could just be a cover for “recycled” or “laundered” military rule, obstructing any further possibility of democratic consolidation. Not that any sequencing be postulated, a new model of military relations to politics, more low-noise, less intrusive, seems to have emerged.

The Non-Intrusive Model

Among the categories of military relations to politics proposed here, the present model is the most recent. If the clichéd word «coup» seems almost inadequate to define it, it remains however a form of interference with politics. In that regard, it is distinctive from the Western-managerial model; the idiom non-intrusive, indeed, is simply a commodity of language to signify it is minimally invasive. It is so both from the standpoint of its modus operandi as well as from the intentions and the objectives of its protagonists.

Generally, it takes place in a postauthoritarian political context (democratic or hybride) and in a postWestphalian time moreover of tempered sovereignty that licenses the censure of illiberal posture by transnational regimes that have become guardians of the political-constitutional rightness with the power to sanction its violations.³² It consists therefore in a rather modest and self-contained interfering in the realm of politics carried out to monitor a situation perceived as problematical, usually in the name of good governance and in the interests of the society. As it might imply a reevaluation of the country’s political balance, it could be broadened in scope with penalties against civilian politicians for their misuse or their violation of democratic rules, through their displacement followed by a temporary occupation of power, together with the promise of a rapid new throw-in.³³ Moreover, these low-intensity interventions, be they remedial, arbitratory, censoring or vetoing, often pretend to pass for a recourse simply anticipating or responding to people’s deceptions and desires.

Thus this type of action bears resemblance with those observed in the early phases of praetorianism, a few years after independances, when the military, often with the public opinion implicit consent, sometimes explicitly pleaded, intervened to replace inept or corrupt civilian governments. If nowadays, it has lost the assertive redempting outlook it pretended to have in the past, it seeks its justification out of the various discontents born from posttransitional malfunctionings under civilian guidance. The move by the military appears therefore as a form of regulatory judgment on appeal, and all the more so when it is expected to be, even partly welcome by the populations whose expectations it anticipates. Should the military continues to engage in politics in the future, it will probably be under such that pattern.

At the same time, the non-intrusive model is not completly foreign with the two aforediscussed models. The storyline justifying the entree of uniformed personnel on the political scene focuses on the defence of liberal democratic norms, of which they pretend to be the guardians, and above all their explicitly voiced intention to quickly return to barracks and serve obediently a legitimate civilian government, as attested by the rapid reestablishment of political normality, suggests a proximity with the Western managerial pattern. Yet, it is always potentially Kemalist, even sometimes with a praetorian twist,³⁴ either because the military become intruders and keep for too long the commands of power, or because they decide, as fresh retirees or having traded kaki fatigues for muftis, to compete to win the elections they have organized after their intervention.

So to be distinctive from standard coups and take over, this type of military intervention in politics ought be minimally invasive, brief in duration and followed by a speedy restoration of constitutional normalcy, under the aegis of civilian politics; in other words, on the part of the military, a prompt return to barracks.

To the mid-2010s, seven occurrences could be regarded as proceeding from that logic; they are offered by Algeria, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Mali and Niger (on two successive occasions in each of these two last countries), in a more of less clear-cut fashion and to be examined here chronologically.

The first intervention in Niger, conducted in April 1999, ended the neo-Kemalist regime under Baré (who was killed during the operation). It was led by the chief of the presidential guard, Major Daouda Malam Wanké, on behalf of democratic governance that had been flouted by Baré’s rule. New elections were held again and a civilian government set up under Mamadou Tandja who had became president the same year, to be reelected in 2004 (Alou 2008). The second monitoring episode, still in the name of constitutional legality, occured in February 2010 against Tandja who was planning to modify the fundamental law to give the system a presidential structure and to extend his mandate for three more years after having dissolved the parliament and the constitutional court which opposed him. Major Salou Djibo responsible for the move, as head of the Supreme council for the Restoration of Democracy (a telling designation), prepared new elections which were held in April 2010 and won by Mahamadou Issoufou, a former Premier and president of the National assembly (Baudais and Chauzal 2011).

