NEW NIGER PRESIDENT CALLS FRENCH OPERATION IN SAHEL ‘RELATIVE FAILURE’

Wed 31 March 2021:

Niger’s President-elect Mohamed Bazoum on Monday called the French-led operation to defeat jihadists in Africa’s Sahel region the coalition’s relative failure, arguing that a drawdown would not change the balance of power.

“We would have liked to see better results from our cooperation with the French army than what we have. This relative failure is our shared failure, a failure of the entire coalition,” he told RFI radio and France 24.

Bazoum suggested that a drawdown of French forces would not have a significant effect on events on the ground, provided France maintained the air support.

This comes more than a week after jihadists killed at least 137 villagers in an attack in western Niger.

More than 5,000 French soldiers are deployed under Operation Barkhane which is led by France alongside the G5 Sahel countries to fight against terrorist groups in the region, particularly al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and Daesh in the Greater Sahara.

However, their presence is not welcomed by all Malians, especially after the recent killings of several civilians in airstrikes by Barkhane forces. In this operation, about 100 civilians were killed. Last year September, a civilian in Gao was killed by a French soldier, which was termed “accidental” by the French army. On Oct. 23, 2017, 11 Malian soldiers detained by a terrorist group lost their lives during a counterterrorism operation led by the Barkhane forces.

In July 2020, in an article published on the A l’encontre website, author Guillaume Davranche listed five reasons for France to leave the Sahel – it is waging an endless war there, delaying a political solution, aggravating the situation, reinforcing a criminal system and its intervention is “imperialist.”