PARIS (Dispatches) -- France has started the withdrawal of its military from Chad with the departure of two warplanes that were based in the capital N’Djamena, the French army said, two weeks after Chad said it was ending its defense cooperation pact with Paris.
In a surprise move, the government of Chad - an ally of the West in the alleged fight against takfiri militants in the region - ended the defense cooperation pact on Nov. 28.
Terms and conditions of the withdrawal and whether any French troops will remain in the central African country altogether have yet be to agreed, but on Tuesday the first Mirage warplanes returned to their base in eastern France.
“It marks the beginning of the return of French equipment stationed in N’Djamena,” Army spokesperson Colonel Guillaume Vernet said after two Mirage fighter jets left Chad.
France has already pulled its soldiers out of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger following military coups in those West African countries and spreading anti-French sentiment.
The departure from Chad will end decades of French military presence in the Sahel region and ends direct French military operations there.
France still has about 1,000 troops in Chad. Vernet said a calendar to drawdown its operations would still take several weeks for the two countries to finalize.
There were no indications Paris received advance notice of Chad’s decision to end its defense cooperation although a French envoy to President Emmanuel Macron delivered a report last month containing proposals on how France could reduce its military presence in Chad, Gabon and Ivory Coast.
Last week, Chad’s foreign minister said his country was putting an end to its military cooperation with former colonial power France, saying “Chad has grown up, matured and is a sovereign state that is very jealous of its sovereignty”.
The announcement came just hours after a visit by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.
The announcement also came just days after Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye indicated in an interview with AFP that France should close its military bases in that country.
Landlocked Chad faces a potent threat from Boko Haram and other takfiri groups. It borders the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya and Niger, all of which host Russian paramilitary forces.
Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby has sought closer ties with Moscow in recent months, but talks to strengthen economic cooperation with Russia have yet to bear concrete results.