The expulsion of the French ambassador to Niger, Sylvain Itté—after barely a year in office—on Sep. 27 marked the denouement of several weeks of standoff between Paris and the new junta in power in the West African state.
Under a joint escort of a French special forces commando and Nigerien gendarmes, Mr. Itte and six of his colleagues left his residence in the Niger capital of Niamey at about 4 a.m. for a military base where they boarded a plane for Paris.
The junta in Niger, which overthrew democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26, declared the French ambassador persona non grata at the end of August and issued him an ultimatum to leave the country within 48 hours.
But France ignored the order, insisting that the military government was illegitimate and calling for the reinstatement of Mr. Bazoum.
French President Emmanuel Macron finally announced on Sept. 24 that the ambassador would leave the country in the “coming hours,” while the 1,500 French troops stationed in several bases across Niger would follow by the end of the year.
The new authorities in Niger, known as the National Council for the Safeguarding of the Country (CNSP), described the French move as a “historical moment” for the nation.
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The exit is the latest in a series of French withdrawals from African countries—including Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, and Mali—in recent years amid a wave of anti-French sentiment across parts of the continent.
French departures from Burkina Faso and Mali also followed political upheavals led by military figures in those two West African states, both of which have emerged as the most ardent supporters of the junta in Niger.
French President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum (L) attend a video summit with leaders of G5 Sahel countries, at the Élysée Presidential Palace in Paris on July 9, 2021. Stephane de Sakutin/AP
Some observers attribute the current backlash to the “unclear outcomes” of France’s military intervention in its former colonies.
It’s no coincidence that every country that France has been involved in has seen a military that tapped into anti-French sentiment to find legitimacy, said Yasser Louati, a political analyst at the Committee for Justice and Liberties.
France’s involvement in the Sahel region “has been a failure from the start,” Mr. Louati, who hosts the podcast “Le Breakdown with Yasser Louati,” told The Epoch Times in a chat.
“European countries barely supported it, and the country is paying the price for its incapacity to update its foreign relations software especially when it comes to Africa,” he said.
“European analysts can minimize the extent of what we can call France’s African bankruptcy by calling the outcomes ‘unclear,’ but when millions of people either call for its military personnel to leave and go as far as clapping for another foreign power like Russia or China, it speaks volumes on the incompetence at the foreign policy level and the political myopic approach, be it from left, right, and center French presidents.”
However, Nick Westcott, professor of practice in diplomacy at SOAS University of London—who served as the UK ambassador to Niger from 2008 to 2011—believes that French military actions in the Sahel have been “quite successful.”
France’s intervention in Mali in January 2013 almost certainly “saved the state from falling into the hands of jihadists” and paved the way for the 2015 peace agreement with Tuareg separatists, Mr. Westcott told The Epoch Times in an email.
“They were also working successfully with the Nigerien [and Chadian] militaries in counter-terrorist operations,” he said, although he noted that while France won some military battles, she “lost the political war.”
“The civilian governments of [Ibrahim Boubacar Keita] in Mali and [Roch Marc Christian Kabore] in Burkina Faso, both supported by France, were unable to assure adequate security or adequate jobs for their citizens to retain public legitimacy, allowing the coups to happen.”
Niger was different, as then-President Bazoum was being successful against the jihadists and in bringing in international aid, according to Mr. Westcott.
“But intra-elite rivalries got the better of him,” he said.
Contagious Insecurity
Gilles Olakunle Yabi, founder and director of the Dakar-based West Africa Citizen Think Tank, said the current backlash against French presence in the Sahel has mainly been fueled by the worsening security situation in Mali and its spillover effects in Burkina Faso and Niger in the past decade.French operations targeted the heads of terrorist groups but “never managed to reduce the deadly actions of the groups” or their capacity to impose rule on large rural areas in those countries, Mr. Yabi, who’s also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“The initial military operation—Serval—in 2013 was considered successful, and then-President François Hollande [of France] was applauded in Mali as a great friend of Mali,” he said.
“But after the military operation renamed Barkhane was extended to other Sahel countries and the jihadist armed groups adopted new strategy and tactics, violence and insecurity quickly extended from northern Mali to the center of Mali, and then to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.”
During the 2013 operation in Mali, Mr. Yabi said, there were tensions and misunderstandings between Malian authorities and public opinion on one hand and France on the other around the issue of the region of Kidal, where French troops delayed plans to help Mali reconquer its entire territory.
“There has been from that time suspicion by the Malians that France has its own agenda, which isn’t only to help Mali take back its territory,” he told The Epoch Times.
Terrorism Bulwark
Niger has long served as a central hub of the counterterrorism operations of both France and the United States in the Sahel region, where militant groups including affiliates of al-Qaeda and ISIS have an active presence.France has often been considered a compass for joint and multilateral efforts in the region.
Several European powers are reportedly reconsidering their former role as followers of France and are rethinking their Sahel and francophone Africa strategy in a more autonomous way, by trying to avoid a spillover of this negative sentiment onto them.
France’s imminent departure thus raises questions about the West’s security footprint in the region and casts a shadow over the future of 1,100 U.S. forces based in Niger.
Some critics hold that the United States has failed to deliver its own strategy in Niger/Sahel as it has always piggybacked off of the French approach.
