After months of procrastination and consultations, Emmanuel Macron finally announced, on Monday February 27, a further drop in French military personnel deployed on the African continent. A reduction which should be implemented gradually by the end of the year. It comes just six months after the withdrawal of the last soldiers from Mali, which marked the end of Operation “Barkhane”.
The President of the Republic did not give precise figures on this reduction in staff, but this movement “will be seen”, assures a military source. It should mainly concern the bases of Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Gabon, where France has 1,700 troops. The Head of State has indeed assured that Djibouti – the largest French base abroad with some 1,500 men – would not be affected, this being an essential relay for the projections of forces towards Indo- Pacific that he intends to accentuate.
Beyond the symbolic force of a drop in the workforce, Emmanuel Macron insisted on an evolution in the status of French rights-of-way in Africa. “There will be no more military bases as such”, he said. Henceforth these bases will be “co-managed” with partner countries, he stressed.
The ultimate challenge is to erase the term “French bases” of the semantic landscape, in order to continue the erasure of what France considers to have become one of the main catalysts of anti-French sentiment in the countries where it still has a foothold and which it fears losing above all else. “It is worth us today to be the object by amalgam of the rejection which strikes a Malian political class which has failed to straighten out its country and it is this trap which could, if we are not careful, reproduce itself elsewhere “explained the Head of State.
“Renewal” of military cooperation
No base should therefore be closed, even if this option has been seriously studied, in particular for budgetary questions, at a time when the armies are struggling to complete their future military programming law.
Emmanuel Macron preferred the narrow path of “desilhouette”. This work should in particular involve changing the names or status of these rights-of-way, generally governed by the defense agreements signed with each country. The creation of’“academies” military has been part of the ideas in the making for many months, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire. These transformed bases “will become for some academies, for others, partnership bases. Some will be renamed. They will change in appearance, in logic, in imprint.detailed the President of the Republic.
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