Niger accepts additional European troops as Mali withdraws

Legislatures in Niger have passed a bill authorizing the hosting of additional European special troops in the West African country as France continues its departure from neighboring Mali.

Niger’s parliament unanimously approved the law on Friday, clearing the door for the deployment of more European troops, the overall number of which has not been disclosed.

The question of additional foreign soldiers put President Mohamed Bazoum’s ruling party against opposition and civil society groups concerned about France’s military presence in its former colonies.

“We require international forces to provide information and aerial assistance to the Nigerien military forces fighting on the ground,” Daouda Mamadou Marte, a senior ruling party member, said before Friday’s discussion began.

Meanwhile, Abdoulaye Seydou, a Nigerien civil society activist, told Reuters that approving the law would constitute a breach of sovereignty.

“Sahelian governments are capable of establishing their own means of defense,” he told Reuters.

The ruling Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism has a parliamentary majority in Niger, with 135 of 166 seats.

Friday’s decision follows Bazoum’s February agreement for Niger to house some Mali special forces.

Around 2,400 French troops and 900 special forces from the French-led Takuba task force are set to depart Mali in the coming months as ties between France and Bamako’s ruling military government continue to deteriorate significantly.

The pullout has fueled fears that conflict in Mali’s central area, where a variety of armed groups aligned with ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda have fostered ethnic tensions exacerbated by scarce resources, would spread farther throughout the Sahel.

Mali has subsequently resorted to the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor. Along the porous border between Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, a combined force of troops from the G5 Sahel countries — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger – is also active.

The conflict has already claimed hundreds of lives, displaced millions, and rendered large areas of terrain in the Sahel uninhabitable.

Several west African coastal republics, like Benin, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast, which have been affected by spillover assaults in recent months, may also get the re-deployed soldiers.

Protesters in Burkina Faso and Niger halted a French convoy traveling from the Ivory Coast to Mali in November.

In the subsequent skirmishes in Niger, two individuals were murdered.

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