The case of Niger has seen a divergence between France and the United States on policy in the Sahel: While France insisted on no contact with Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani and the junta, the United States was willing to engage—critically, but nevertheless in person.
The result is that France is out while the U.S. troops and anti-terrorist operations continue, according to Mr. Wescott.
The Bazoum Factor
“For the United States, it may be that keeping Wagner [Group] out is more important than keeping [former President] Bazoum in,” Mr. Westcott told The Epoch Times.“They, and the EU, are also genuinely concerned about global terror networks, and a military government pledged to restore civilian rule eventually may seem a better bet than a jihadist government pledged perpetually to fight the West,” he said.
“So the United States looks willing to stay, and the junta willing to work with them.”
However, Mr. Louati believes that the removal of Mr. Bazoum from office will have “ripple effects” for many years to come.
“It first puts an end to Niger’s experiment with elective democracy, then puts the country under pressure from regional partners,” he said, expressing caution at neighboring juntas’ public announcements of the willingness to support Niger.
“They can’t even properly manage their own countries, and the resources spent securing the juntas in power are not spent on the direct economic needs of the population.”
It would be naive to expect the United States to be any different, Mr. Louati. “Their war on terror has been a total disaster and has led to the destabilization of the Middle East and the emergence of al-Qaeda offsprings,” he said.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see the United States “steer clear” of France’s footsteps and pose as a more friendly nation while leaving the role of the villain to France, Mr. Louati said.
“But how much can be accomplished? The United States has proven that their foreign policy software is better suited to bypass their own allies [AUKUS and Ukraine] than to engage in a more positive foreign policy in developing nations,” he said.
“Wherever the United States sends their troops in Africa, everyone knows what they did in countries like Iraq, and their reputation as an imperial power is glued to their flag.”
Security Vacuum to Fill
James Barnett, a research fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute think tank, said that inasmuch as the United States may try to sustain its counterterrorism footprint in the Sahel, such operations will be “more difficult” with French absence.“Politically, the United States has tried to distance itself from the French position, which has been to call for the forceful reinstatement of President Bazoum, with the idea being that the United States might be able to maintain security cooperation if it adopts a more pragmatic approach,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Barnett dismissed fears that a French pullout could plunge Niger into the kind of violence witnessed in Mali and Burkina Faso because Niger’s situation is “somewhat different” and the junta still has the ability to sustain some of Mr. Bazoum’s more successful policies.
“But the withdrawal of French forces certainly complicates things,” he said.
Unlike the mounting security woes faced by a number of fellow Sahel states, Mr. Bazoum’s approach seemed to have actually been working—at least up to a point.
Observers believe that U.S. and French policymakers had a lot of faith in him but lost sight of key things: Niger’s long history of fraught civil-military relations, Mr. Bazoum’s repression of the opposition and the controversial nature of his election.
His predecessor as president, Mahamadou Issoufou, was a very canny political operator who succeeded in keeping the diverse political forces in the country balanced. Mr. Bazoum, on the other hand, was intelligent and honest but a less-astute politician, according to Mr. Westcott.
“He seems to have assumed that his political control was stronger than it was,” he said. “So while the international community—including [the Economic Community of West African States] and the African Union—were right to back him as the country’s democratic leader, he had lost control of key domestic constituencies who decided to seize power.
“There was frankly little that outsiders could have done, except perhaps that you need to let your friends have rows with you occasionally to show that they are not simply your client.”
As president, Mr. Bazoum “secured the trust” of foreign powers but not of his own people, Mr. Louati said in agreement.
“He has indeed fallen victim of his own incapacity to bond with the majority of Niger’s population given his Arab-speaking background and his coming from a minority tribe,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Bazoum did not have enough time to consolidate his power, and his predecessor did not help him either. He first remained silent then barely criticized the coup, which by no means will serve the long-term interests of the people of Niger.
“No democracy comes to life after a military coup; the cases of Egypt or Algeria are some of the most explicit examples.”
‘Dangerous Security Prospects’
Going forward, Mr. Louati is fearful that the CNSP will likely “enter into paranoid mode” as time passes and the people of Niger, growing impatient, will start demanding that they deliver to improve their lives.“This will definitely create tensions within the council with consequences no one can predict,” he said.
The political situation in Niger risks degenerating into “uncertain and dangerous security prospects” for the country and the wider Sahel region, according to Mr. Yabi.
“The departure of French troops might leave a vacuum, which will be difficult to fill in the short term, and jihadist groups can certainly take advantage of that,” he said.
“But it is also possible that cooperation between Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso improves given their new alliance of military rulers and that it ends up producing positive results on the ground.”
The complexity of the crisis in the Sahel calls for “more than military and security responses” even as military rulers don’t seem ready to accept that and explore additional responses, according to Mr. Yabi.
“U.S. presence in Niger was not necessarily mainly about fighting jihadist groups but about having a presence which allows them to watch Libya and the entire Sahel-Sahara region and even beyond,” he told The Epoch Times.
“The countries of the Sahel and wider West African region need to have a full understanding of the layers of their vulnerability to insecurity— beyond terrorism, which is not the only source of insecurity—and they need to have a more subtle and realistic way to get their partners to do what helps them, strengthening progressively their own capacities to deal with existential threats.”
