France pledges more troops for Sahel as US reconsiders Africa deployments

France has pledged to deploy 220 more troops to help suppress the Islamist insurgency in the Sahel, while the US is considering reducing its commitment.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told AFP on 13 January that US resources “could be reduced and then shifted, either to increase readiness of the force in the continental US or shifted to” the Pacific. “We’re developing options for the secretary to consider.”

AFP quoted French President Emmanuel Macron as saying that he hoped to convince his US counterpart “that the fight against terrorism is playing out in this region as well”.

On the same day, Macron hosted a summit of the five G5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) in Pau: the home of the 5 ^th Helicopter Combat Regiment that lost two aircraft and seven personnel in a crash in Mali in November 2019.

Macron said the summit marked “a very deep turning point in the method of approach by reclarifying the political framework, by redefining very clearly the objectives and terms, the organisation of our common intervention”.

He said that a joint military command would be set up by France’s Operation ‘Barkhane’ force and the G5 Sahel Joint Force and 220 more French troops would be deployed. There are already about 4,500 in the region.

Macron said the focus will be on the Burkina Faso–Mali–Niger tri-border area where the regional Islamic State faction has emerged as “the priority enemy”.