The military leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have hailed a newly signed treaty as a step “towards greater integration” between the three countries, in the latest showing of their shift away from traditional regional and Western allies.

During a summit in the Nigerien capital of Niamey on Saturday, the three leaders signed a confederation treaty that aims to strengthen a mutual defence pact announced last year, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).

The signing capped the first joint summit of the leaders – Niger’s General Abdourahmane Tchiani, Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traore, and Mali’s Colonel Assimi Goita – since they came to power in successive coups in their bordering West African nations.

It also came just months after the three countries withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc in January.

Speaking at the summit on Saturday, Tchiani called the 50-year-old ECOWAS “a threat to our states”.

The West African economic bloc had suspended the three countries after their respective military takeovers, which occurred in July 2023 in Niger, September 2022 in Burkina Faso and August 2021 in Mali.

ECOWAS also imposed sanctions on Niger and Mali, but the bloc’s leaders have held out hope for the trio’s eventual return.

“We are going to create an AES of the peoples, instead of an ECOWAS whose directives and instructions are dictated to it by powers that are foreign to Africa,” Tchiani said.

Burkina Faso’s Traore also accused foreign powers of seeking to exploit the countries. The three nations have regularly accused former colonial ruler France of meddling in ECOWAS.

“Westerners consider that we belong to them and our wealth also belongs to them. They think that they are the ones who must continue to tell us what is good for our states,” he said.

“This era is gone forever. Our resources will remain for us and our population’s.”

For his part, Mali’s Goita said the strengthened relationship means an “attack on one of us will be an attack on all the other members”.

Shifting influence

Reporting from Abuja on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris noted that the three military leaders met just a day before ECOWAS was set to have a meeting in the capital of Nigeria.

Efforts to mediate the countries’ return to the bloc were expected to be discussed, Idris said.

“Many people believe that the meeting in Niger was to counter whatever is coming [from] ECOWAS and to also outline their position: That they are not returning to the Economic Community of the West African States,” he explained.

Idris added the newly elected president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, recently visited the three countries in an informal capacity in an effort to mend the ties.

“However, it’s not clear whether or not he’s got a positive response,” he said.

Adama Gaye, a political commentator and former ECOWAS communications director, said the creation of the three-member Alliance of Sahel States has “weakened” the economic bloc.

Still, Gaye told Al Jazeera that “despite its real-name recognition, ECOWAS has not performed well when it comes to achieving regional integration, promoting intra-African trade in West Africa and also in ensuring security” in the region.

“So this justifies the feeling of many in West Africa – [the] ordinary citizenry and even intellectuals – [who are] asking questions about the standing of ECOWAS, whether it should be revised, reinvented,” he said, urging the bloc to engage in diplomacy to try to bridge the rift.

Violence and instability

The Niamey summit also came a day before the United States is set to complete its withdrawal from a key base in Niger, underscoring how the new military leaders have redrawn security relations that had defined the region in recent years.

Armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) have jockeyed for control of territory in all three countries, unleashing waves of violence and spurring concern in Western capitals.

But following the recent coups, the countries’ ties to Western governments have frayed.

French troops completed their withdrawal from Mali in 2022, and they left Niger and Burkina Faso last year.

Meanwhile, US Air Force Major General Kenneth Ekman said earlier this week that about 1,000 military personnel would complete their withdrawal from Niger’s Air Base 101 by Sunday.

The US is also in the process of leaving a separate, $100m drone base near Agadez in central Niger, which officials have described as essential to gathering intelligence about armed groups in the region.

While pushing out former Western allies, the military leaders in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have increasingly pursued security and economic ties with Russia.

However, it remains unclear if the new approach has helped to stem the violence that has plagued the countries, which are home to about 72 million people.

In 2023, Burkina Faso saw a massive escalation in violence, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) tracker.

In Niger, slight gains against armed groups largely backslid following the coup, according to ACLED.

Meanwhile, an offensive by Malian forces and Wagner mercenaries saw “elements” of the Russian-government-linked group “involved in the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, and looting of property, as well as triggering mass displacement”, ACLED said.

About three million people have been displaced by fighting across the countries.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — To a defiant President Joe Biden, the 2024 election is up to the public — not the Democrats on Capitol Hill. But the chorus of Democratic voices calling for him to step aside is growing, from donors, strategists, lawmakers and their constituents who say he should bow out.

The party has not fallen in line behind him even after the events that were set up as part of a blitz to reset his imperiled campaign and show everyone he wasn’t too old to stay in the job or to do it another four years.

On Saturday, a fifth Democratic lawmaker said openly that Biden should not run again. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota said that after what she saw and heard in the debate with Republican rival Donald Trump, and Biden’s “lack of a forceful response” afterward, he should step aside “and allow for a new generation of leaders to step forward.”

Craig posted one of the Democrats’ key suburban wins in the 2018 midterms and could be a barometer for districts that were vital for Biden in 2020.

With no public schedule on Saturday, the president and his aides were taking a step back from the fervor over the past few days. But Biden will head out campaigning again on Sunday in Philadelphia. And this coming week, the U.S. is hosting the NATO summit and the president is to hold a news conference.

Vice President Kamala Harris planned to campaign Saturday in New Orleans.

