Niger orders US troops to leave its territory

Niger said it has withdrawn its military cooperation agreement with the United States, forcing 1,000 U.S. forces to leave the country and throwing the United States’ strategy in the region into disarray.

The announcement by the West African nation’s military junta on Saturday came after a meeting with a delegation from Washington and the top US commander for Africa, General Michael E. Langley. The move is in line with a recent pattern of countries in the Sahel region, an arid region south of the Sahara, cutting ties with Western countries. Instead, they are increasingly working with Russia.

Niger’s rejection of military ties with the United States follows the intake from Niger by troops from France, the former colonial power that has led foreign counterterrorism efforts against jihadist groups in West Africa for the past decade but has lately been seen as a pariah in the region.

“The American presence on the territory of the Republic of Niger is illegal,” Niger’s military spokesman Colonel Amadou Abdramane said on national television. He added that the US military presence “violates all constitutional and democratic rules, which require that the sovereign people – especially through their elected officials – be consulted regarding the installation of a foreign army on its territory.”

Matthew Miller, the State Department’s chief spokesman, said it was in contact with the ruling military junta, known as the National Council for the Protection of the Homeland (CNSP), about the move.

“We are aware of the statement by the CNSP in Niger, which follows frank, high-level discussions in Niamey this week about our concerns about the trajectory of the CNSP,” he said in a speech. message on Xformerly Twitter.

Many of the Americans sent to Niger are stationed in US Air Force Base 201, a six-year-old, $110 million facility in the country’s desert north. But since the military coup that ousted President Mohamed Bazoum and installed the junta last July, troops there have been inactive, with most of their drones grounded.

Because of the coup, the United States had to do so suspend security operations and development aid to Niger.

Mr Bazoum, the country’s elected president, remains under arrest, eight months after he was ousted. But the United States did wild maintain its partnership with the country.

A senior US military official said on Sunday that there had been no immediate changes in the status of about 1,000 US service members stationed in the country. The Pentagon has continued to conduct drone flights from Air Base 201 to protect U.S. troops and alert Nigerian authorities if the flights detect an imminent terrorist threat.

“Abandoning the security treaty is not really a direct expulsion of the US military presence, as happened with the French,” said Hannah Rae Armstrong, an analyst who focuses on peace and security in the Sahel. “It is more likely that it is an aggressive negotiating tactic to gain more benefits from cooperation with the Americans.”

In Niger, the decision was couched in terms of “sovereignty” – rhetoric intended to resonate with the public.

“The goal of US policy is not to help fight armed groups, but to maintain control and counter the growing influence in the region of countries like Russia, China and Turkey,” wrote Abdoulaye Sissoko, a Nigerian columnist, on a popular Nigerien news magazine. place. “There is no public evidence that US bases in Niger have proven useful.”

U.S. officials say they have tried for months to avoid a formal break in ties with the Nigerien junta.

The new US ambassador to Niger, Kathleen FitzGibbon, one of Washington’s top Africa specialists, has held regular talks with the junta since taking office early this year.

During a trip to Niger in December, Molly Phee, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the United States plans to resume security and development cooperation with Niger even as she called for a rapid transition to a civilian government and the release of Mr Bazoum.

But the Pentagon has planned for the worst contingencies if the talks fail. The Defense Ministry has spoken with several West African coastal countries about establishing new drone bases as a backup to the landlocked base in Niger. The talks are still in their early stages, said military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.

J. Peter Pham, a former US special envoy to the Sahel, said Washington “will have to wait and see” how Niger will implement the new approach.

“The potential consequences go beyond the not insignificant damage to counter-terrorism and intelligence efforts that the loss of access to bases in Niger poses,” Mr. Pham said, “but to the broader damage to America’s position on the continent .”

The Biden administration formally recognized last October what most countries had declared months earlier: that the military takeover in Niger last July was a coup.

Biden administration officials had sidestepped that statement for weeks because the word “coup” has major policy implications. Congress has ordered the United States to suspend all economic and military aid to governments installed by military coups until democracy is restored.

But the government ultimately concluded that efforts to return Niger’s democratically elected government to power had failed and that aid that had not yet been restricted would be stopped. State Department officials said nearly $200 million in aid that was temporarily suspended in August would be suspended. About $442 million in trade and agricultural aid will also be suspended.

In Washington, the Biden administration harbored increasingly dim hopes that the military junta would reverse its takeover and agree to restore a democratically elected government.

The junta’s announcement is part of a major change in the dynamic between the country and its former Western partners.

“It reflects a real shift in the balance of power,” Ms. Armstrong said. “Over the past decade, Niger has repeatedly called for security assistance and aid. Now it is the US that finds itself in a position where it is being asked to beg to keep troops and bases in the country.”

The entire military approach in the Sahel needs to be reformed, says El Hadj Djitteye, director of the Timbuktu Center for Strategic Studies on the Sahel, a Mali-based think tank.

“Western governments, including the United States and France, have failed to work closely with African governments and civilians on economic and military development,” Mr Djitteye said. This, he said, has fueled the widespread perception that their presence in the region is an extension of “the old colonial pattern that puts colonial interests first and African interests a distant second.”