Another western army is leaving a fragile inland area. Faisal Al Yafai believes that although the United States has withdrawn from one country, Afghanistan, France is moving away from five countries
Faisal Al Yafai has worked in news media such as The Guardian and BBC, and has reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. He is currently writing a book on the Middle East and frequently comments on international television news networks.
Surprisingly, France announced that it will end its nearly ten-year military intervention in the Sahel region-Operation Crescent Dunes. After trying the US Iraqi script to win the Sahel war, it is now using the Afghan script to get rid of it.
For eight years, France has been deploying troops in the Sahel region, a national belt extending along the edge of the Sahara Desert. Originally to prevent Mali from being occupied by jihadists, it has now evolved into a military operation in five countries with more than 5,000 French troops. On the surface, the French were there to prevent militant groups from fighting a long-term, low-level rebellion in the region, which has claimed thousands of lives and displaced 2 million people. But in reality, the French army served as the “private army” of the Sahelian government.
Intervention is unwelcome, whether in the region, French participation is considered a colonial sequelae, or at home, French casualties have paid a political price. When Emmanuel Macron stated in June that France could not “forever replace the countries in the region,” he himself seemed to understand this reality.
In some ways, the decision to leave is easy. France now faces the same dilemma that the United States encountered in Afghanistan: how to withdraw its troops from the country without the rapid collapse of the government they have guarded for years.
France initially tried to win the war by force, trying to replicate the 2007 US “surge” strategy in Iraq. Last year, it sent 600 more soldiers to the area, hoping to open a path so that the local army can control the situation. There are some bright spots—the leader of Al Qaeda in North Africa was killed—but the price was bloody. Last year was the worst year for civilian casualties since France joined in 2013; nearly 7,000 civilians were killed.
Now, France is looking for a way out and is paying attention to the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, which is to let allies do most of the work to protect the government from external attacks. A new Takuba task force will replace Operation Crescent Grass; it will be composed of 600 soldiers, half of which will come from EU countries.
For the Sahel and Paris, this is a risky strategy. Macron hopes to eliminate Sahelian intervention as a source of criticism before the French election next year. However, how a contingent of hundreds of people can achieve goals that thousands cannot achieve has yet to be explained.
In addition, public sentiment needs to be considered. The largest non-French contingents in Takuba are soldiers from Sweden, Estonia, and the Czech Republic; all come from countries with little ties to the Sahel, and the public is very sensitive to casualties. The Swedish Parliament did not approve the deployment until the end of this year.
Without the French army, the Sahel might resemble another Western war: this time it was Libya, an invasion that ended with the influx of foreign influence.
This seems to be the case, and familiar Russian figures are waiting to step in and protect the Sahelian government from militants. In the past year, there have been two major incidents in the region-both incidents were reported by Russia.
The first time was in August last year when Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was overthrown by the military in the middle of his second five-year term. The second is the sudden death of Chadian President Idriss Déby, who has been in power for three years. Chad is the headquarters of Operation Crescent Dunes, and Macron is the only Western head of state to attend his funeral-even when the rebel soldiers who attacked and killed Deby threatened to march into the capital, his funeral Still being held.
All in all, the end result is that the two long-term French allies are no longer in power, and the two previously stable governments are now in turmoil. Macron was sensitive to criticism that France preferred African strongman leaders to true democracy. He had to adopt an unpleasant balancing act, welcoming Deby’s son to Paris in early July, while insisting on his military government. There must be a transition to civil rule.
Reports on Russia’s involvement in these two events are sketchy and may have been exaggerated. The British “Times” reported that the Chadian rebels who killed President Deby were trained in Libya by Russian mercenaries belonging to the mysterious Wagner group. The German public broadcaster DW suggested that the two planners of the Malian coup d’état spent a year in a Russian military academy.
To be sure, Russia has quietly expanded its relations in the region in the past four years, signing military cooperation agreements with the three Sahel countries. Russia’s Wagner Group also operates in Libya and the Central African Republic, which border Chad to the north and south.
Russia has demonstrated its mercenaries’ ability to fight rebels and protect the government of the Central African Republic. From the perspective of the Government of the Central African Republic, it did so without lectures on democracy, and without colonial baggage. (The views of civilians are quite different: just last week, the Kremlin was forced to deny that its military instructors in the country killed civilians and ransacked houses.)
When the French army finally left, the still fragile Sahelian government, and Mali and Chad, which were more fragile than before, still needed foreign troops to protect their weak power. How often will they look south to the Central African Republic for help from Moscow? Just like in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of Western troops will only open the door for the Russians.