Mali offers a similar instance of two episodes of the same pattern, though chronologically more discontinuous. The first time, it was the incapacity of President Moussa Traoré, in power since a successful coup in 1968 (as Captain), to deal with the democratic demands presented by the various composing groups of the opposition (grouped in the Alliance for Democracy in Mali) in the early 1990s, which was at the origin of his eviction at the end of March 1991 by (then) Lieutenant-Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré. Following the process adopted in many Francophone countries to engage the political transition, Touré organized a national conference and prepared a new constitution. However, he abstained from seeking an electoral mandate and it was the candidate of the opposition, Alpha Oumar Konaré, who got elected as head of state (Clark 1995). Ironically, the second time, it was Touré’s tenure, inaugurated in April 2002 after his successful run for the presidency which he was reelected to in May 2007,³⁵ that was terminated by a coup in March 2012, supplanted by the National Committee for the Restoration of the Democracy and the State, under Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo’s lead (Whitehouse 2012). Actually, the operation, condemned outside as well as by most political parties, appears somewhat ambiguous. What its protagonists reproached Touré for was his mishandling of the Tuareg and the Islamist rebellions in the Northern part of the country, but also his disinterest for military affairs and lack of support to uniformed personnel, itself divided. Because, the take-over led nowhere, creating more problems than could be solved (rebels in the North tried to proclaim their independence), Sanogo, less than a month after he displaced Touré resigned after remitting power to a transitional civilian government which permitted in November 2013 the election of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

In Guinea, after Lansana Conté’s successor to power, self-proclaimed president Captain Dadis Camara, prove too autocratic and whimsical, the military intervened again in December 2009, this time to restore a civilian and democratic governance. This was done under Brigadier Sekouba Konaté who had been Camara’s Defense minister but had got fired when he sought to arrest the man responsible of the massacres of September 2009. The following December, Camara who had been wounded, was excited in Burkina Faso. Konaté presided an interim government to organize new elections, only opened to civilians, won by Alpha Condé who will be reelected in October 2015: the first democratic elections ever in the country.

In the Ivory Coast, the long tenure of President Felix Houphouet-Boigny ended with his death in December 1993 and the accession to power of Henri Konan Bédié, as interim first then elected head of state in 1995. Until then, as already observed, the tradition of civilian rule, the low-profile of a fairly legalist military institution, with a rather stable, yet modest, number of troops, clearly positioned the country’s civil-military relations as belonging to the Western-managerial type.

But afterwards, the regime grew oppressive in a context of corruption and economic and social crisis. Bédié’s xenophobic policy of ivoirité excluding non-Ivorian born and Northern Muslim led to a mounting opposition that could not be controlled. Discontent had spread in the armed forces, due to the latent marginalization of heretofore pampered officers, and to aggrieved rank and file and NCOs, those who had served in the Central African Republic under the UN auspices but excluded from special bonuses and those from Northern areas rendered mutinous by the regime’s ethnic discrimination. Resulting interhierarchical feuds, disobedience, even rebellion and delinquency, disorganized the institution and led the Chief of Staff, General Robert Gueï, to take over in December 1999 (Dozon 2000; Kieffer 2000; Ouegui Goba 2000). After having given the impression that he did not intend to stay in power, he decided to run for the presidential elections that he lost. Thus the Ivorian case is ambivalent, as it seems to proceed from the non-intrusive model, yet not by design but simply because General Gueï was not chosen in the elections he organized in October 2000. The circumstances surrounding this intervention was already announcing that the Ivory Coast civil-military relations was shifting toward the disarticulation pattern.

By comparison with these instances, the case of Algeria is perhaps equivocal. As noted, by the end of 1992, the military, led by influential high-ranking members of the People’s National Armed Forces (code-named “Janviéristes”) intervened to stop the electoral national process (that was part of the reforms engaged by Chadli Bendjedid’s presidency) that seemed to be won by the Islamists, who had prevailed in the first round of the legislative elections. This intervention, which also ended Bendjedid’s mandate, was justified by the fear of an Islamist preponderance, by the subsequent threat on secularism (in that, it had a Kemalist tone) and by the “preservation of the nation’s vital interests”. But it also disrupted a process of political liberalization, covering for the decline of the National Liberation Front that seemed to have exhausted the capital of trust accumulated during and after the war for independence; above all, it plunged the country in a dramatic internal conflict (Stora 2000; Souaïdia 2000). The appointment and the election of General Liamine Zeroual reset Algeria on the neo-Kemalist track.

