More than 1,000 U.S. troops will leave Niger in the coming months, Biden administration officials said Friday, upending U.S. counterterrorism and security policies in Africa’s tumultuous Sahel region.
At the second of two meetings this week in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell told Niger Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine that the United States disagreed with the country’s turn to Russia over security and to Iran for a possible deal over its uranium. reserves, and the inability of Niger’s military government to chart a path to return to democracy, according to a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic talks.
The decision was not a particular surprise. Niger said last month it was withdrawing its military cooperation agreement with the United States after a highly contentious series of meetings in Niger’s capital Niamey with a high-level US diplomatic and military delegation.
The move was 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.
U.S. diplomats have tried in recent weeks to salvage a renewed military cooperation agreement with Niger’s military government, U.S. officials said, but ultimately failed to reach a compromise.
The talks collapsed amid a growing wave of ill feeling toward the U.S. presence in Niger. Thousands of protesters in the capital last Saturday called for the withdrawal of US military personnel, just days after Russia supplied its own military equipment and instructors to the country’s army.
Niger’s rejection of military ties with the United States follows the withdrawal of 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 is seen as a pariah in the region. .
U.S. officials said Friday that talks with Niger on an “orderly and responsible withdrawal” of forces would begin in the coming days and that the process would take months.
Many of the Americans deployed to Niger are based at US Air Base 201, a six-year-old, $110 million installation in the country’s northern desert. 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 MQ-9 Reaper drones on the ground, except for those that carry out surveillance missions to target U.S. forces. to protect.
It is unclear what access the United States will have to the base in the future, and whether Russian advisers and perhaps even Russian air forces will intervene as Niger’s relations with the Kremlin deepen.
The coup forced the United States to suspend security operations and development assistance to Niger. Mr Bazoum remains under arrest, eight months after he was deposed. Nevertheless, the United States wanted to maintain its partnership with the country.
But the sudden arrival of 100 Russian instructors and an air defense system in Niger last week made the chances of near-term cooperation even more unlikely. According to Russian state news outlet Ria Novosti, the Russian personnel are part of the Afrika Korps, the new paramilitary structure intended to replace the Wagner Group, the military company whose mercenaries and operations are led by Yevgeny V in spread to Africa. . Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last year.
Protesters in Niamey on Saturday waved Russian flags as well as those of Burkina Faso and Mali, two neighboring countries where military-led governments have also sought Russian help to help fight insurgents linked to Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
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 she officially took 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.
Current and former security and diplomatic officials said Niger’s strategically important location and willingness to work with Washington would be difficult to replace.
J. Peter Pham, a former U.S. special envoy to the Sahel, said in an email: “While the general population of Niger will bear the brunt of the consequences of a U.S. military withdrawal and subsequent loss of political and diplomatic attention, the United States and its allies will also lose, at least in the short term, a strategic military asset that will be very difficult to replace.”