AFTER NIGHTFALL During a moonless evening last November, three French combat helicopters, supported by fighter jets, took off from military bases in the heart of the African Sahel. Their mission was to support a French commando operation on the ground, tracking down terrorists in vans and motorcycles in the Liptako region of Mali. Flying in close formation and close to the ground in total darkness, two of the helicopters collided. Thirteen French soldiers, the youngest of 22, were killed.
The dead have rocked France. They also revived questions about what exactly the country is doing in this vast semi-arid belt south of the Sahara Desert. On January 13, at a summit he organized in the French city of Pau, in the southwest, with the leaders of five countries in the Sahel, President Emmanuel Macron tried to provide an answer. France is there to provide “security and stability”, he said, and nothing else. “If at any time an African state asks the French army not to be there any more,” declared Mr. Macron with irritation, “we will leave”.
The paradoxes and anxieties of the French operation, known as the “Barkhane”, were brutally exposed by these deaths, as well as those of (many more) troops from other African countries. In early January, 89 Nigerien soldiers died in a jihadist ambush at a military post in Chinagodrar, near the border with Mali. This follows a separate attack on a military base in Niger, Inates, which killed 71 soldiers. The border areas between Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali have become an area of chronic instability, trafficking and jihadist activity. It flourished in the Sahel after the collapse of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and the descent of Libya into chaos. France, explains Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, author of a new book on France in the Sahel, has been drawn into what he calls “the mission impossible”.
It was President François Hollande who initially sent French troops to Mali in 2013 in order to repel a jihadist incursion. It was not meant to be a permanent operation. However, seven years later, France still has 4,500 men. In theory, they help train and work alongside a joint force of 5,000 members from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, known as g5 Sahel. But these forces – apart from Chad – are not considered to be up to the task. There is also a United Nations peacekeeping force in Mali of approximately 15,000 men.
Macron, who belongs to a generation that has never known Africa under French colonial rule, took office in 2017, eager to adopt a less paternalistic approach than his predecessors. He forged links with non-French-speaking countries, including Nigeria and Ghana, promised to return African works of art from Paris, and spoke of “crimes of colonization”. Macron says the French anti-jihadist operation in the Sahel is “absolutely essential” in the fight against terrorism, which France sees as a burden it carries on behalf of others.
It is therefore with obvious frustration that Mr. Macron is now also the target of a campaign hostile to France in the region. Protesters from the Malian capital of Bamako and neighboring Niger demanded the departure of French troops. Critics accuse France of supporting autocrats. Some political leaders, for their part, are lukewarm in the face of France’s efforts.
In the midst of charges and counter charges, the objective of this week’s summit in Pau, according to a French official, was to “clarify”. Macron said in December when he was NATO London summit, that he “cannot and will not” keep French soldiers on the ground in the Sahel as long as there is an ambiguity as to whether they are welcome. In Pau, he obtained from the leaders of the five countries of the Sahel a formal affirmation of their “wish that the French military engagement in the Sahel continues”.
However, France finds itself more and more alone. He has limited help from the British, Danes, Estonians and Germans. And it is trying to help build local capacity. Its true partner, however, is America, which conducts its own counterterrorism activities in the region, including an air base and drones in Agadez, in the desert in central Niger, and another surveillance facility in the north. Now the Pentagon is considering cutting back on operations. “We are stuck,” says François Heisbourg of the Foundation for Strategic Research, “we are exactly in the kind of place we would not want to be; it’s a little Afghanistan. ” ■
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the title “Un petit Afghanistan”
