Sahel Edition

Sahel: No French troop drawdown from the Sahel, Macron announces escalation aheadF

Posted On 16 February 2021

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Macron says France to “decapitate” Al-Qaeda in the Sahel

France will intensify its efforts to help “decapitate” Qaeda-linked groups in the Sahel, President Emmanuel Macron told regional leaders via video conference on Tuesday, according to AFP. Macron said the efforts would focus on combatting the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and in particular one of its main armed groups, Katiba Macina. The GSIM has claimed responsibility for some of the biggest attacks in the Sahel since its official launch in 2017. It was placed on a US blacklist of terrorist organisations in September 2018. Other ethnic groups, notably the Dogon and Bambara, then formed so-called self-defence forces, setting the scene for bloody tit-for-tat violence.

President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday there would be no “immediate” reduction in the 5,100 French troops supporting Sahel nations fighting an Islamist insurgency. “Changes that are likely to be significant will be made to our military deployment in the Sahel when the time comes, but they will not be made immediately,” Macron told reporters after a video-linked summit with leaders of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

“They will result first of all from a collective discussion with our Sahel partners and with the partners who have accepted to help us, and they will be based on the results obtained and the degree of engagement from our partners,” he said.

Calls have risen in France for a review of the Barkhane force deployed in western Africa, which aims to curtail the terrorism threat while training local security forces, following a series of deadly attacks on French troops. “A French withdrawal, a massive withdrawal of men, which is a possibility I have considered, would be a mistake,” Macron said. “It would be paradoxical to weaken our deployment at a time when we have a political and military alignment that enables us to reach our goals,” he said.

“In the coming months we will not change our presence. We hope that we will have concrete results in terms of security in the very next months, for me this means between now and the summer,” Macron added. “Beyond summer, I want to work with our partners for an evolution of our presence to consolidate our military victory in the region,” he added.

AFP

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