German forces have ended an eight-year deployment in Niger after handing over control of a key air base in the West African country.
A military plane carrying the remaining 60 German troops stationed at the base in the capital Niamey landed in Germany on Friday evening.
A second A400M transport aircraft carrying equipment was also on its way back.
The air base on the outskirts of Niamey was manned by some 120 German soldiers and was seen as a key factor in Western efforts to contain terrorism in the region.
After failing to reach an agreement with Nigerien authorities on the legal immunity of military personnel, Berlin agreed in July to hand over control of the base.
After coups in Mali and Burkina Faso, Niger was for a time seen as the West’s last democratically governed partner in the fight against terrorism in the region. The region has suffered repeated attacks by Islamist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
But in Niger too, the army seized power in a coup on July 26 last year.
The Niamey air base served as a logistics hub for the UN MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in neighbouring Mali, which was established in 2013 and ended last year.
Over the years, approximately 3,200 German troops served in Niamey.
Troops lost ‘too high a price to pay’
German State Secretary for Defense Nils Hilmer welcomed the returning troops upon their arrival at Germany’s Wunstorf air base, noting that more than 200 servicemen had died while deployed to MINUSMA and the European Union training mission in Mali.
According to Hilmer, this number is “too high a price to pay, given the limited success at the political level in this region.”
According to the Ministry of Defense, three German soldiers were killed and thirteen wounded during the MINUSMA mission.
Hilmer praised the soldiers’ efforts after the redeployment order was given in July as an extraordinary military, logistical and planning feat.
The German base in Niger has cost Germany about €130 million ($143.7 million) since it opened in 2016, the government said in response to a parliamentary question from MP Sevim Dagdelen of the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
German military presence uncertain
The German Ministry of Defence initially planned to keep the base operational after the end of the mission in Mali and to use it for possible evacuations or emergency missions.
It was also seen as a way to maintain a strategic position in the region.
But like its neighbors, Niger has since turned increasingly to Russia, hosting Russian military training personnel at a base in Niamey, while all former partners have been expelled.
Germany is in talks with Senegal to temporarily keep equipment at an air base in the coastal country to facilitate the withdrawal from Niger.
After the mission, operations at the base in Senegal were halted.
