French troops have started leaving Niger more than two months after soldiers toppled the African country’s president, the military said on Wednesday.
More than 100 personnel left in two flights from the capital, Niamey, on Tuesday in the first of what would be several rounds of departures by the end of the year, French military spokesman Colonel Pierre Gaudilliere said.
All of them are returning to France, Gaudilliere said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Niger’s state television broadcast images of a convoy leaving a base in Ouallam in the north, saying it was bound for Chad.
The departure comes weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would end its military presence in Niger and pull its ambassador out of the country as a result of the coup that removed Mohamed Bazoum as president in late July.
About 1,500 French troops have been operating in Niger, training its military and conducting joint operations.
Also on Tuesday, the junta gave the UN resident coordinator in Niger, Louise Aubin, 72 hours to leave the country, the Nigerien Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
The junta cited “underhanded maneuvers” by the UN secretary-general to prevent its full participation in last month’s General Assembly in New York as one of the reasons.
The military rulers had wanted former Nigerien ambassador to the UN Bakary Yaou Sangare, who was made foreign minister after the coup, to speak on its behalf at the General Assembly.
However, Bakary did not receive credentials to attend after the deposed Nigerien government’s foreign minister sent the world body a letter “informing of the end of functions of Mr Bakary as permanent representative of Niger to the United Nations,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
The junta’s decision to order Aubin out would disrupt the UN’s work in helping Nigeriens, more than 4 million of whom are in need of humanitarian assistance, and is contrary to the legal framework applicable to the UN, Dujarric said.
“Ms Aubin has been exemplary in leading the United Nations system in Niger to work impartially, and tirelessly to deliver humanitarian and development assistance,” he said.
Since seizing power, Niger’s military leaders have leveraged sentiment against France among the population and said the withdrawal signals a new step towards its sovereignty.
The US has formally declared that the ousting of Bazoum was a coup, suspending hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, as well as military assistance and training.
Niger was seen by many in the West as the last country in Africa’s Sahel region that could be partnered with to resist an insurgency linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group.
French troops have already been ousted by military regimes in Mali and Burkina Faso, which are seeing a surge in attacks.
Analysts warn that France’s withdrawal would leave a security vacuum that could be exploited.
“French forces might not have defeated these groups, but at least disrupted and limited their activities, said Rida Lyammouri, senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a Moroccan-based think tank.
With the French out of the picture, these would likely “expand to areas where French forces were providing support to Nigerien forces, especially on the borders with Mali and Burkina Faso,” Lyammouri said.
Violence has already spiked since the coup. In the month after the junta seized power, violence soared by more than 40 percent, data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project showed.
Jihadi attacks targeting civilians quadrupled in August compared with the month before, and attacks against security forces spiked in the Tillaberi region, killing at least 40 soldiers, the data showed.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion