Only months after forcing its former colonizer France to withdraw its troops, Niger, West Africa's largest country, has said the presence of US troops is illegal. This could be a major blow to the US military's power-projection capacity in the region
Brig. Gen. Moussa Barmou, Niger Special Operations Forces commander, meeting with a U.S. Army Special Operations team to discuss anti-terrorism policy and tactics throughout the region, at Air Base 101 in Niger on June 12, 2023
"We are in touch" with Niger's government"and will provide further updates as warranted," is all that the US State Department's Spokesperson Matthew Miller has been able to muster so far in response, via a General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the then chief of the Presidential guard who had led the coup, went on to form the CNSP with popular support including from the trade unions and the protest movement against French presence.
Apart from the Pentagon-run airbase 101 in Niger's southwest and 201 in its central region, the CIA has also been running another base further to the northeast in the small oasis town of Dirkou. The existence of such a base was a secret until it was exposed in 2018. Niger, it seemed, was not particularly keen on the US partnership. Like in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, the presence of Western troops in Niger for nearly a decade only saw an increase in the spread of violence by Islamist insurgencies they were ostensibly deployed to fight, after spawning them across the Sahel by destroying Libya in 2011.
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