Russia is filling the vacuum left by the west in the Sahel

The writer is editorial director and a columnist at Le Monde

His country may be among the poorest in the world but General Salifou Mody, Niger’s minister of defence, is a much-courted man. Never mind that his government, born of a military coup in July 2023, still detains the deposed democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum and his wife. On December 4 last year, General Mody welcomed to Niamey Russia’s deputy defence minister, General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. Two weeks later, it was Boris Pistorius, the German minister of defence, who showed up to meet him.

This paradoxical list of visitors epitomises the growing security challenge confronting western countries in this part of Africa. On the battleground for great powers’ influence that Niger and its neighbours of the Sahel region have become, Russia is scoring impressive points.

Niger’s rulers have turned picky when it comes to foreign guests. In March, a high-level US delegation led by assistant secretary of state Molly Phee, her Pentagon colleague Celeste Wallander and General Michael Langley of US Africa Command was snubbed by the head of the military junta. The American officials, eager to talk about the future of the two military bases they keep in Niger, even extended their stay in Niamey to give it another chance — to no avail. Two days after they left, having met other officials, Washington learnt from a Facebook post that Niger had ended the bilateral agreement signed in 2012 that allowed around 1,000 US military personnel to operate in the country.

A spokesman for the junta elaborated in a televised statement. The US delegation, he said, had shown a “condescending attitude” and wanted to “deny the sovereign people of Niger the right to choose its partners and the types of partnerships likely to help it to truly fight terrorism”. American officials confirmed that the delegation had expressed concern over Niger’s relationships with Russia and Iran. A little over a week later, Moscow announced that the same head of Niger’s junta who refused to meet the Americans, General Abdourahamane Tiani, had spoken on the phone with president Vladimir Putin about “strengthening security co-operation”.   

European diplomats in Moscow describe a constant string of visiting leaders from Africa to the Kremlin. One of them, in particular, didn’t go unnoticed in Paris: meeting Putin in late January, the president of Chad, Mahamat Idriss Déby, introduced himself as head of a “brotherly country”. Déby is supposed to be France’s last ally in the Sahel and Chad is a pillar of the fight against terrorism in the region. 

For France, the former colonial power, it has been a humbling experience. Kicked out of Mali by another junta, after having been called in to prevent jihadi groups from taking Bamako in 2013, then kicked out of Burkina Faso, French forces have had to operate a complex retreat from Niger. Withdrawing 1,500 troops and their equipment over more than 1,000 miles to reach N’Djamena, through some areas controlled by jihadi groups, was a logistical challenge which they completed at the end of December with no fanfare.  

Having learnt the hard way that their uncompromising stand with the junta in Niger was not paying off, the French could not hide a touch of schadenfreude on learning of the American misadventure in Niamey. Washington had tried a different tactic, waiting for two months to acknowledge that the coup in Niamey was indeed a coup. But whatever the approach, the stakes are clear for everybody: any vacuum left by western forces in the Sahel is filled by Russia, taking over the anti-terrorist fight with some short-term successes but also with its own methods — and agenda.

Stunned by Moscow’s powerful anti-western disinformation campaigns, observers note how Russia’s presence in Africa is being extended and reorganised in the “post-Prigozhin era”, as the Wagner mercenaries that the former Putin’s ally-turned-rebel used to lead are integrated by the ministry of defence. Africa is General Yevgurov’s domain: the deputy minister of defence makes frequent trips to the continent, often accompanied by General Andrei Averyanov of the military intelligence service GRU, a veteran of Afghanistan, Chechnya and Crimea.      

Should they stay or should they go? This is the dilemma now facing, unexpectedly, some 120 German soldiers still in Niger, where they went to team up with the French and Americans. Now the French are gone, the Americans are in a limbo, the Russians flex their muscles and the Germans are left to wonder whether they can protect Europe’s southern flank from the threat of chaos in the Sahel by themselves. Tough new world.