France will begin evacuating its nationals from Niger on Tuesday, the foreign ministry said, after a coup there last week toppled the country’s pro-Western leader.
The decision to move citizens out was prompted by attacks on the French embassy in the capital Niamey, and the closure of Niger’s airspace which made regular departures impossible, the ministry said in a statement.
France had earlier on Tuesday said that it was preparing an evacuation “in the face of a deteriorating security situation in Niamey” but gave no time frame.
The foreign ministry said France was offering to evacuate other European nationals wanting to leave.
Italy also said on Tuesday it would offer a special flight to repatriate its nationals from Niamey.
“The Italian government has decided to offer our fellow nationals present in Niamey the possibility to leave the city with a special flight for Italy,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani tweeted.
The ministry said it was “not an evacuation” but “a special flight for those who want to leave the country”.
Niger President Mohamed Bazoum, 63, was detained by his own presidential guard in a third coup in as many years in the Sahel, following putsches in neighbouring fellow former French colonies Mali and Burkina Faso.
Former colonial power France and the United States have between them deployed 2,600 soldiers in Niger to battle jihadists.
While I don’t endorse colonialism, I’m not quite sure they’ll get it better with Russia.
You either have to believe the new state is becoming a colony of Russia(it obviously isn’t), or accept that its improved from the colonial arrangement and that’s what makes it attractive to make deals with Russia.
Russia gets plenty out of it without doing anything colonial. The export deals France had were basically stripping the country of all of its wealth, Uranium and Gold in particular, which Niger are nationalising.
Russia will certainly get some beneficial deals out of their help offered but don’t have to make themselves as bad as France to come out on top of this, and in fact simply the act of weakening France and by extension the rest of the western bloc is a win for them by itself. I don’t see Russia as anywhere near as good as the Soviets were but the Soviet strategy was basically “liberate african countries entirely in order to weaken the west who are the colonial holders of these countries”. The history of soviet liberation of africa is also the primary reason many in africa still hold a lot of positivity to Russia, even though the two are not remotely comparable.
It’s now a military dictature. Which one of those went well in the last 50 years in Africa?
Every single african nation that today is no longer a colony achieved so through either a coup or revolutionary regime. What exactly are you expecting people to do? Vote colonialism out? How childish.
Nice try. Avoiding the question and distracting with colonialism. But Niger was not a colony anymore, and you provided no example of a military coup that ended well in recent africa history. You are also avoiding the very obvious Russian imperialism of this coup. When a protest shows more Russian flags than Nigerian ones, I hardly believe it’s going to be independent…
Yes it fucking was a colony. Calling somewhere “independent” and puppeting it while maintaining all colonial extractions is not freedom from colonialism.
You only learned the country’s name this week, and your entire understanding of this topic is from wikipedia. I am very much willing to give them, Burkina Faso and Mali an opportunity to be better, or not. At which point I will adjust my opinion.
At least get the name of the fucking country right. You’re naming the wrong ass country.