Humiliation to France: expelled from another country in Africa

France registers another humiliation in the field of foreign relations, after being expelled from Chad, another country from Africa that keeps it away after decades of active involvement. The French army officially announced yesterday (Tuesday) that it began withdrawing its forces from the country, and returned French fighter jets from the Chadian capital N’Djamena back to the base in eastern France.Two weeks ago, Chad’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it was immediately terminating France’s military cooperation agreement – meaning that the French army operating in the country would be forced to leave it. The spokesperson of the French army clarified that this is only the first stage of the withdrawal, but weeks are expected before the task of evacuating about a thousand French soldiers from the African country is completed, while also evacuating all French military assets in the country.

 

 

 

At the moment, all the details of the French withdrawal have not yet been finalized. For decades, the French army operated in the country, as well as in a number of other countries in Africa in general and the Sahel region in particular. The French military has been very active in the country in missions related to fighting terrorism and eradicating Islamist terrorist nests such as ISIS.

 

 

 

The move by the government of Chad to remove the French army comes after it was decided to remove the US army from the country as well. The move expresses a deep and widespread phenomenon of reducing the involvement and influence of the Western countries led by the US and France in the Sahel region of Africa, while the involvement and influence of Russia is significantly strengthening .

 

 

 

Over the past two years, the French army has also been expelled from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso – three neighboring countries that experienced military coups, moved away from the West and got very close to Russia. In all of them, the French army worked to eradicate the terrorist organizations in the region, but it was dismissed in disgrace, with the support of anti-colonial sentiment on the part of those regimes.

Even in Senegal, the western edge of the Sahel region in Africa, they continue to signal their intention to remove the French army from their territory. At the end of November, the president of Senegal, Basiro Dumay Paya, announced that the continued presence of 350 French soldiers in his country was “inappropriate”. He has not yet officially called for the removal of French forces from his country, but it is evident that even there it is only a matter of time.