A senior Pentagon official sought Thursday to soften the impact of Niger’s recent decision to withdraw its military cooperation deal with the United States, which has upended the Biden administration’s security strategy in a volatile part of Africa.

If the announcement is completed Saturday by Niger’s military junta, it could force the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. military personnel and contractors from a country that for years has been a linchpin of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel region, an arid area south of the Sahara.

But in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Celeste A. Wallander, an assistant secretary of defense, told lawmakers Thursday that the junta’s ruling might not be as dire as initially thought, and that U.S. officials could find a way tried to find American troops to stay in the country.

“Niger’s self-proclaimed government has not asked or demanded that the U.S. military leave,” Ms. Wallander said. “There’s actually quite a mixed message. We are following this up and asking for clarification.”

Ms Wallander said the junta has ended formal military ties for the time being, but that “they have assured us that US forces are protected and that they will not take any action that would endanger them.”

Last week there was a high-level delegation of US officials, including Ms Wallander; Molly Phee, the State Department’s top Africa official; and Gen. Michael E. Langley, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, traveled to Niger to meet with members of the military junta.

In meetings described as tense by Pentagon and State Department officials, the Americans raised serious concerns about the junta’s growing security ties with Russia, negotiations to give Iran access to Niger’s vast uranium reserves and the lack of a clear roadmap to restore democratic rule after the coup that deposed President Mohamed Bazoum last July.

“We made clear in Niger, including very recently, that we had some very real concerns in several areas and that we were concerned about the direction that Niger was taking,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this week.

The junta stuck to the tone and content of the discussions, U.S. and Nigerien officials said, announcing its decision a few days after the U.S. officials left.

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

U.S. officials and Western analysts said it was unclear how determined the junta was to drive out the U.S. military presence, rather than use its ruling in negotiations to reap greater benefits from working with the Americans.

Ms. Wallander made the government’s position clear, telling lawmakers that “countries governed by military juntas are not reliable security partners.” She added that “part of the value proposition for us who have access to Niger would be a return to democratic civilian rule in Niger.”

Many of the Americans deployed to Niger are stationed at US Air Base 201, a six-year-old, $110 million installation in the country’s northern desert. But since the coup, troops there have been largely inactive, with most drones grounded except to carry out surveillance missions to help protect Americans.

Due to the coup, the United States suspended security operations and development assistance to Niger.

U.S. officials say they have tried for months to salvage relations with the junta and change its course. However, 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, officials say.

US security analysts said a final decision by the junta to withdraw from the agreement would be particularly damaging after a wave of other coups in the region, including in Mali and Burkina Faso, and because of the growing influence of Russia and China on the continent .

“It’s a total mess for the United States,” said Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a security consultancy based in New York. “I am concerned that the end of any U.S. assistance to Niger will not only open the door to Russia and the rebranded Wagner forces operating under the banner of the Africa Corps, but also exacerbate the challenge of counterterrorism at a time when Al Qaeda and Islamic State-affiliated allies. have become a formidable regional threat.”

Mr Clarke added that JNIM, Qaeda’s affiliate in the Sahel, “has expanded significantly, not only in terms of manpower, but also in the overall size of the territory in which the group now operates.”

He said that while some U.S. Army Green Berets are training local troops in West African coastal countries such as Benin, “the lack of U.S. presence, coupled with weak governance and porous borders, has given jihadists a free hand to continue expanding.”

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.”

On an arid strip of land in the Sahara, U.S. Air Force Base 201 stands far from public view, on the edge of a remote town in one of the poorest countries in the world. Its role is more elusive than ever since it was completed nearly six years ago.

Most of the drones that once monitored jihadist activity in unstable African countries are grounded. Most of the Americans stationed at the $110 million base near the city of Agadez, Niger, sit quietly, embodying the uncertain future of the United States’ counterterrorism efforts in West Africa: hard to give up , even if it is ‘business as usual’ at the moment. , beyond the question.

Following a military coup in Niger in July, the United States and its European partners halted cooperation with the country, which had become one of the largest recipients of security and development aid in Africa over the past decade.

Like the ruling Nigerien junta strengthens his grip on powerthat the Biden administration is now facing take on new challenges in its fight against Islamist militants in Africa. Chief among them is how to resume operations at US Air Base 201 – the most important military asset in a region that is emerging as a global hub of terrorist activity.

Because the United States has labeled the takeover a coup, it is legally obliged to do so suspend security operations and development aid to Niger, and cannot fully resume them until democracy is restored. So while U.S. officials have indicated they are eager to restore security cooperation with the Nigerien government, doing so with former Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum under house arrest will require a diplomatic needle.

Complicating matters for Washington, European countries that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and sent thousands of troops to Niger are divided over what to do next.

