The withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. military personnel from Niger is underway and all American troops will leave the West African country by September 15, the U.S. and Nigerian governments said Sunday.
The agreement, described in a joint statement by the two countries’ militaries, lays out the terms of the withdrawal that the Biden administration announced last month. It also marks the beginning of the end for the Pentagon’s most enduring counterterrorism partnership in Africa’s turbulent Sahel.
A senior Pentagon official, Christopher P. Maier, and a senior U.S. officer, Lt. Gen. Dagvin RM Anderson, met last week in Niamey, the capital of Niger, with representatives of the Nigerian military led by Army Chief of Staff Col. Maj. Mamane Sani Kiaou, the statement said. The aim of the meeting was to “coordinate the orderly and safe withdrawal of US forces from Niger,” it said.
The statement released by the Pentagon also said the two militaries had established procedures to facilitate the entry and exit of US personnel, including flight and landing clearances for military aircraft. Niger has refused to approve some of these releases in recent months, American officials said.
In a separate statement posted on social media, the Nigerian military said that “the withdrawal of American forces from Niger by mid-September 2024 will occur with mutual respect and transparency.”
The date was in line with American officials’ expectations but became official after meetings last week. About 100 American soldiers with urgent medical needs or family obligations or whose jobs had been made obsolete by the earlier decision to withdraw left on commercial flights last week, Kelly Cahalan, spokeswoman for the military’s Africa Command in Stuttgart, said on Sunday.
In a conference call with reporters Sunday afternoon, a senior Defense Department official said U.S. forces would take away any lethal or dangerous weapons or equipment, but would leave other items such as shelters, generators and air conditioners for Nigerians to use.
U.S. relations with Niger have steadily deteriorated since the military overthrew the country’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, last July. The Biden administration waited until October to officially declare the junta’s seizure of power a coup, hoping to resolve the crisis and avoid a congressional mandate to cut off economic and military aid to a government suspected of being overthrown by a military coup was put in place until democracy is restored.
But diplomatic negotiations went nowhere and the junta said in March it was ending its military cooperation agreement with the United States after a series of contentious meetings with a high-level American diplomatic and military delegation in Niamey. Nigerian leaders accused American officials of telling them how to run their country, an accusation that Biden administration officials denied.
Niger’s decision was in line with a recent pattern of countries in the Sahel, an arid region south of the Sahara, cutting ties with Western countries. Instead, they are increasingly entering into partnerships with Russia.
At the beginning of April, around 100 Russian trainers and an air defense system suddenly arrived in Niger. According to the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti, the Russian soldiers are part of the Afrika Korps, the new paramilitary structure designed to replace the Wagner Group, the military company whose mercenaries and operations spread across Africa under the leadership of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last year.
Niger’s rejection of military ties with the United States follows troop withdrawals from France, the former colonial power that has led foreign counterterrorism efforts against jihadist groups in West Africa over the past decade but has recently been perceived as a pariah in the region.
Nearly 400 American soldiers work at an air base in Niamey, with the remaining 600 at US Air Base 201, a six-year-old, $110 million facility in the remote town of Agadez. Since the coup, troops in Agadez have been inactive. Most of its MQ-9 Reaper drones were grounded, except for those flying surveillance missions to protect U.S. personnel.
The loss of the two bases will be a blow to counterterrorism and overall security in the Sahel, American officials acknowledged. Discussions are underway with West African coastal states such as Ghana, Togo and Benin, officials said, but the talks are still at a very early stage.
“These bases have been a huge advantage for us in terms of our strategic access and influence, including at the operational level,” Gen. Michael E. Langley, the head of the military’s Africa Command, said in an interview last month.
The senior Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational issues, said it was possible that the Pentagon could resume training or other security assistance at a later date, and suggested that Nigerian army officers could Wanted to maintain relationships with their American counterparts. But under what new conditions this would happen is uncertain.
It is also unclear what access, if any, the United States will have in the future to the sprawling base in Agadez and whether Russian advisers and perhaps even Russian airpower will move in as Niger’s ties with the Kremlin deepen. The joint statement released Sunday did not mention the fate of the bases.
Ruth Maclean contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal.
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2024-05-19 21:06:07
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