As it is conceived here from empirically complex experiments, this monitoring model implies from the armed forces a modicum of political neutrality and apparent respect, if not full adherence to democratic values, something not always easy to observe in an immediate postpraetorian period. Furthermore, the military is expected to function as an institution normally obedient to civilian prescriptions, but whose expectations as a profession are met, and internal tensions regulated if not appeased, which supposed solved a number of issues.³⁶ It is the frailty of still recent democratic experiments, vulnerable either to political/social polarizations, or the no longer bearable unpopularity of top political authorities, which motivates a temporary military intervention, even if the impact of possible material grievances or of its instigators’ belief that they are capable of mobilizing the polity by themselves, cannot be always excluded.

The acceptability if not the legitimacy of the model, of course, is negatively correlated with the rate of recurrence of interventions and the subsequent constitutional disruptions it implies. Moreover, a history of a too manifest instability within the ranks, affected from within by corruption, unrest and discontent, prone to plots and mutinies, will contribute to undermine the credibility of any idea of arbitration or regulation supposed to justify the action of the military, and make it, on the contrary, appear clearly as a threat for the political system. The Malian military began giving such an impression after various episodes of internal unrest in 1994 and 1996 particularly; undeniably the intervention of March 2012 was also expressing material grievances as much as a political discontent about the regime policy in the North. The same could be said of the Algerian military, whose highly repressive tactics to quell the Islamist opposition started to trouble the public opinion, while showing signs of internal division, notably among senior officers, and disorganization in the ranks (Addi 1999, 2002; Bourrat 2012; Martinez 2000).

Furthermore, and quite importantly, this type of military relations to politics, if unfrequent, brisk and mildly intrusive, may indeed pass for benign, even useful given its remedial dimension (Powell 2014a), given also the positive image the armed forces might enjoy in the public. Nevertheless, it is intrinsically problematical as it attests the enduring difficulty for many in the ranks to keep away from the political scene, as if addicted. So much justified it could be sometimes perceived, this style of political interference is ambivalent from the viewpoint of the normalization and the institutionalization of civilian supremacy and, beyond, the consolidation of democracy. Should it be reiterated, even episodically, it trivializes the tutelary role of the military and ultimately perverts the nature of the political order where it is tolerated, if not welcome. It is certainly the case when their protagonists decide, after their intervention, to run for the elections they organize, if not take advantage of the restored constitutional legality, and enter a Kemalist cycle.

Such a possibility to penetrate the political realm smoothly under the flag of a «good coup», compromises any prospect for civil-military separation, while it encourages the existence and the thriving of a «postmilitary elite» (N’Diaye 2009a; Obi 2011). An elite which perceives itself as in reserve of the nation and capable to participate to its government, perhaps even, as during praetorian times but in a far more sophisticated way, with the feeling of being key players eligible to handle it as any other political group. So much civilianized and socialized to the narratives and the trappings of the good governance, so much emancipated from its professional culture, and free from any corporate motives it pretends to be, nevertheless it is inevitably different from civilian elites in its conceptions of the state, its relations to authority and force, its political referentials, its networks, notably with the other security milieus, not to mention its other business connections; and all the more so if they have been associated with former military regimes. Perpetuating the transition phase, when it does not simply jeopardize its democratic strenghtening, this type of political interference contributes first to pervert, to the point of hybridation, governing modes, eventhough these seem formally liberal and civilian; secondly, by maintaining the transition at intermediate levels under consolidation, at which the process is the most fragile, it puts civil peace at risk (Collier and Hoeffler 2005). For many then, a «good coup d’Etat» is only a myth (Miller 2011), and the regime it leads to simply proceeds from a form of «garrison democracy» (Omotola 2009), which demonstrates the difficulties that African military, even today, have to turn away from politics and to content with barracks life (Luckham 2004; Malan 2000; Thiriot 2008).

The Disarticulation Model

The word «disintegration» lacks indeed precision simply because, as there are always degrees in the process (with disintegration or dissolution properly speaking at the far end), it materializes under various and changing shapes, all the more so given the societal and political specificities of the settings affected. Therefore, other idioms, such as fragmentation, disorganization, degradation, or self-demobilization could applied as well. Moreover, that state of affairs is inevitably temporary, either because the polity site where it happens collapses or mutates completly as a consequence, or inversely because it gets restructured, often through external assistance.

