French President Emmanuel Macron wants over 1,500 military personnel currently stationed in post-coup Niger to have exited the country by the end of the year.
In July of this year, an anti-French military junta overthrew the democratically elected—and still held as prisoner—President Mohamed Bazoum, severing the otherwise friendly relations between the two governments.
The French leader made the announcement during an interview with TF1 and France 2 on Sunday, September 24th. France, the former colonial power in Niger, refuses to “be held hostage by the putschists,” he said.
While Macron refuses to recognise the junta as Niger’s legitimate authority, he said Paris would coordinate the troop withdrawal with the coup leaders. “We will consult with the putschists because we want things to be orderly,” Macron stated.
In addition to starting work on the pullout, the French would recall their ambassador from the capital of Niamey in “the next few hours,” Macron said.
Macron’s not wholly unexpected decision comes amid tense relations between France and its former colony. To Macron, the withdrawal of France’s forces would constitute the “end of military cooperation with Niger,” which it had assisted in counterinsurgency efforts against jihadist groups.
To fill the vacuum left behind by France, analysts expect Niger’s military junta will turn to Russia, and enlist the services of its Wagner mercenary force.
The junta announced earlier on Sunday it would ban all French aircraft from entering its airspace.
Earlier this month, Macron expressed concern about the condition of French ambassador Sylvain Itté and several of its diplomats currently in Niger. Following a late August request by Niger’s authorities for the ambassador to leave, which Macron flatly refused to grant, Itté is believed to be held hostage in his office, barely being fed.
The withdrawal of France’s military from Niger would only be the latest in a list of similar exits out of its former colonies, with its forces previously having been kicked out of neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso following coups.
Before the coup, Niger was a key security partner of not only France but the U.S., as it served as a base of operations against an Islamist insurgency in West and Central Africa’s wider Sahel region.
