The government of United States is making precautionary plans to evacuate two key drone and counter-terrorism bases in Niger if that becomes necessary under the West African nation’s new ruling junta, the US Air Force commander for Africa was quoted as saying by Yahoo News on Friday.
The planning includes looking for US allied nations in the Saharan and Sahel regions, some of the world’s most active areas for al-Qaida- and Islamic State-allied extremist groups, “that we could maybe partner up with, and then move our assets there,” Air Force Gen. James Hecker told reporters in Washington.
Hecker stressed that there had been no decision from the Biden administration regarding whether the Niger military’s July 26 overthrow of the country’s democratically elected president would force US diplomats or security forces to leave the country.
US bases there have been vital counter-terror posts in the region that is seeing an increasing number of coups as well as encroachment by Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. The US presence includes air bases in Niamey, the capital, and in the remote city of Agadez on the southern edge of the Sahara.
If US security forces do leave, either following a decision by the Biden administration that it cannot work with the mutinous soldiers now leading the country or because the junta orders them out, “it obviously will have an effect” on US intelligence and counterterrorism efforts, Hecker added.
“But of course what we hope for is that we have a peaceful diplomatic solution to this and we don’t have to” leave, he said.
The US has yet to formally call what happened in Niger a coup. That designation could compel Washington to cut many of the military and security ties between the two countries.
Hecker said he believed it would be “weeks or much longer” before U.S. officials would announce any kind of decision to evacuate, if it does come to that.
Niger had been one of the countries in West Africa’s Sahara and Sahel regions neither ruled by a military-backed government nor aligned with Russian mercenaries.
Hecker gave no details on what countries the US was considering as an alternate West Africa counter-terror post, if Niger became unworkable.
“We’ve just started looking at that,” he said. American military officials “know where we would like the base to be, but more of that’s going to be diplomatic” in terms of how it’s decided.
The precautionary planning for evacuation, Hecker said, included scenarios where the Americans are able to move out at leisure and also where they have to depart in a hurry, taking only the most sensitive materiel.
