At the request of the junta in power in Ouagadougou, the French special forces acted with their withdrawal from the Sahelian country. Their balance sheet, after almost twelve years of presence, is difficult to draw up.
by Cyril Bensimon, Elise Vincent and Morgane the cam
Their departure was like their arrival and action. It was in all discretion, Saturday, February 18, that the French special forces (FS) acted with their withdrawal from Burkina Faso, during a solemn ceremony for descent of the flags at the Zagré military camp. Located in Kamboinsin, on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, the ultra-secure military enclosure was the main rear base of “saber”, name of the tricolor special forces operation in the Sahel.
This departure comes at the end of the period of one month given to the French to leave the country, following the rupture of the defense agreement which linked Paris and Ouagadougou. Since the coming to power of Captain Ibrahim Traoré and his men following a coup in September 2022 – the second in eight months -, the end of “saber” was one of the main requirements of the demonstrators who gathered Regularly at the end of the week in the capital in support of the junta. A distrust that has strengthened as the terrorist armed groups have extended their grip over the country, to the point of controlling 40 % of the territory today.
If most French special forces – which have counted up to 400 operators – have already left Ouagadougou, “saber” will keep an anchor in West Africa. Several countries are mentioned as a fallback basis, notably Côte d’Ivoire, where France has one of its most important military locations on the continent (with 900 men), and Niger, where a substantial part of the means of ‘Operation “Barkhane” were repatriated in 2022.
Blaise Compaoré, precious and interested friend of France
The departure of the “FS” is in any case the end of more than twenty years of French military presence in Burkina Faso, initially the result of a constrained choice, a mixture of security and political contingencies. In 2009, to respond to the multiplication of attacks and hostage -taking organized by Islamist groups, French military strategists reflect on a Sahel security plan. Nicolas Sarkozy, then in power in France, does not intend to trigger a major armed operation, as will finally resolve his successor, François Hollande, with the “Serval” operation in 2013, followed by ” Barkhane “. But it takes a fall point for elements of the FS.
Now the Malian president of the time, Amadou Toumani Touré, and his Nigerian neighbor, Mamadou Tandja, maintain difficult relations with their French counterpart and refuse any establishment. Only Mauritania responds favorably at first. A detachment from FS is therefore first installed in Atar, a small desert town in the west of the country which has advantages for Paris. The soldiers have some landmarks there because the town served as a garrison for colonial troops until the 1960s. Atar also has the merit of having an airport from which it is easy to take off to launch operations without too much visibility. But this first detachment of FS is quickly eccentric to radiate throughout the Sahel.
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