In March 9, 2017, Jean-Yves Le Drian, then Minister of Defence, extolled the merits of Operation Barkhane and its African partners to fight against terrorist groups in the Sahel. ” France, he said in Paris Match, has trained more than 20,000 soldiers and every day our joint blows weaken the enemy […] These operations carried out by the French army with the national armies show excellent results. »
Six years later, however, the coup in Niger raises questions. The latest in a long series that began in 2020 in Mali and continued in Guinea and then in Burkina Faso, it rather invites us to question the alleged successes of military cooperation which, in concrete terms, amounts to training putschists as the insurgents continue to gain ground.
France, it is true, is not alone in question. In addition to the European Union, the United States has, for example, provided training to soldiers who took power in Mali (Amadou Haya Sanogo in 2012 and Assimi Goïta in 2021), Guinea (Mamadi Doumbouya in 2021) and Burkina Faso (Paul-Henri Damiba and Ibrahim Traoré in 2022). In Bamako, Assimi Goïta and Lassine Togola, acting commander of the autonomous battalion of special forces, recently sanctioned by Washington, had thus participated in 2019 and 2020 in the “Flintlock” exercise that the Americans organize each year to strengthen operational capacities and counter-terrorism of their allies in Africa.
warrior diet
On the French side, the overthrow of Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, elected in 2021, however has deeper consequences. Indeed, it not only highlights the ineptitude of military cooperation which parliamentarians, with a few exceptions, have never had the courage to confront seriously, for fear of being immediately accused of leftism or laxity in the regard to the terrorist threat. In the longer term, the coup in Niger also demonstrates the strategic limits of a middle power that has not finished purging its colonial past.
President Bazoum was in this case one of the last allies of Paris in the region. Favorable to the withdrawal of the troops of “Barkhane” from Mali towards the territory of Niger, he had also agreed to welcome the men of the “Saber” force, expelled from Burkina Faso. Now that he is removed from power, military France can only count on Chad. Like Uganda for the United States in East Africa, this country is traditionally considered by Paris as its most reliable partner in the area, knowing that the French army trains there to war since the period of independence.
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