The European Union has suspended aid and at Niger’s request, about 2,000 European troops have left the country in recent months, leaving about 1,000 U.S. troops as the only Western presence in the country. But several European countries have recently signaled their willingness to normalize relations with the junta.

Then there is the looming threat from Russia, which is eager to exploit any rift in relations between Niger and Western countries to further expand its regional influence. The Kremlin, which recently signed a new defense deal with Niger, is already the preferred security partner of two neighboring countries fighting Islamist insurgencies: Mali and Burkina Faso. The three countries, now all ruled by military governments, have pledged to strengthen cooperation under a new security alliance.

“Russia will be there anyway – whether the US is at the table or not,” said Daniel Eizenga, a researcher at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Ministry research institute.

A U.S. military official said the Pentagon is discussing establishing new drone bases with several West African coastal countries as a backup to the landlocked base in Niger. The talks are still in the early stages and many details remain to be worked out, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. First the Wall Street Journal reported about Thursday’s discussions.

The official added that the U.S. military remains committed to preserving Air Base 201, the largest construction project ever undertaken by Air Force engineers alone, even as policy in the region is under discussion in Washington and any decisions have been postponed. for the time being due to the crises in Gaza and Ukraine.

However, Aneliese Bernard, a former foreign ministry adviser who worked in Niger in the late 2010s, said talks to move special forces and drone operations out of the country had begun some time ago.

“Once the coup happened in Niger, it became, ‘Yes, it’s probably moving to Ghana and Ivory Coast,’” said Ms. Bernard, now director of Strategic Stabilization Advisors, a Washington-based risk consultancy, referring to the two western coastal areas. African countries.

Now an estimated 11.5 million Nigeriens – 44 percent of the population – live in extreme poverty, according to the World BankSome analysts say Niger could have a strong incentive to improve relations with the United States and Europe to get aid and security money flowing again.

Attacks by militant groups have increased since the coup, US officials and analysts say, and hundreds of schools remain closed due to widespread insecurity. Foreign diplomats and humanitarian workers have left the country, and economic sanctions imposed by a bloc of West African countries have helped send food prices soaring and even blocked humanitarian aid at the border.

While anti-Western sentiment is running rampant in the capital Niamey, many Nigeriens elsewhere in the country feel differently, especially in Agadez, where the historic center includes the tallest mud mosque in the world and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“We told the central authorities: ‘Don’t kick out the French and the Americans to bring in the Russians,’” ​​said Mohamed Anacko, the chairman of the council in the Agadez region, where the US Air Base 201 is located. “We don’t need new settlers.”

Many Nigeriens may be comfortable with the presence of the United States, but the two countries still have a long way to go. Interactions between the US military and junta leaders are now limited to periodic phone conversations between General Michael Langley, the head of US Africa Command, and Brigadier General. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the junta’s defense chief, Africa Command officials said.

For now, that leaves Air Base 201, that once served as a broader launching pad for monitoring activities of armed groups in North, West and even Central Africa, in limbo.

The US military continues to conduct unarmed drone surveillance missions to protect its troops in Niamey and Agadez. And under the obligation to warn, they pass on any serious threats they discover to the Nigeriens.

U.S. diplomats have indicated they want to restore ties with the junta and resume security operations at Air Base 201, but how they might achieve that remains unclear.

The new US ambassador to Niger, Kathleen FitzGibbon, one of Washington’s top Africa specialists, recently presented her credentials to the Nigerien government. During a trip to Niger last month — the second since the coup — Molly Phee, a senior State Department policy official, said the United States plans to resume security and development cooperation even as she called for a rapid transition to civilian rule and the release of Mr Bazoum, the deposed president.

But Mr Bazoum remains under house arrest with his wife and son in the presidential palace in Niamey, cut off from the rest of the world except for occasional visits from a doctor. In theory, the junta could announce a timeline for the transition to civilian rule, allowing the United States to resume some support, but only for transition, not for security purposes. However, the generals in power have so far refused to release Mr Bazoum or reveal a timeline.

Still, some European countries say they are ready to move forward, with or without Mr. Bazoum. During meetings last month with Nigerien officials in Niamey, the German defense minister pledged to resume cooperation in 2024. Other countries, such as Italy and Spain, are also ready to engage with the junta – and turn away from France, which has become increasingly isolated in its uncompromising stance towards the country’s military leaders.

But for now, Western efforts to strengthen governance in Niger have been put on hold indefinitely, diplomats and analysts say, and many doubt the rift can be repaired. “End of a love story,” said a European security official on condition of anonymity to speak openly about developments in Niger.

Still, Ms. Bernard, the former State Department adviser, said the comparison for the United States was a little different because of US Air Base 201.

“In the coastal countries they would have to start all over again,” she said, referring to recent reports that the United States is considering building new bases there, “while the Agadez base was the largest investment in American military history. I don’t see us deviating from it.”