France’s bitter retreat from west Africa

For nearly a decade the French embassy in Bamako, the capital of Mali, was the political nerve centre of a counterterrorism operation that spanned five countries. The sprawling fortress still resembles a military base. But its guard towers and walls topped with razorwire are as much a relic of a bygone era as the French-built colonial avenues that surround it.

Following the ignominious end in 2022 of Barkhane, the multi-country anti-terrorism operation it launched at Mali’s request in 2013, France has given up most of its military footprint across west Africa with astonishing speed. By the end of the year, the only remaining French base in Africa will be in Djibouti. Driven by pressure from the military dictatorships that have taken power across the Sahel and by anti-French sentiment in neighbouring countries, the abrupt exit marks a sea change in France’s singular relationship with its former colonies. It also raises the question of what, if anything, will fill the void left by the French presence.

Unlike other former colonial powers, France maintained permanent military bases in Africa for decades after the continent’s countries won their independence. At times it acted as a regional gendarme, propping up leaders in trouble and beating back jihadists. No more. Military juntas have forced French troops out of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso (see map). In November Chad tore up its defence pact with France; the last French troops left in January. In December Côte d’Ivoire and France jointly agreed on the withdrawal of French troops. The same month Senegal declared that French soldiers would leave in 2025.

France had envisioned a more orderly exit. In a speech in Paris on January 6th, President Emmanuel Macron lamented what he called “ingratitude” in the Sahel for France’s efforts to fight jihadists there. Mr Macron’s comments, widely criticised in the region, marked an awkward twist to his promise, upon taking office in 2017, to develop a more equal partnership with France’s former colonies.

Yet the more important question is what the French withdrawal will mean for security across the region, which is being menaced by jihadism, separatism and, more recently, military rule. For a period, it seemed as if Mr Macron’s revamped version of Barkhane, complete with a new contingent of European special forces, was making tactical gains against jihadist groups, and helping to improve the appalling level of insecurity for civilians in some pockets of the Sahel. After Mali’s new junta, which took power in a coup in 2020, decided to hire mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group, relations took a turn for the worse. In 2022 the French quit Mali and shut down Barkhane, which at one point involved 5,100 soldiers, and the regional domino effect began.

Military leaders in the Sahel, who have increasingly turned to Russian-backed mercenaries to help fight separatists and jihadists since taking power in a series of coups over the past five years, have cheered the French departure as the end of a neo-colonial hangover. Last year Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahelien States (aes), a putative confederation to rival the Economic Community of West African States (ecowas), the main regional bloc. Critics in the region claim that for years France and ecowasundermined, rather than aided, their counter-terrorism campaign. Backed by an army of online activists, the three Sahelian juntas have promoted the aesas a vehicle for restoring their “sovereignty” (and, less avowedly, for escaping pressure to hold elections). “Previously, everything was controlled by France,” alleges Drissa Meminta, an influential Malian pundit. “Now we can join forces to fight terrorism”.

In practice that has meant that aes countries have jettisoned efforts to negotiate with rebels of all stripes in favour of full-bore militarism. Yet this approach has fared little better than the French operation. In Mali the army, supported by mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group and Bayraktar drones from Turkey, made some important territorial gains in the country’s north. In 2023 it seized Kidal, the symbolically significant stronghold of Tuareg separatists that French troops had restrained Malian forces from entering a decade earlier.

But it has failed to stop the entrenchment of Islamic State in the north, or to stem worsening violence elsewhere in the country. Urban areas long considered secure have recently seen attacks. In September Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (jnim), a jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda, carried out deadly assaults on a police academy and an airport in Bamako, the first major terrorist incident in the Malian capital for nearly a decade. “They say things are better since they captured Kidal,” complains a local businesswoman. “Ok, but why hasn’t that stopped terrorists from bombing the city?”

Elsewhere in the region, things are hardly better. A month after the attack in Bamako jnim claimed responsibility for an attack on a military checkpoint on the outskirts of Niamey, Niger’s capital. In Burkina Faso, the national army now controls barely a third of the country’s territory.

Unlike the French troops and un peacekeepers they expelled, local armies and the mercenaries that support them also care little for protecting civilians. In the first six months of 2024, 3,064 civilians were deliberately targeted and killed in the Sahel, up from 2,520 in the last half of the previous year, according to acled, a conflict monitor. In 2022 the Malian army and Wagner forces killed over 500 civilians, mostly women and children, in a single operation, according to un investigators. “Before, people were afraid of the terrorists,” says Fatouma Harber, a Malian journalist. “Now they are afraid of the Malian army and Wagner.”

Yet there appears to be broad support across the Sahel for the departure of French troops. However much worse things may have got since they left in 2022, many Malians point out that security had been steadily deteriorating ever since their arrival a decade earlier. “With all the means they had at their disposal, what did they achieve?” asks a local investor. The disillusionment has made it easy for the region’s juntas to use France as a scapegoat, accusing the former coloniser of isolating the aes diplomatically while conspiring with militants to destabilise it. However much the anti-French movement in the Sahel was fanned by Russian cyber-propaganda and influence operations, which French officials say they have documented exhaustively, France proved ill-equipped to counter its potency. Even in the traditional redoubts of Francafrique, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, anti-French sentiment has been on the rise.

Nor would a return be on the cards. By the end of the year France will close all its permanent bases on the continent, besides Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, according to military sources. A rotating average of some 100 soldiers will be stationed at any time on what will become an Ivorian base in Abidjan and a co-run Gabonese base in Libreville, chiefly for training purposes. They will report to a new Africa command based in Paris.

The new arrangement marks the “demilitarisation” and “normalisation” of France’s tie to Africa, says a presidential adviser. The hope is that 2025 will mark the end of an anachronistic high-visibility footprint that exposed France to accusations of neo-colonialism, without precluding a modernised form of defence aid. Full training exercises or operations involving the dispatch of planes or soldiers from France may be carried out, only if requested by African partners, under the Paris command.

Where does that leave the Sahel? Regional observers say there are signs the juntas are realising that they cannot defeat insurgents by brute force alone. Niger’s junta recently sent envoys to jihadist leaders. Regional negotiations devoid of external influence could eventually produce deals that reduce the violence. More likely, for the time being, the toxic new alliance of military rulers and Russian mercenaries will continue to cause misery for beleaguered civilians.