Chad’s military ruler Mahamat Deby is almost certain to win the country’s May 6 presidential election, cementing the ruling junta’s power in a move that could jeopardize the future of U.S. military engagement in the region.

The election comes as Chad has become the last remaining military ally of the U.S., France and its European partners in the fight against Islamist insurgents and Russian influence in West Africa’s Sahel region. But that alliance may be fraying, highlighting how politically salient anti-Western sentiment has become in the Sahel.

Chad’s decision last month to ask the U.S. to withdraw its troops from an army base in the capital, N’djamena, shows how even a stalwart Western ally like Deby, running in an election he is guaranteed to win, was compelled to push back on Western presence, said Remadji Hoinathy, Central Africa analyst at the Dakar-based Institute for Security Studies.

“With anti-French sentiment on the rise, Deby wants to be seen as less dependent on the West by asking some U.S. troops to leave,” Hoinathy said.

Chad is in the middle of a belt of countries that have suffered coups since 2020 that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. French troops have been forced to leave neighboring Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso after their ruling juntas forged closer ties to Moscow.

This week the U.S. said it would temporarily withdraw its roughly 100 troops from Chad and hundreds from neighboring Niger after the military rulers there cut security agreements with the U.S. and invited Russian forces to deploy. Lloyd Austin, U.S. defense secretary, on Friday confirmed reports that Russian soldiers were now stationed at an airbase used by U.S. troops in Niger’s capital, Niamey.

They “are in a separate compound and don’t have access to U.S. forces or access to our equipment,” he told reporters in Honolulu.

Deby’s taken advantage of the emerging multipolar world order, reinforcing ties with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia while maintaining relations with France and the U.S., at least for now, said Yamingué Betinbaye, a political analyst and research director at the Anthropology and Human Sciences Research Center in N’djamena.

“France is too strategic at the moment for Deby to cut ties, but he can at least show that Chad is a sovereign country that won’t accept to be bullied into choosing sides or only working with some partners,” Betinbaye said. Ex-colonial power France has roughly 1,000 soldiers stationed in the country.

The continued U.S. presence in Chad is still in limbo after it failed to reach an agreement for its troops to remain at a French army base. The Stuttgart-based U.S. Africa Command didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

...continued

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.