(Ken Silva, Headline USA) U.S. troops ordered out of Niger by the West African country’s new government will complete their withdrawal by the middle of September, the Pentagon and Nigerien defense officials said Sunday.
The timeline was the product of four days of talks between the countries’ defense officials in the capital city of Niamey, according to a joint statement.
“The U.S. Department of Defense and the Ministry of National Defense of Niger have reached a disengagement agreement to effect the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which has already begun,” the two entities said.
“It is therefore agreed that this disengagement will end no later than September 15.”
The withdrawal means the U.S. will leave behind infrastructure it has built over the years to support the approximately 1,000 troops who have been based there to conduct counterterrorism missions, the officials said. Fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops are still in Niger, mostly on an airbase near Agadez, some 550 miles away from the capital.
The officials called Niger an “anchor” in U.S. counterterrorism efforts over the last decade, and they are still looking at options on how to fill that gap. The officials said that their hope is to continue to work with the Nigerien military on counterterrorism work in the future, even if U.S. troops are not based there on the ground.
The rupture in military cooperation followed last July’s ouster of the country’s democratically elected president by mutinous soldiers.
After that, the Biden State Department’s top official for African affairs, Molly Phee, allegedly threatened the new government from doing business with Iran and Russia—which didn’t sit well with the new prime minister, Lamine Zeine.
“When she finished, I said, ‘Madame, I am going to summarize in two points what you have said,’” Zeine said in a recent interview. “First, you have come here to threaten us in our country. That is unacceptable. And you have come here to tell us with whom we can have relationships, which is also unacceptable. And you have done it all with a condescending tone and a lack of respect.”
In March, Zeine’s government declared that the U.S. military presence there is “illegal.”
From there, conditions for U.S. troops began to deteriorate rapidly.
In a letter published last month by the Washington Post, an Army whistleblower accused Biden of endangering the troops’ lives by leaving them there against the wishes of the country’s new government.
“Americans deployed here have not been able to perform their primary mission and have been told to ‘sit and hold.’ It is clear that the country of Niger does not want a permanent military presence in the country and they have informed us that we need to leave,” the whistleblower said.
“At the same time, there are approximately 1,100 US Military Service Members in the country who are essentially being held hostage from returning home to their families while the State Department continues with failed diplomacy by not communicating with the country of Niger on what their withdrawal plans will look like.”
According to the whistleblower, the troops in Niger can’t leave because the government isn’t approving visas for the new troops that would replace them.
The Pentagon has also said the U.S. will relocate most of the approximately 100 forces it has deployed in neighboring Chad for now. But talks are expected to resume next month about revising an agreement that allows U.S. troops to be based in Chad.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
