France to Withdraw Over 2K Troops from Africa’s Sahel

By Staff, Agencies

French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that his country will withdraw more than 2,000 troops from West Africa’s Sahel region in the coming months.

During the past years, the former colonial power has maintained military intervention in the volatile area under the pretext of fighting terrorism, but has failed in its purported mission.

After talks in a virtual summit with the leaders of five West African nations at the Elysee presidential Palace in Paris on Friday, Macron said France will pull out over 2,000 troops from its Barkhane force in Africa’s Sahel region by early next year and instead pivot its military presence to specialized regional forces.

The French Barkhane force, operating in Mali, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, currently has 5,000 troops in the region.

Macron said France would focus over the next six months on dismantling the Barkhane operation, closing bases in Sahel's north and reorganizing troops in the south of the region.

“France will first move its troops further south and then later start reducing their presence to around half the current level of some 5,100 soldiers,” he said.

“The French military will shut down Barkhane bases in Timbuktu, Tessalit and Kidal in northern Mali over the next six months, and start to reconfigure its presence in the coming weeks to focus particularly on the restive border area where Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger meet,” he added.

Macron also repeated claims that France’s military presence in the future will focus on neutralizing extremist operations and strengthening and training local armies.

Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum told a news conference after the Friday’s summit that he supported the French troop reduction, amid widespread criticism that the security situation in the region has worsened despite the French military presence.

"Five thousand French troops in Mali will not fix the problems in Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast or elsewhere. That is clear, and we must understand that," he said.

The French president announced last month that his country was ending its Barkhane mission eight years after it first intervened in the Sahel and would operate within a broader international alliance.

The Sahel, a semi-arid stretch of land south of the Sahara desert, has been in turmoil since 2012, when a number of armed separatists started targeting the local population in Mali.

As a former colonial power seeking significant military presence in Africa, France decided to send thousands of soldiers in 2013 to try to prevent separatist forces from reaching Mali’s capital, Bamako.