French Troops withdrawn from Burkina Faso
- February 24, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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French Troops withdrawn from Burkina Faso
Subject : International Relations
Section :Places in news
Concept :
- On February 19, Burkina Faso announced an official end to the operations led by France in the country.
- France was asked to withdraw its troops from Burkina Faso months after it pulled out its troops from Mali.
Reasons for withdrawal
- The primary reason behind the withdrawal is the failure of its counter insurgency operations in the Sahel region against Islamist groups.
- Secondly, as Islamist insurgency kept intensifying, France’s military presence in Burkina Faso came under scrutiny.
- After the second coup in September 2022, anti France protests increased in Burkina Faso with demonstrators demanding French withdrawal from the country.
- There was also an increasing proRussia sentiment.
Background
- On November 9, 2022 French President Emmanuel Macron announced the end of the decade-long Operation Barkhane in Africa.
- French President, Mr. Macron said that, “Our military support for African countries will continue, but according to new principles that we have defined with them.”
Operation Barkhane
- In January 2013, France started conducting military operations in the Sahel.
- Operation Serval, as it was known, was restricted to going after Islamic extremists affiliated with al-Qaeda who had taken over northern Mali.
- The operation, now known as Operation Barkhane, was renamed and scaled up in 2014 with a counterterrorism focus.
- The goal was to support regional military forces in their efforts to stop the emergence of non-state armed groups throughout the Sahel.
- The regional joint counterterrorism force deployed about 4,500 French personnel.
- The Operation Barkhane initiative, which aims to combat terrorism in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Chad, was launched as a result of the 2014 success. But Operation Barkhane saw a number of setbacks.
- First, the region saw the expansion of new groups linked to terrorist organizations, notably the Islamic State, notwithstanding the operation.
- Second, the operation’s failure triggered a humanitarian crisis.
- Third, the failure of Operation Barkhane to put an end to the insurgencies in the area led to a rise in civilian military support, which in turn exacerbated the political unrest that followed in the Sahel.
Sahel Region
- In Africa, the Sahel is the region of ecoclimatic and biogeographic transition between the Sudanese savanna to the south and the Sahara to the north.
- It covers the southern central latitudes of Northern Africa, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, and has a semi-arid climate.
- The name is derived from the Arabic word for “coast, shore,” which is used metaphorically to allude to the southernmost tip of the huge Sahara, it is said.
- The Sahel part includes from west to east parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, extreme north of Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and the Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea and the extreme north of Ethiopia.(Read with MAP)
Great Green Wall (GGW) Programme:
- It was launched in 2007 by the African Union.
- Initial idea for the GGW: A band of trees about 8,000 kilometers long and 8 kilometers wide, stretching across Africa from east to west.
- The GGW programme aims to restore 100 million hectares of degraded ecosystems across 11 countries in the region.
- It aims to promote sustainable development and climate change mitigation.
- By 2030, the GGW aims to sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon, restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land and create 10 million jobs for the world’s poorest people.
Countries selected as intervention zones for the Great Green Wall are:
- Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.