DJIBOUTI: French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday its military base in Djibouti could assume a greater role, speaking after Paris was forced to pull troops out of several other African countries.
“Our role is changing in Africa because the world is changing in Africa, because public opinion is changing, because governments are changing,” he said.
Macron was addressing French forces stationed at the strategic Horn of Africa nation before sitting down for a Christmas meal with the troops, a regular feature on the presidential calendar.
France had to change its past logic of having too many military bases in Africa, he said.
In recent years, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, all three under military rule, have told France to get its troops out.
They have turned instead to Russia for military support in their fight against the jihadist forces active in the region.
And on Friday, France also began withdrawing ground troops from Chad, after N’Djamena last month abruptly ended military cooperation with the former colonial power.
The central African country was the last Sahel nation to host French troops.
Its decision also came shortly after Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye told AFP in an interview that France should close its military bases there.
Djibouti has in the past been part of France’s Indo-Pacific strategy, contributing to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
“It is also, and will also have to be reinvented as, a projection point for some of our African missions,” Macron said, without elaborating.
The French base at Djibouti currently hosts 1,500 soldiers.
That makes it France’s largest military contingent abroad and the only one untouched by the military draw-down African nations have imposed on Paris.
In July, Djibouti and France renewed their defense cooperation treaty.
As well as paying rent for the base, France also assumes responsibility for patrolling the airspace over the country.
The small east African state is a relative haven of stability. On the other side of the Red Sea lies Yemen, gripped in a devastating civil war.
Macron sees new role for French military base in Djibouti
https://arab.news/n6uc3
Macron sees new role for French military base in Djibouti
- Macron was speaking after France was forced to pull troops out of several other African countries
RSF drones hit civilian sites in Sudan’s North Kordofan
- According to the sources, the strike targeted classrooms at Kordofan University for the second time this week
CAIRO: The Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces carried out a drone attack on multiple civilian sites in Al-Ubayyid, the capital of North Kordofan state, in the early hours of Friday, field sources have told Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath.
According to the sources, the strike targeted classrooms at Kordofan University for the second time this week.
The city’s medical supply center and a private home in the Riyadh Al-Salihin neighborhood were also hit.
No civilian casualties were reported, the sources said, though the buildings sustained material damage.
A military source told the two outlets that army ground-based defenses intercepted and shot down about 11 drones involved in the attack on Al-Ubayyid.
The use of drones has escalated in recent months, with both the Sudanese army and the RSF increasingly relying on unmanned aerial systems in their operations.
The RSF has been accused of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure in Kordofan.
Meanwhile, the army has continued to track and strike RSF supply lines in Kordofan and Darfur.
More than 100,000 people have been displaced from the Kordofan region in just over three months, according to the UN, as violence between the army and RSF intensifies with the conflict nearing its third year.