The president’s ABC interview on Friday night stirred carefully worded expressions of disappointment from the party’s ranks, and worse from those who spoke anonymously. Ten days into the crisis moment of the Biden-Trump debate, Biden is dug in.

With the Democratic convention approaching and just four months to Election Day, neither camp in the party can much afford this internecine drama much longer. But it is bound to drag on until Biden steps aside or Democrats realize he won’t and learn to contain their concerns about the president’s chances against Trump.

Even within the White House there were concerns the ABC interview wasn’t enough to turn the page.

Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez has been texting lawmakers and administration officials are encouraging them not to go public with their concerns about the race and the president’s electability, according to a Democrat granted anonymity to discuss the situation.

Most Democrats have stayed quieter in recent days, allowing the president’s team the space to show them — and Americans — he is up for the job with the rallies, interview and flurry of public events.

But Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, without breaking with Biden at this point, are pulling together meetings with members in the next few days to discuss options. It was clear that discontent among Democrats on Capitol Hill has not subsided, and privately many would prefer to see the president not run.

Many lawmakers are hearing from constituents at home and fielding questions. One senator was working to get others together to ask him to step aside.

Yet some senior lawmakers were now trying to bring the party behind their presumptive nominee. “Biden is who our country needs,” Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, who had raised questions about Biden in the aftermath of the debate, said after the interview.

Following the interview, a Democratic donor reported that many of the fellow donors he spoke with were furious, particularly because the president declined to acknowledge the effects his aging. Many of those donors are seeking a change in leadership at the top of the ticket, said the person, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Biden roundly swatted away calls Friday to step away from the race, telling telling voters at a Wisconsin rally, reporters outside Air Force One and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he was not going anywhere.

“Completely ruling that out,” he told reporters the rally.

Biden dismissed those who were calling for his ouster, instead saying he’d spoken with 20 lawmakers and they had all encouraged him to stay in the race.

Concern about Biden’s fitness for another four years has been persistent. In an August 2023 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, fully 77% of U.S. adults said Biden was too old to be effective for four more years. Not only did 89% of Republicans say that, but so did 69% of Democrats. His approval rating stands at 38%.

Biden has dismissed the polling, citing as evidence his 2020 surge to the nomination and win over Trump, after initially faltering, and the 2022 midterm elections, when polls suggested Republicans would sweep but didn’t, largely in part over the issue of abortion rights.

“I don’t buy that,” when he was reminded that he was behind in the polls. “I don’t think anybody’s more qualified to be president or win this race than me.”

At times, Biden rambled during the interview, which ABC said aired in full and without edits. Asked how he might turn the race around, Biden argued that one key would be large and energetic rallies like the one he held Friday in Wisconsin. When reminded that Trump routinely draws larger crowds, the president laid into his opponent.

“Trump is a pathological liar,” Biden said, accusing Trump of bungling the federal response to the COVID pandemic and failing to create jobs. “You ever see something that Trump did that benefited someone else and not him?”

Republicans, though, are squarely behind their candidate, and support for Trump, who at 78 is three years younger than Biden, has been growing.

And that’s despite Trump’s 34 felony convictions in a hush money trial, that he was found liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, and that his businesses were found to have engaged in fraud.

___

Miller and Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Saugatuck, Michigan, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

A police department in Canada believes over 6,500 gold bars have disappeared overseas after being stolen from an airport last year. 

The incident, which took place in April 2023 at Toronto’s Pearson International airport, was perhaps the most valuable gold heist in history. Police reported more than CA$20,000,000 worth of gold was stolen in the form of 6,600 serialized bars. 

“We believe a large portion has gone overseas to markets that are flush with gold,” lead investigator Det. Sgt. Mike Mavity said at a June 21 meeting of the Peel Police Service Board, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 

CANADIAN POLICE SAY 9 PEOPLE WILL BE CHARGED AFTER $20 MILLION WORTH OF GOLD WAS STOLEN LAST YEAR FROM AIRPORT

He continued, “That would be Dubai, or India, where you can take gold with serial numbers on it, and they will still honor it and melt it down.”

Mavity said he believes the gold was handed over to another party and melted down very shortly after the heist.

Suspects in the case include a jewelry store owner, a former Air Canada manager, and a warehouse employee. A total of nine individuals have been arrested in connection with the case.

TORONTO AIRPORT HEIST: $15M CONTAINER OF GOLD, VALUABLE ITEMS STOLEN FROM CARGO FACILITY

A photo of the falsified seafood order that was used to gain access to the Air Canada warehouse is displayed on a monitor. Peel Regional Police and the US Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau announced details and arrests made concerning the theft of 20 million dollars in gold from Pearson International Airport. (Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

The suspects reportedly used a completed bill for a seafood pick-up to forge paperwork that was given to a warehouse attendant.

Authorities believe a small amount of precious metal was melted down in the basement of a Mississauga jewelry store immediately following the heist. Only CA$90,000 has been recovered from the heist.

Police have attempted to draw connections between the stolen gold and cross-border gun trafficking, citing dozens of firearms seized from suspects in the investigation.

Sgt Mike Mavity of the Peel police, a lead investigator in the case, speaks to the media with the sum total of the gold so far recovered projected beside him. (Richard Lautens/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Two fully automatic weapons and several untraceable firearms were recovered, but authorities have not yet offered substantial evidence of connections to the illegal gun trade.