Emmanuel Macron and Nigerian President Mahamadou Issoufou, December 22, 2019 in Niamey. - Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP

It is this Monday in Pau that Emmanuel Macron receives the presidents of the five countries of the Sahel, where jihadist attacks are increasing. The objective of this meeting, which looks like a "convocation", is to strengthen the disputed legitimacy of the French soldiers deployed on the ground and to mobilize the European allies.

In addition to the presidents of the G5 Sahel (Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania), this summit will welcome Monday in Pau (southwest of France) the Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, the president of the Commission African Union Moussa Faki and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.

A wreath for the soldiers who died in December

The French president must first go to the base of the 5th regiment of helicopter gunships of Pau, from which came seven of the 13 French soldiers killed in operations in Mali in December. With his African counterparts, he will lay a wreath in their memory. The summit should start at 4 p.m. at the Château de Pau with the presidents of the G5 Sahel, before a working dinner at the Parliament of Navarre with the other international officials. The city center is placed under close surveillance, cars prohibited and pedestrian access tightly controlled, said the prefecture of Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

The five leaders had been abruptly invited to Pau in early December by the French president, irritated by criticism of their public opinion against the 4,500 French soldiers of the Barkhane force and of the declarations deemed ambiguous by some of their ministers.

Anti-French sentiment in Mali

By issuing this invitation, perceived as a "summons" by some Sahelian presidents, Emmanuel Macron had warned that he would put all options on the table, including that of a withdrawal or a recession of Barkhane. The French president, however, postponed the summit for a month after the attack on the Niger camp of Inates, the deadliest since 2015 (71 dead). Anti-French sentiment is developing in particular in Mali, where on Friday a thousand people demonstrated again in Bamako to demand the departure of French and foreign troops.

Paris wants above all to obtain a joint declaration of the five countries which will underline that France acts at the request of its leaders, in order to "relegitimize" its presence, explains the presidency. "We must first get political leaders a clear position on what they want or not," ruled the Minister of the Armies Florence Parly Saturday.

Hesitations in Europe and the USA

"The meeting will be decisive in that it will put on the table all the questions, all the grievances, all the solutions," said Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in early January. In addition to its political component, the Pau summit also aims to review the military strategy against the jihadists in this area as vast as Europe and call for increased participation by international allies, especially European.

Nigerian President Mahamadou Issoufou thus intends to launch in Pau "an appeal for international solidarity" so that the Sahel and France "are not alone in this fight" against the "jihadist scourge". France is also in the process of setting up an operation called "Tacouba", bringing together special forces from a dozen European countries. Paris hopes that the Pau summit will convince reluctant Europeans, favorable to the fight against jihadists in the region but worried to see France criticized. Another concern is the hesitation of the Americans, whose military support in the region is irreplaceable, explains the Elysée.

In this semi-desert Sahelian zone, which has become since 2012 the field of action of several jihadist groups, for some affiliated with Al-Qaeda or Daesh, blood continues to flow. On Christmas Eve, seven soldiers and 35 civilians had been killed in Arbinda (Burkina Faso), followed on January 9 by the 89 Nigerien soldiers killed in Chinégodar, on the borders of Niger and Mali. Increasingly daring attacks against which the joint force of the G5 Sahel, launched in 2017, seems powerless.

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