As for civil-military relations, disarticulation defines a range of situations subsumed by the breaking up of any control, within as well as without, over the armed forces, which are no longer capable or disposed to assume their institutional mandate: delivering security. Left to themselves from above, they separate into rival factions and bands, some still obedient and loyal to their authorities, other simply dissolving, some forming or joining insurgent groups, other acting on their own as gangs; sometimes, they take on all these postures simultaneously, part time soldiers, rebels (hence the neologism «sobels» coined to describe them), as well as delinquants. These armed groups, be they headed by power-hungry chieftains hoping to negotiate their place in the forthcoming post-conflict regime, or by self-promoted predatory warlords looking to sustain their leadership, are fighting with any sort of means, criminal notably, to hold territories where they have ethnic affiliates or simply because they offer opportunities of plunder, or constitute economically rentable enclave to arm and feed their troops, while enriching themselves (Bøås and Dunn 2007; Gershonil 1996; Reno 1998).³⁷

The intricate causes for such situations have been amply discussed already, and do not need to be detailed here.³⁸ They originate from within dysfunctioning militaries, plagued by demoralization, disobedience, desertion and revolt, confronted to a disabled command structures. Such institutional pathologies are the products of various aggravated deficits at the professional and organizational levels, induced by interservices frictions, interhierarchical feuds, transgenerational tensions, incompetent and corrupted leadership, and so on. They also result from a civilian tutelage, either ignorant of, or uninterested by military affairs, if not distrustful of uniformed personnels, often administered via fraudulent and damaging clientelist practices, or by coup-fearing leaders who purposefully undermine their armed forces even at the risk of domestic insurgency (Powell 2014b). Indeed, past yet recent episodes of political activism and occupation of power by the military have also left their deleterious marks on internal cohesion and moral.

At a systemic level, this process of disintegration is precipitated by a regime that has become unable to insure the discharge of basic statal functions and most needed public services, for reasons ranging from government’s corruption or ineptitude, to economic troubles related to decreasing revenues, devaluation and all other structural adjustments related to the logic of the new global political economy. As a result, the state legitimacy and societal civility melt down, while bottom up violence due to unemployment and desperation, to insurgent or secessionist tendencies that can no longer be overcome, fueled moreover by the ever-growing availability of weapons, develops and contributes to polarize the whole society along identitarist lines to the point of civil war that security forces, because of their own dereliction, are unable or unwilling to handle, often inviting foreign interventions. The easy transborder diffusion of internal tensions and clashes generates regional multilevel conflict systems (Lanotte 2003; Marchal 2006) that tend to last and consolidate, especially where the kind of natural resources available permit warlordism and rebellion to prosper.³⁹

At some point such a plight seemed to have prevailed in other countries than those of French colonial succession,⁴⁰ but it was not long before they became at their turn affected. Yet, the deterioration of the armed forces and the dislocation of civil-military relations, have not always reached the same dramatic proportions. The greater resilience of their state structures and military institutions, though sometimes fragilized by a long praetorian involvement, could be an explanation together with France’s continued influence and unwillingness to let political situations degenerate in that area.⁴¹

