French President Emmanuel Macron has formally ended France’s decade-long Operation Barkhane to fight Islamist insurgents in the Sahel.
Key points
- In his speech at a naval base in Toulon, he said some French troops would remain in the region. However, they would be there under new arrangements to be worked out with host countries.
- The French troops’ deployment was launched in 2013 when the jihadist insurgents took over much of northern Mali before being pushed away by the French and their regional partners.
- At its high point, Operation Barkhane saw some 5,500 French soldiers deployed in Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.
- The failure of Operation Barkhane has been in large part attributed to the worsening image of France in the region of the Sahel.
Sahel region
- The Sahel region consists of the vast semi-arid and mostly inhospitable region of Africa, separating the Sahara Desert to the north and tropical savannas to the south.
- It includes parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.
