After more than six decades, French troops completed their withdrawal from Chad this week before a January 31 deadline, the latest blow to France’s shrinking military hold in its former West and Central Africa strongholds.N’Djamena abruptly cut ties with Paris in December and ended a military pact that saw 1,000 French soldiers stationed in the country. The sprawling nation is a prime spot for monitoring and launching missions against the swarm of armed groups operating in the troubled Sahel region, but also for monitoring activities in neighbouring war-wracked Libya.
That wind-down is part of a recent trend that has seen ex-French colonies cut off or downgrade military and diplomatic ties with their former ruler, due to resentment from perceived French interference in their countries.
In military-led Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, some 4,000 French soldiers have exited, while Russian troops have flooded in to help battle armed groups.
Chad, Senegal and Ivory Coast have since followed suit. Advertisement
“For these countries, it’s about sovereignty,” Francophone Africa security analyst Beverly Ochieng with the Control Risks consultancy told Al Jazeera.
“If you have a foreign force in your country, it means you are in some way surrendering sovereignty, and these countries see it as freeing themselves of that interference.”
A convoy of French troops drives by in Niamey as they prepared to leave Niger in October 2023 [File: Mahamadou Hamidou/Reuters]
Popular resentment against France has festered in “La Francafrique” since colonial ti …
