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Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The German armed forces have concluded their eight-year mission in Niger, relinquishing control of a key airbase in Niamey. A military plane carrying the last 60 German troops stationed at the base landed in Germany on Friday evening, signaling the end of the deployment. A second A400M transport aircraft, carrying essential equipment, was also en route back to Germany.
The airbase, located on the outskirts of Niamey, had been manned by up to 120 German military personnel and was considered a crucial asset in Western efforts to contain terrorism in the region. However, after failing to reach an agreement with Nigerien authorities on legal immunity for its military personnel, Berlin decided to surrender control of the base in July.
Niger, once seen as the West’s last democratically ruled ally in combating terrorism following coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, also experienced a coup on July 26 last year, further complicating the region’s stability. The Niamey airbase had served as the logistics hub for the UN’s MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in neighboring Mali, which was established in 2013 and terminated last year. Over the years, approximately 3,200 German troops served in Niamey.
Welcoming the returning troops at Germany’s Wunstorf airbase, German State Secretary of Defence Nils Hilmer noted that more than 200 servicemen and women lost their lives while deployed for MINUSMA and the European Union Training Mission in Mali. Hilmer remarked that this number was “too high a price to pay in view of the limited success at the political level in this region.” The German Defence Ministry reported that three German troops were killed, and 13 were injured during the MINUSMA mission. Hilmer praised the soldiers for their outstanding military, logistical, and planning achievements during the redeployment ordered in July.
The German base in Niger has cost Germany around €130 million ($143.7 million) since its launch in 2016, the government revealed in response to a parliamentary question from lawmaker Sevim Dagdelen of the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
Initially, the German Defence Ministry had planned to keep the base operational after the end of the Mali mission, using it for potential evacuation or emergency missions. The base was also seen as a way to maintain a strategic foothold in the region. However, like its neighbors, Niger has increasingly turned to Russia, hosting Russian military training personnel at a base in Niamey while expelling all former partners from the country.
Germany is now in talks with Senegal to store equipment at an airbase that was temporarily established in the coastal country to facilitate the Niger withdrawal. Operations at the Senegal base were discontinued after the end of the mission, leaving the future of Germany’s military presence in the region uncertain.
