Ivory Coast’s president announced the withdrawal of French troops from the country, joining a growing number of francophone states that have asked the former colonial power to relinquish its military presence in West Africa. The downscaling of defense ties comes 10 months before Ivory Coast holds elections in which 83-year-old President Alassane Ouattara may seek another term.
A surge in anti-French sentiment across the region helped bring Senegalese opposition leader Bassirou Diomaye Faye to power last year, and has been tapped by military juntas that seized control of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger since 2021. “We have decided on the concerted and organized withdrawal of French forces from Ivory Coast,” Ouattara said in a televised address late on Tuesday. The pullout will begin this month, he said.
France has withdrawn forces from at least four West African nations since 2022 – Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and most recently Chad. Paris’s remaining permanent military bases in Ivory Coast, Senegal and Gabon have become “major political vulnerabilities” for Paris and for their African host governments, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Hostile actors and strategic competitors can easily weaponize them against France’s overall policies towards the continent,” Will Brown and Suzanne Tisserand, policy fellows at the thinktank, said in a Dec. 20 note. “Second, African countries increasingly perceive permanent foreign military presence as an infringement of their national sovereignty.”
The military rulers of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have motivated their decision to part ways with the Economic Community of West African States – a regional economic bloc – by saying the group of nations is being “instrumentalized” by France. Faye on Tuesday said Senegal’s developing a new security strategy involving the end of all foreign military presence in the country from 2025. In addition to cutting security ties with France, the juntas have also severed relations with other Western allies including the U.S., hampering efforts to contain an Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region.
In turn, they’ve boosted ties with countries including Russia, Iran and Turkey, though the security situation has deteriorated further – with thousands of people killed each year and many more displaced. Ouattara’s decision is a blow to President Emmanuel Macron’s strategy to redefine French military policy in the region. In November, Macron’s personnel envoy to Africa – Jean-Marie Bockel – submitted a report on the upcoming remodeling of France’s military presence in Africa, which according to Agence France-Presse included cutting its presence to 100 troops from 350 in Senegal and Gabon; to 300 in Chad from 1,000, and 100 in Ivory Coast from 600.
By Katarina Höije and Baudelaire Mieu, Bloomberg News The Tribune Content Agency
