Port-Bouët (Ivory Coast) (AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron, who came to spend Christmas Friday with French troops based in Côte d'Ivoire, has announced that he intends to give "new strength" to the anti-Jihadist struggle in the Sahel.
Welcomed by his counterpart Alassane Ouattara, the president arrived at the end of the day in Ivory Coast, for a 48-hour visit away from the retirement reform crisis in France. From the airport, he went directly to the French base to share with the 1,000 French soldiers present on site a dinner prepared by the head of the Elysée Palace, Guillaume Gomez.
Throughout the evening, Emmanuel Macron went from table to table, greeting the soldiers and posing with them. At midnight, a group of legionaries, followed by Ivorian employees of the base, chanted loudly "Happy Birthday" to celebrate the 42 years of the Head of State, born on December 21, 1977.
He started this last trip of the year in a tense social context in France: France has been living for 16 days at the rate of a strike in transport which greatly disrupts daily life.
In front of the soldiers, Emmanuel Macron notably mentioned the recent tragedy experienced by the French army: the loss of 13 soldiers from the anti-Jihadist Barkhane operation in an accidental collision between two helicopters, during an operation in Mali.
"We will continue to fight against jihadist terrorists. We will continue to do so with our African partners and with our European and international partners (...) Because if we allow the threat to flourish, it will also affect us", he said. warned.
"I hope that we can give a new depth, new commitments, a new force to this operation to win this fight essential to the stability and security of the Sahel, more broadly in the whole region and also in Europe", said the French president during his speech to French soldiers.
- Tenfold daring of the jihadists -
At the end of his visit to Côte d'Ivoire, Emmanuel Macron will make a three-hour stopover in Niamey on Sunday to pay tribute to the 71 Nigerien soldiers who recently died in the attack on a military camp, but also to prepare with the Nigerian President Mahamadou Issoufou the Sahel summit scheduled for January 13 in Pau (southwest of France). The presidents of the G5 Sahel (Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Mauritania) are invited to attend.
After the tension born at the start of December of his declarations asking the heads of state to "clarify" their position on the French military presence in the Sahel, the French president stressed that "without their political commitment (from the heads of state), we cannot can fight effectively. "
The French Forces camp in Côte d'Ivoire (FFCI), 950 men strong, 84% of whom are on short-term missions (four months), is like "a submarine" capable "of deploying throughout the West Africa as needed ", according to their commander, Colonel Frédéric Gauthier.
The FFCIs are regularly mobilized to transport equipment and goods landed at the port of Abidjan to the bases of Operation Barkhane, in Niger or Mali.
Saturday, Emmanuel Macron and Alassane Ouattara must relaunch the work of the International Academy to fight terrorism, which wants to become the training center for players in the sector in West Africa.
The entire Sahel - in particular Mali, Niger and Burkina - is now the target of increasingly daring assaults by Islamist groups, despite the strengthening of local armies and the presence of 4,500 French soldiers of the anti-Jihadist Barkhane force .
In the company of the former Ivorian international Didier Drogba, who made the heyday of Olympique de Marseille (France) and Chelsea (United Kingdom), he will inaugurate on Saturday a "sports agora" in a popular district of Abidjan . Before debating with students and signing bilateral agreements, in particular for the Abidjan metro site.
© 2019 AFP