The intervention of French particular forces in Benin, a “turning point” in Paris’ African coverage | EUROtoday

With its excessive grey partitions bristling with barbed wire and its troopers posted on the high of barricaded watchtowers, the Togbin army camp, within the west of Cotonou, appears like a citadel in the course of town. It was on this National Guard enclosure that, on Sunday December 7, the final mutineers who tried a putsch in opposition to President Patrice Talon took refuge.

To overcome this, the Beninese authorities appealed to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and specifically to neighboring Nigeria, whose fighter planes carried out strikes on the Togbin camp. But additionally to France, which, for the primary time for the reason that collection of putsches that overthrew its allies between 2020 and 2023 in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, deployed army means to defend certainly one of its companions within the area. Patrice Talon, who cooperates with Paris in a number of areas, notably that of protection, is the truth is one of many African heads of state closest to Emmanuel Macron.

Tuesday, December 9, the Elysée indicated that France had “provided support in terms of surveillance, observation and logistical support” to the Beninese forces, all in “the logic of regional support” and in coordination with “ECOWAS efforts”. A minimalist communication, which doesn’t reveal what, concretely, the French military did in Cotonou.

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