Chad appears as the country having entered first in this logic of armed confrontation between successively winning military leaders and rebellions, alternatively supported by Libya and France, according to contradictory strategies. Ethnic and religious considerations, along a North-South divide, completed this situation of endemic conflictuality. After the eviction of the leader of the independence, François Tombalbaye, following a military coup by General Félix Malloum in 1975, the country lived through coexistence first, then alternation in power of Goukouni Oueddeï (1979–1982), Hissen Habré (1982–1990), and afterwards Idriss Déby, without counting lesser and more ephemeral personalities at the head of other politico-military movements (Buijtenhuijs 1998; Charlton and May 1989; Conesa 2001). The political fate of the Chadian people was thus in the hands of leaders, incapable to represent it as a whole, each of them seeking the support of specific religious or ethnic groups, commanding a small quasi-personal force controlling a portion of the territory which alternatively serves as rear-base for attack or counter-attack, or as refuge. By the end of 1990, Déby, with French assistance, seized N’Djamena, the capital city, forced Habré to exil, and took over the state. Elected president in 1996, he was continuously confronted by numerous politico-military groups, as well as army coups attempts (as in May 2004 and March 2005) which fragilized his tenure that became more authoritarian. There were clashes with the Movement for Justice and Democracy for Chad in 2003 and May 2005, and in April 2006, insurgents of the United Front for Democratic Change almost succeeded to get him out. In the early years of his third mandate,⁴² in February 2008 and in May 2009, he faced attacks by the Unified Military Command (FUC), another rebellious group and was besieged in N’Djamena that was nearly seized, saved in extremis by French and European troops.⁴³ Yet Déby was reelected in April 2011 and, while some kind of stabilization set in at last,⁴⁴ and he continued his policy of regional power projection, helping President François Bozizé, then the latter’s foe in the Central African Republic, later Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, intervening with France in Mali, and in Nigeria against Boko Haram lately; Chadian armed forces having thus become one of the most militarily active and reliable in the region. That involvement in external operations surely helped their professionalization and their control by the regime, while giving the latter a greater capacity to quell internal insurgencies and rebellions.⁴⁵

In Central African Republic, the logic of disintegration is different. The country went praetorian at the very end of 1965 with the coup against David Dacko, led by Colonel Jean-Bedel Bokassa, then the army chief of staff, whose autocratic rule was associated with such ostentatious and sultanistic excesses that he was soon deconsidered in the international public opinion and ousted by France in September 1979. With his departure and the ephemeral return of David Dacko, instability set in.⁴⁶ General André Kolingba’s post-coup regime (1981–1993) was punctuated by various overthrow attempts, until a pluralist electoral process was engaged, which permitted Ange-Felix Patassé, a former Premier, to rise to the presidency in October 1993 (which he was reelected to six years later). At that time however, the armed forces, fragilized by internal divisions dating from Bokassa and Kolingba’s recruiting policies, then discontented by budgetary and financial problems and subsequent delays in the payment of salaries, turned against Patassé. Soldiers grew vulnerable to calls of revolt, as attested by recurrent mutinies, throughout 1996 and early 1997. Tensions, induced by identity manipulations, between men of Yakoma origin, Kolingba’s ethnic group, and the presidential guard made up of Baya, affiliates of President Patassé, degraded further civil-military relations and the armed forces torn into opposing groups.

The situation was complicated by the presence of foreign troops called on to restore some law and order. That of France led to clashes between April 1996 and January 1997, that of the Inter-African Mission for the Bangui Agreements Watch, followed in April 1998 by the United Nations Mission in Central African Republic (MINURCA) in charge of the disarmament of militias, precipitated violent demonstrations in March and June 1997 against Chadian and Senegalese units, also called in. To quell an attempted coup led by General Kolingba in May 2001, Patassé had to appeal to the Congo Democratic Republic and Libya. None of these interventions (in February 2000, the MINURCA was replaced by the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office in Central Africa—BONUCA) helped. In 2002, General François Bozizé, the army chief of staff, who had been demoted and had fled with his men to Chad, returned to seize Bangui, the capital city, and supplanted Patassé as head of state in March 2003. Despite the succession of peace-keeping forces (after the BONUCA, it was that of the Community of Sahel-Sahara States, then the Multinational Force of Central Africa, the Mission for the Consolidation of Peace in Central Africa, the International Support Mission to the Central African Republic, and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic), armed civil war continued in a climate of human rights violations and insecurity (Mehler 2012), fueled by foreign conflicts spillover, such as the war in Darfur. Bozizé’s regime, supported by France and Chad, was faced by the militarized rebellion from the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR) led by Michel Djotodia. The fragile truce signed in 2007 did not last long. The Séléka, a large coalition of several groups, allied to the UFDR, with a Muslim majority, captured several cities in the North, East and Center of the country and was able to enter Bangui in March 2013. Bozizé left again the country and Djotodia took over the presidency. Séléka’s brutalities precipitated self-defense groups among non-Muslims (the Anti-Balaka) which grew in size and militarized to the point of attacking the Séléka and the regime, creating a third civil war, now with a confessional and regional dimensions, stirred by terrorist groups such as Boko Haram and al-Qaeda in Islamic Magbreb, that French troops and the inter-African forces of the MISCA and MINUSCA could not stop (Flichy de La Neuville 2014; Kane 2014). If violences seem to recede after Djotodia resigned (in January 2014) and cease-fire agreements signed (in July and January 2015 in Nairobi) by the transition government (headed by Catherine Samba-Panza), state power and public order are far to be restored (Doui-Wawaye 2015), though the reconstruction of a national armed forces has began.

