Chad has called on the US to withdraw its troops from a military base in the country.
Chad, a key Western ally in the fight against jihadists and Russian influence in Africa, has called on the United States to withdraw its troops from a military base in the country. Bloomberg reports this with reference to a letter from the Chief of Staff of the Chadian Air Force.
The move comes a month after Niger—another key Western ally in the region—suspended a security agreement with the United States amid a series of coups that have left military-ruled governments in the Sahel, a tropical savannah region in Africa that includes twelve countries and 300 million population) established closer ties with Russia while simultaneously severing ties with the West.
The letter to the US military attache in Chad was intended to “warn the Americans that we have decided to stop their activities.” This was confirmed by Foreign Ministry spokesman Ibrahim Mahamat Ahmed, who declined to comment further.
Chad’s request comes just ahead of presidential elections that are widely expected to be won by the country’s interim leader Mahamat Deby, who seized power three years ago after the death of his father, who ruled for 30 years.
In January, Déby became the latest Sahel military ruler to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and stress the need for “sovereignty.”
The military rulers of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, who seized power over the past three years, have also cut security ties with their former allies in the West amid rising anti-Western sentiment in the region, especially against former colonial powers.
Russian influence in Africa
Earlier, the Financial Times wrote that Russia is gaining impressive points on the battlefield for influence in parts of Africa (Niger and its neighbors in the Sahel region).
“Any vacuum left by Western forces in the Sahel is being filled by Russia, which is taking over the anti-terrorism fight with some short-term successes, but also with its own methods and agenda. Shocked by Moscow’s powerful anti-Western disinformation campaigns, observers note how Russia’s presence in Africa is expanding and reorganizing in the “post-Prigogine era,” the publication says.
In April, it became known that the Wagner PMC began the first large-scale recruitment of mercenaries in Africa after the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
