The U.S. Military is withdrawing dozens of special forces soldiers from Chad over the next week in what is a second blow for U.S. foreign policy in Africa over the last week.
The New York Times reported that the U.S. is removing 75 Army Special Forces personnel from Chad’s capital N’Djamena due to a letter the U.S. received from Chad’s government that it “saw as threatening to end an important security agreement with Washington.”
The U.S. forces being withdrawn work at a base where they train with local forces and advise them on operations.
U.S. officials were reportedly “blindsided and puzzled” by the letter due to a number of factors, including the fact that it was “not sent through official diplomatic channels.”
The move comes after news broke last week that Biden was going to start withdrawing U.S. soldiers from Niger, which is on Chad’s western border.
The dwindling of America’s presence in the region upends U.S. counterterrorism efforts and security policy in the politically unstable Sahel region of Africa, which stretches across the central part of the continent and includes Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Sudan, and Eritrea.
The region is one of the most dangerous in the world and is a hotbed for multiple major Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and more.
The report said that although the U.S. is withdrawing, France still has troops in the country and has a much larger military footprint there than the U.S. does.
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The Times noted that the withdrawal of U.S. forces in both countries “comes as Niger, as well as Mali and Burkina Faso, [are] turning away from years of cooperation with the United States and forming partnerships with Russia — or at least exploring closer security ties with Moscow.”
The report noted that Russia often uses coercive tactics to destabilize governments in the region.
The U.S. warned “Chad’s president last year that Russian mercenaries were plotting to kill him and three senior aides and that Moscow was backing Chadian rebels massing in the Central African Republic, to the south,” the report said. “At the same time, the Kremlin was courting sympathizers within Chad’s ruling elite, including cabinet ministers and a half brother of the president.”
