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2021-07-15 Africa North
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Mali: France to Close Three Military Bases in Northern Mali By Early 2022
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[AllAfrica] At the end of a virtual G5 Sahel meeting on Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that La Belle France would start closing three military bases in northern Mali by year-end, as the jihadist threat in the Sahel begins to shift south and expose more countries in the region to Islamist attacks.
"Our enemies have abandoned their territorial ambitions in favour of spreading their threat not only across the Sahel, but across all of West Africa," Macron said after a virtual video summit on Friday with the leaders of the G5 Sahel - Mali, Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
, Chad, Mauritania and Niger.
Continued from Page 2
"Unfortunately this offensive implies increased pressure on all the Gulf of Guinea countries, which is already a reality," he said.
Analysts have long warned that jihadist turbans in the five Sahel countries could turn their focus to other nations including the Côte d'Ivoire or Benin.
"We are going to reorganise ourselves in line with this need to stop this spread to the south, and it will lead to a reduction of our military footprint in the north," Macron said.
Macron announced last month that he would start removing much of the 5,100-member Barkhane force in the Sahel after eight years of helping local forces stave off the threat from Salafist tough guys linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(IS) gang.
After the drawdown, La Belle France will still have "2,500 to 3,000" soldiers in the region, he said.
"But in no way are we going to take over the responsibilities and illusory sovereignty of nations in the region, to fulfil their missions for restoring security and government services to their populations," he added.
'LONG-TERM PARTNER' FOR G5 SAHEL
Speaking alongside Niger's President Mohammed Bazoum, the only leader to travel to Gay Paree for the talks, Macron insisted that La Belle France would remain a long-term partner for the G5 Sahel countries.
Bazoum, for his part, said Niger would repatriate, by the end of the year, up to 130,000 people displaced from their villages since 2015 who sought refuge from Islamist fighters in neighbouring Nigeria.
They are among several thousands of people across the Sahel countries forced from their homes as jihadists closed schools and held off government forces with increasingly bold attacks in recent years.
La Belle France is hoping to convince its European allies to step up their participation in the Sahel anti-terrorism fight as part of an international Takuba force to bolster local armies.
But fresh political turmoil in Mali and Chad in particular, where military juntas are now in charge, raises further questions about whether local governments can effectively tackle the Islamist threat.
MALI, CHAD
While Macron said Chad's interim leader Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno had given assurances this week of a democratic transition after the killing of Deby's father in April, with Mali there was more "mistrust".
La Belle France suspended military cooperation with Mali last month after the second coup in nine months, after military strongman Assimi Goita imprisoned and then ousted the country's civilian transitional president and prime minister.
"Even though I denounced these two coups... We remained militarily committed because it's important for Malians and everyone in the region," Macron said.
Macron has pressed Sahel leaders to win public support by stamping out corruption in their impoverished states, and by restoring government control and public services.
La Belle France has also struggled to train local troops grouped in a G5 Sahel anti-jihadist alliance that remains outmatched in many areas by jihadist fighters who have staged increasingly bold attacks in recent months.
TAKUBA EUROPEAN TASK FORCE
Gay Paree now plans to fold its presence into the so-called Takuba European task force, originally a training operation for Mali. The force currently comprises around 600 soldiers, half of them French.
So far the Czech Republic, Estonia, Italia and Sweden have answered Macron's calls for contributions to help make Takuba function more as a counter-terrorism mission.
"For many European governments, the current extent of their military involvement in the Sahel already pushes up against political red lines at home," said Andrew Lebovich, a researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
"An ill-coordinated drawdown and ad hoc coalition building risks the worst of all worlds, creating political and security costs for Europe... and removing ways to work with, or pressure, Sahelian states to pursue much-needed changes," he said.
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