After weeks of mounting pressure from the military junta in Niger Republic, France has finally announced that it is withdrawing its troops from the country. This was made known by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
“We are putting an end to our military cooperation with the de facto authorities of Niger because they don’t want to fight terrorism anymore,” president Macron says.
Macron also said that he has decided to bring back the French ambassador to Niger, Sylvain Itte, to France. This decision comes a week after he said the envoy was “literally being held hostage.”
According to him, “in the coming hours, our ambassador along with several diplomats will return to France.”
The decision to end the “cooperation”, Macron said, is “because we are not there to deal with internal politics and be hostages of putschists.”
Regarding the timeline for the evacuation, Macron said the withdrawal will be organized in the coming weeks. He said there will not be any French soldiers in Niger by the end of 2023.
“They will come back in an orderly manner in the weeks and months to come, and for that, we will coordinate with the putschists because we want this to happen calmly,” Macron said.
The decision by France to pull its troops from Niger signals a major victory for Niger’s military junta and the tens of thousands of protesters who gathered outside a French military base in Niger’s capital Niamey demanding that its troops leave.
France’s military presence in Niger has spanned over years and has been a major component of the Sahelian country’s war against Islamist insurgents. However, many in the country insist that France’s military presence has not brought any significant reduction in the insurgency, and the military junta insists that French presence has created far more Logistical problems than it has solved.
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