A similar situation has affected the Ivory Coast after 2000, though the process of military disintegration and alienation has began under Konan Bédié’s tenure. The elections of October 2000, won by Laurent Gbagbo but contested by General Gueï who had organized them and had hoped to win, led to clashes between his guard and the population and the gendarmerie (Le Pape and Vidal 2002). Though Gbagbo was declared head of state, instability did not cease. Coups were fomented in September 2002 in the three biggest cities, and several political personalities were assassinated (among whom Gueï), attesting the violence of the anti-governmental rebellion. Many former excluded soldiers, trained in and armed by Burkina Faso and Mali,⁴⁷ occupied the Northen half of the country, while the West was invaded by two other groups from Liberia. These were regrouped in the Forces nouvelles, 7000 strong, under the command of Guillaume Soro and General Soumaïla Bakayoko, which occupied next to 60% of the territory, opposed to the Ivory Coast Armed Forces joined by several armed groups (Ayissi 2003; Beugré 2002). Thanks to France and the Economic Community of West African States, a cease-fire was signed in October followed in January 2003 by the Linas-Marcoussis Agreement, with a power-sharing government and the interposition of French and West African troops between the belligerent forces. Yet, tensions continued and degenerated with France accused of partiality by both parties, while exactions were committed eveywhere. In October 2004, war reignited at the same time the French contingent got in conflict with various groups attached to Gbagbo (Rueff 2004). In March 2007, after much fighting, the Ouagadougou Agreements were signed, and civil peace seemed restored, yet Gbagbo’s rejection of the results of the presidential election (which gave the lead to Alassane Ouattara), revived the North-South conflict which lasted until his arrest in April 2011. Since then, under Ouattara, reelected president in 2015, there has been a return to political stability while the economy took off again.

The Republic of Congo seems to be a milder version of the disintegrating process, undoubtedly because it was shorter that the cases just analysed. Very soon after its independence, the country was dominated by a highly radicalized praetorian regime. The military took over in 1966 (after an earlier attempt against Fulbert Youlou) quickly controlled by captain Marien Ngouabi who set up a Marxism-oriented govermnent. After his assassination in 1977, he was briefly replaced by Colonel Joachim Yhombi Opango, and more durably after 1979 by Colonel Denis Sassou Nguesso, who maintained the monopartist system and the ideological frame of his predecessors. If the military sought to dominate the process of political transition the regime went through in the early 1990s, it ended up losing control of the situation and the national conference fell into the hands of the opposition. In 1991, civilians came back to power, but Sassou Nguesso, remained president until June 1992. Then elections were held and gave the advantage to Pascal Lissouba; in 1997 in an atmosphere of heightened internal tensions, Sassou Nguesso took over by declaring himself president again.

If the Congolese armed forces never constituted a very stable milieu, cohesion was maintained in the past thanks to procedures of subjective control recalling those operated in communist systems. The disintegration they began experiencing in the 1980s was the result of the tensions in the civilian sphere. That was deeply divided, politicians forming very frail political coalitions, which allowed the military to become autonomous at first, then to play umpire. Attempts to regain its control, notably after the eviction of the Chief of staff, General Michel Mokoko, finally failed. With the incapacity of political parties and groups to overcome their disagreements, the military ended up crumbling, all the more irremediably that confrontations between civilians factions which it espoused, operated on a high degree of violence and delinquency fed by a sharp “militian culture” (Dorrier-Apprill 1997; Bazenguissa-Ganga 1999); cease-fires never lasted and from 1992, civil war went on. The lines of cleavage in the forces were complex, intergenerational and hierarchical, organizational and inter-services, with a strong ethnic overtone, notably between Mbochi and Kongo-Lari groups, exacerbated moreover by foreign influences, notably Angolan. At the end of the 1990s however, Sassou-Nguesso was able to recentralize somewhat the state authority over the country, reorienting the revenues of oil resources in a way to buy a modicum of civil peace.

