France withdraws first contingent of soldiers from Chad

France began withdrawing soldiers from Chad on Friday, Chad’s ministry of the armed forces said, after N’Djamena last month abruptly ended military cooperation with the former colonial power.

A contingent of 120 soldiers departed for France from a military airport in the capital, the ministry said in a statement on Facebook, 10 days after French fighter aircraft left the Sahelian country for good.

Chad had been a key link in France’s military presence in Africa and its last foothold in the wider Sahel region after the forced withdrawal of its troops from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in the wake of a series of military coups. But it announced on November 28 its decision to end a defense accord with Paris mainly dating from independence in 1960.

“At midday, 120 French soldiers took off from the military airport of N’Djamena onboard an Airbus A330 Phoenix MRTT, headed for France,” the ministry said in a statement on Facebook. The French army, which had some 1,000 personnel in the country, did not immediately comment on the announcement.

The departure on Friday of French soldiers took place in the presence of Chadian military authorities, a move which “testifies to the intensity of cooperation between the two countries in the field of security,” the statement said.

Chad’s decision to break military ties with France came only hours after a visit by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, whose delegation appeared unaware the move was looming. The central African country was the last Sahel nation to host French troops.

Its decision also came shortly after Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye told AFP in an interview that France should close its military bases in the West African country.

The military authorities in Mali, Burkina and Niger have pivoted towards Russia in recent years. Chad’s leader General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno has also sought closer ties with Moscow in recent months but talks to strengthen economic cooperation have yet to bear concrete results. The Chadian president has previously said that the ending of the defense agreement did not mean “a rejection of international cooperation or a questioning of our diplomatic relations with France, whatsoever.”