France has started evacuating its citizens and other Europeans from Niger, days after a junta toppled the president, Mohamed Bazoum, and seized power in the west African country.
Tensions between Niger and former colonial power France have escalated after the coup on 26 July overthrew one of the last pro-western leaders in Africa’s Sahel region. France’s decision to swiftly evacuate its citizens goes further than its reaction to putsches in recent years in the other former French colonies of Mali and Burkina Faso, where French citizens were not evacuated after military coups.
The first of three planned evacuation flights landed in Paris on Tuesday evening.
“There are 262 people on board the plane, an Airbus A330, including a dozen babies,” French foreign minister Catherine Colonna told AFP after the flight took off, adding that most of the passengers were French but there were “some European nationals”.
Earlier, a crowd of foreigners gathered outside the terminal with their luggage, Reuters reported.
“I never thought we would leave like this,” a French woman who was waiting to leave with her family told the news agency. “It’s a scene worthy of a war movie.”
The evacuations began the day after Mali and Burkina Faso – Niger’s neighbours – said any outside intervention to restore the ousted government would be seen as a declaration of war. Analysts were however sceptical of the statement, with both countries struggling to contain jihadist insurgencies.
The US said it was not evacuating its citizens from Niger for now, but it suspended activities such as training with Niamey’s forces.
Washington is “certainly aware of efforts by France and other European nations to evacuate their citizens. At the same time, we don’t have any indications of direct threats to US citizens or to our facilities, so we have not changed our posture with respect to our presence in Niger at this time,” the national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said.
The White House said it had yet to make a decision whether to send American troops to support international evacuations. It said it had seen no evidence that Russia or Wagner mercenaries, who operate in the Sahel and central Africa, had been involved in last week’s coup or were actively supporting it.
Supporters of the junta burned French flags and attacked the French embassy in Niamey on Sunday.
The French foreign office said: “Given the situation in Niamey, and the violence that took place against our embassy [on Sunday] and the closing of airspace that leaves our citizens without any possibility of leaving the country by their own means, France is preparing to evacuate those of its citizens and European citizens who want to leave the country. The evacuation will begin today.”
It added the evacuations would take place within “a limited time span”.
French people were told the evacuation would be coordinated with Niger, that it would be quick, and that people should prepare their identification documents, a minimum of luggage, and water and food for the wait for departure. There are believed to be about 500 to 600 French nationals in Niger, fewer than the usual number of about 1,000 because many left earlier this month for school holidays.
The Italian government said it would arrange a special flight to repatriate its nationals from Niger and, with the risk of conflict escalating, Spain said it was preparing to evacuate more than 70 citizens by air. Germany urged its citizens to join the French flights.
“The Italian government has decided to offer our fellow nationals present in Niamey the possibility to leave the city with a special flight for Italy,” said Antonio Tajani, the foreign minister of Italy, which has about 90 nationals in Niamey and 500 in the wider country.
Tajani said the embassy in the capital, Niamey, would “remain open and operative, in particular to contribute to the mediation efforts under way”.
Bazoum has been detained by his own presidential guard, the latest in several coups in the Sahel in recent years, including those in Mali and Burkina Faso.
The EU on Tuesday renewed its call for Bazoum’s release. A spokesperson said the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, spoke to him regularly and he was in good health “but we still need the release of President Bazoum”.
The spokesperson added that the bloc had not instigated any evacuation programme but was supporting any member states that were removing staff from its military support and civilian programmes on a voluntary basis.
Niger’s junta on Monday accused France of seeking to intervene militarily to reinstate Bazoum, which the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, denied. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Sunday vowed “immediate and uncompromising” action if French citizens or interests were attacked, after the protest by thousands of people outside the French embassy in Niamey.
Bazoum’s Nigerian party for Democracy and Socialism said Niger risked becoming a “dictatorial and totalitarian regime” after several arrests.
Since the coup, the junta has arrested the country’s oil, mining, interior and transport ministers, the head of the PNDS’s executive committee and a former defence minister, according to the party.
The Economic Community of West African States demanded at an emergency summit on Sunday that Bazoum be reinstated within a week, or it would take “all measures” to restore constitutional order. “Such measures may include the use of force,” it said in a strong statement.
Niger, with a population of 26 million, frequently ranks at the bottom of the UN’s human development index benchmark of prosperity. The country, which became independent from France in 1960, is landlocked, and strict economic sanctions against it could affect many supplies, including electricity.
The coup, according to the putschists, was a response to “the degradation of the security situation” linked to the jihadist conflict, as well as corruption and economic difficulties.
As Niger struggles with two jihadist campaigns – one in the south-west, which swept in from Mali in 2015, and the other in the south-east, involving jihadists from north-eastern Nigeria – the coup has shone a spotlight on France’s reduced and contested military presence in the Sahel after 10 years fighting jihadist insurgencies.
The coup is a serious threat to the French strategy in the Sahel, after several military coups in other countries had already forced it to rethink its military presence and anti-jihadist mission.
France first deployed troops against jihadists in Mali in 2013 under the Socialist president François Hollande, but in the past three years several military coups in the region, as well as a continued jihadist presence, have exposed the limitations of the military strategy and forced France to scale back its presence and focus its efforts in Niger, with Bazoum as a firm ally. It has 1,500 troops in the country and an airbase near Niamey.
