FRENCH TROOPS WITHDRAWAL FROM NIGER TO START THIS WEEK

Fri 06 October 2023:

French troops will start from this week to leave Niger, France’s armed forces ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

France currently has a contingent of 1,500 troops stationed in Niger as part of a Sahel counterinsurgency campaign.

Niger’s military rulers have asked France to withdraw its troops and its ambassador, as France has refused to recognise the new military authority.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the withdrawal of French troops from Niger.

“France has decided to withdraw its ambassador. In the next hours our ambassador and several diplomats will return to France,” Macron told French television in an interview, without giving details over how this would be organised.

Macron added that military cooperation was “over” and French troops would withdraw in “the months and weeks to come” with a full pullout “by the end of the year”.

The French president has repeatedly spoken of making a historic change to France’s post-colonial imprint in Africa but analysts say Paris is losing influence across the continent especially in the face of a growing Chinese, Turkish and Russian presence.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threatened military action to restore Bazoum but so far its threats, which were strongly supported by France, have not transferred into action.

Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, all three states were members of the France-supported G5 Sahel alliance joint force with Chad and Mauritania, launched in 2017 to tackle armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) groups.

They have undergone coups since 2020, most recently Niger, where soldiers in July overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum, who cooperated with the West in the fight against Sahel-based armed groups.

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened to intervene militarily in Niger over the coup, but the regional bloc has toned down its war rhetoric in recent weeks.

Mali and Burkina Faso quickly responded by saying that any such operation would be deemed a “declaration of war” against them.

Relations between France and the three states have soured since the coups.

France has been forced to withdraw its troops from Mali and Burkina Faso, and is in a tense standoff with the military that seized power in Niger.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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