The United States military on Monday said it had completed the withdrawal of its troops and assets from Niger, meeting a 15 September deadline.<\/p>\n
Its pull-out took place in phases, starting in May, after Niger’s new leaders scrapped a military cooperation deal with Washington.<\/p>\n
They seized power in a coup last year and in recent months, Niamey has pulled away from its Western partners, turning instead to Russia for security.<\/p>\n
The withdrawal of the US\u2019 nearly 1,000 military personnel is seen as a major setback for Washington.<\/p>\n
Prior to the coup, Niamey had been a key partner in its battle against Islamist insurgents operating in the region.<\/p>\n
Together with France and other European countries, Washington had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance and training to Niger.<\/p>\n
The US had handed over its last military bases to local authorities last month, but about two dozen soldiers had remained, largely to oversee the withdrawal.<\/p>\n
Their departure comes amid concerns about the growing number of extremist groups operating in the West Africa region.<\/p>\n
Groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State organisation operate in the vast region south of the Sahara desert.<\/p>\n
One of them, Jama\u2019a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, known as JNIM, is active in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, and is looking to expand into Benin and Togo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States military on Monday said it had completed the withdrawal of its troops and assets from Niger, meeting a 15 September deadline. Its pull-out took place in phases, starting in May, after Niger’s new leaders scrapped a military cooperation deal with Washington. They seized power in a coup last year and in recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"AP"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,27],"tags":[1373,383,2884],"class_list":["post-13356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-niamey","tag-niger","tag-united-states-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}