Guinea civil-military relations after the end of Sékou Touré’s personal rule in 1984, which has been discussed as a mix of praetorian and Kemalist models, presented also signs of disarticulation so acute were tensions in the armed forces. These have tended to factionalize during General Lansana Conté’s leadership, who took over after Touré’s death, according to individual ambitions, complicated by ethnic rivalries. Prime minister, Colonel Diarra Traoré, co-author of the 1984 coup with Conté, tried a year later to depose him but was finally arrested and executed. He was a Malinke, Conté belonged to the Soussou group, and his regime seemed to have been opposed also by Mandé officers. In February 1996, Conté himself was detained during a mutiny by soldiers supposed to be ethnic opponents. Civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia aggravated the situation, with cross-borders moves of uncontrolled elements and other security threats. But at close look, internal tensions in the armed forces has never led to any splitting. The military establishment kept its integrity and never seriously threatened Conté’s rule. As pointed out, given its business linkages, its large autonomy, its copious budget, there was no reason for it to fall apart nor to revolt (Bah 2015). Interestingly, moreover, adjacent civil wars, though intense, have never diffused in the country, at least with the same detrimental effects as elsewhere (Arief 2009; Bah 2012; Kanafani 2006). For all these reasons, Guinea’s civil-military regime is only a borderline case of the model.

It goes without saying that those complex situations, sketchily rendered here for lack of space, were accompanied by human rights violations, displacements of populations, ethnic and religious cleansings, economic devastations, coerced enrolments (notably children), and so on. As a result, return to normality, with the reconstruction of the state centrality and of the social contract between the government and the population, is never an easy process. Sassou-Nguesso and Déby’s regimes have been able to extract their country from such a predicament with strategies mixing co-optation and repression and a better allocation of national resources. But, in general it is a rather protracted process to be run and that needs to be assisted by the international community. It requires appropriate and costly means which go beyond those necessary to counter ordinary underdevelopment, so much economies and societies are distorted (Ajakaiye and Gadir Ali 2009; Collier 2009). The use of natural resources has to be reorganized as to benefit all sectors of the population (Ballentine and Nitzschke 2005). Power-sharing or consociationalist mechanisms have to be institutionalized, but in such a way to minimize their «hidden costs» (Tull and Mehler 2005).⁴⁸

A key factor in that process is the restoration of a unified national military institution and the state monopolization of armed violence. This supposed a threefold policy: the disarmament and demobilization, the resocialization and reintegration of all those that have been involved in the conflicts; the amalgamation into corps that had remained loyal to the “legitimate” leader, of key rebelling and insurgent units and their commands, together with the dissolution of militias; the (re)professionalization of all military personnel along Western-managerial norms of civil-military relations and within inter-African multilateral cooperation, that foreign programs of defence institution building seek to promote. The success of such actions is never automatic and immediate. They are complex and costly (Herbst 1996–1997). Demobilization, reintegration, amalgamation (Erickson Baaz and Verweijen 2013; Lewis 1999) and program of reforms (N’Diaye 2009b; Luckham and Hutchful 2010; Hutton 2010; Isima 2010; Augé and Klaousen 2010) are not easy to handle, as well as professionalization (Soeters and Van Ouytsel 2014). As shown in the case of Central Africa, disarmament works only if a modicum of rule of law and order is ensured first (Faltas 2000).⁴⁹ Often, moreover, international peace missions, for many reasons linked to their norms of engagement, are not always successful in coping with problems (Bedzigui 2008).

Conclusion

Through that rather long postpraetorian period of transition, begun at the turn of the 1980s-1990s and during which democracy was tried out, four dominant models of military relations to politics can be identified in Francophone Africa, with several states having experimented shifts from one to another. Indeed, given the number of cases composing the area under consideration here, these models are simplified ideal-types that do not operate under the pure forms under which they have been analytically described here. The reality is rather crossbred, not always easy to situate and define with certainty, even to the point of displaying sometimes traits reminiscent of the pre-1990 praetorian authoritarian brand, postulated here as now outmoded. Lastly, the case of some states of the region, could not be fully detailed, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo⁵⁰ and to a lesser extent Bunrundi and Rwanda (the three former Belgian colonies), or examined at all, as, for example, the Comoros, where the government was taken-over in February 1999 by Colonel Azali who got elected president in April 2002 (again in April 2016), and which approximates the neo-Kemalist paradigm.⁵¹

A tempting interrogation at this point, though not completly futile, concerns the evolution to be expected, its direction and whether it is going to be toward the Western-managerial model, perceived as the only appropriate one in a democratic setting. Of course, should democracy expand and consolidate, together with an economic growth delivering a largely shared prosperity, it will undoubtedly prevail (Lindberg and Clark 2008). Yet, these processes are slow and, at any step before consolidation is achieved, remain precarious. Governments, therefore, in order to preserve a modicum of domestic peace, have to be able to mobilize adequate and efficient coercive means, notably against still potentially dissenting groups (either from low productive areas left out from economic growth, or simply marginalized in a majority rule system), and until dependable police forces are in place, that role is handled by the military. That type of situation tends to hinder the definitive disengagement of the military from politics and the recognition by its members of civilian supremacy.

Moreover, despite its deleterious effects, past political activism still adulterates the military culture and fuels the idea that officers, who often enjoy a positive image in the public opinion, are a politically legitimate and able recourse; such a factor goes against the political neutralization of the khaki establishment, not to mention those cases where it has been able to secure a privileged and unrestricted status.

But, the main circumstance likely to distort further this principal-agent divide is induced by the mounting geopolitical threats affecting the whole continent, under the form of diffusing civil wars, systems of conflicts, and above all regional terrorist deployments. Inevitably, they enhance, through states of exception and emergency regimes, the role of armed forces, all the more so that foreign traditional security purveyors, whose direct intervention has become uncertain and problematical, are now reduced to a role of assistance to inter-African operations. That situation benefits local military establishments, inclined then to turn into new security rentiers, a tendency that not only supports their entrenched positions but also their capacity, if not their legitimacy to interfere in political affairs. This trend could even affect countries where the Western-managerial model seems to take roots, as in Morocco and Senegal where the radicalization of Islam constitutes new forms of political opposition (Turquoi 2001; Villalón and Kane 1998; Zeghal 2005).

On the other hand, military incursions in politics are nowadays reproved by the international community and associated with sanctions in the name of proper democratic governance. Consequently, it is probable that, should such intrusions be decided and undertaken, they will take the guise of a rather sophisticated and stealthy forms of political monitoring, wholly foreign to the aggressive putschism of earlier praetorian or Kemalist generations, with a briefest as possible, if any, occupation of power, in other words in a minimally invasive fashion. The goal would be limited to censure, veto and/or oust leaders, often in conjunction with a popular protest, either because they have clearly deviated from the democratic norms, or breach the social contract with the population by exclusionary policies (against those led then to find the revolt option or alliance with outside insurgents more profitable), or have been revealed incapable to safeguard the country’s sovereignty against threats; this before letting the political/institutional processes reoperate while staying out of it or infiltrating it as new-born civilians. This light footprint arbitration, with an asserted remedial quality, is consistent with the younger generations of military personnel, more socialized to the ideals of rule of law and democracy, and might be more acceptable to, if not tolerated by the international community, all the more so that there is no complete consensus and coherence in viewpoints on dealing with those issues (Witt 2013).

The use of more hidden non-intrusive methods of bearing upon the central decision-making process (preventive veto and dissuasion, intimidation and blackmail, etc.) could even render this low-intensity model more stealthy, somehow closer to the managerial model, though not isomorphic as in the latter, military influence is not converted in such ways as to threatened civilian supremacy.

This expectation, which anticipates the end of «coup-ism» (Croissant et al. 2010), needless to say, holds only if democratization is still the political horizon of the region’s states, as it had seemed at least a decade ago. Should however, as predicted by many analysts of the «end of the transitions era» and «democratic roll-back»,⁵² hybrid authoritarian electoral regimes tend to become the rising norm, with slower elite turnover (given the no-limit number for political mandates), powerless «agencies of restraint», conditional enjoyment of rights, etc., on the top of other structural vulnerabilities (Belkin and Schofer 2003), within an international context nowadays more opened to influential non democratic powers and donors. Thusly, military relations to politics in Africa will probably continue to operate according to other models than the Western-managerial, noticeably the low-intensity and the neo-Kemalist ones as dominating.