Students in Benin demanded the withdrawal of French troops from Benin in a demonstration held on January 29. The protest was organized by members of the Collective of Students for the Defense of the Homeland in Place Lénine, a public square in the capital Cotonou.
This was one of the latest in a series of demonstrations held in different parts of the country last month by organizations of youth, workers and students, blaming France for the terror attack that took place on January 8, claimed by an Al-Qaeda affiliate.
On January 8, one of the Army’s strongest military installations in the northern region bordering Niger and Burkina Faso, was overrun by hundreds of Islamist insurgents. In the eight-hour battle with no reinforcements, over 30 Beninese soldiers were killed.
“Among us students, there are those who will never see their parents, guardians, siblings and cousins again. Orphans who no longer have anyone to ask for breakfast or school fees,” the Collective of Students for the Defense of the Homeland said in a statement. It went on to note that ever since the French troops “driven out of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger” have stationed themselves in Benin, “our nation has been experiencing these terrorist attacks.”
The Trade Union Confederation of Benin Workers (CSTB) also expressed a similar sentiment at a meeting held at the Cotonou Labor Exchange on January 25 “to pay tribute to the martyrs” who fell in the fight against terror groups. “It is known by all in Benin and elsewhere” in the region that the arrival of French troops brings increased terrorist attacks on its heels, its statement added.
“France’s military strategy is to set fire and then come presenting itself as the firefighter”
“The deadly terrorist attack on January 8 was the event that made the Beninese people realize that colonial France has declared war on Benin,” Philippe Noudjenoume, first secretary of the Communist Party of Benin (PCB), told Peoples Dispatch.
He argues it is a strategy of France to use terror attacks to “weaken and destabilize” its former colonies in West Africa “to get its governments to accept the presence of French military forces” on their territories. “It was the revelation of this collusion that outraged the patriots in the armies” of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Siding with the anti-colonial protest movement demanding the expulsion of French troops, army leaders removed French-backed regimes from power in the three neighboring Sahelian countries in a series of coups between 2020 and 2023. With popular support, they formed new military governments that asserted sovereignty. Ordering the French troops out, the three countries united to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
Read: Niger hosts historic conference on the fight against neocolonialism in the Sahel
Since then, the AES countries have made significant strides in combating terror groups and re-securing the vast swathes of territories the previous governments, regarded as French puppets domestically, had lost control over, added PCB member Nidol Salami.
Before the French troops were expelled, “most news reports we heard from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were of terrorists killing soldiers. Now the news is more often about their soldiers killing terrorists.” The reason, he argues, is obvious: France is the source of terrorism in the region.
“The first major terrorist group to emerge in the region was Al-Zawad. It was an armed mercenary used by France” in the war against Libya “promising to give them northern Mali and other regions to create their country,” he recalled.
When the group launched an attack on Mali to seize the territory that France had promised, France moved in its military forces and set up bases in the country in 2013 to ostensibly protect the Malian government from the terror group it had unleashed. Over the next 9 years until their expulsion, French bases multiplied across the Sahelian region, while the terror attacks increased multifold.
“France’s military strategy is to set fire and then come presenting itself as the firefighter only to loot the house,” remarked Salami, who is also a member of the Council of Patriotic Youth (CoJeP), which has been organizing several protests across the country since the terror attack.
Raising a banner with pictures of the dead soldiers as martyrs, hundreds of youth gathered in the Red Star Square in central Cotonou on January 15, expressing solidarity with the armed forces and calling for the withdrawal of French troops.
“French forces, which are…providing a rear base for these terrorist groups, must be expelled from our territory,” read the joint statement by the organizers of the demonstration, including CoJeP, Planet of Pan-Africanist Youth (PJP), Grain d’Amour NGO, Alliance Conclave and Sovereign Front.
Cross-border coordination with AES neighbors is crucial for Benin’s success in combating terror groups
Organizers further demanded that their government should “engage in a dialogue with the sovereigntist armies” of the AES, especially the neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, to develop cross-border cooperation and coordination in combating terror groups.
Even the army head, following a meeting after the attack on January 8, concluded that lack of coordination with these neighboring countries is impeding Beninese efforts against terrorism, Salami told Peoples Dispatch. However, there is little prospect of such coordination because “AES countries don’t trust the Beninese government” which has been hosting many of the French troops they had expelled.
Arriving in increasing numbers in Benin in 2023, the French troops had initially set up a camp next to the Beninese military base in the Kandi region. After this provoked public outrage, they were dispersed to more discreet bases and across several ‘advanced posts’, cropping up more and more along the borders with Niger and Burkina Faso, PCB maintains. Masquerading as ‘instructors’, they are directing the Beninese army’s military and intelligence operations.
AES countries have alleged that the French are using Beninese territory to support terror operations against Niger and Burkina Faso. But it is not only the neighboring countries with sovereign governments who are suffering the consequences of French-backed terror attacks, reiterates Noudjenoume. Soldiers under the command of Benin’s president Patrice Talon, who is widely perceived as a French puppet, are also victims.
The French “position our men against the terrorists, handle intelligence and oversee equipment. And if, despite this, the deadly attack of January 8 still occurred, the conclusion was reached that French troops are behind the terrorists. Our soldiers are being used as cannon fodder in France’s imperialist domination strategy, with Talon acting as the enforcer,” he insists.
“What is evident is that Benin is now at war—a war waged by French imperialism through proxy jihadist forces,” President of CoJeP, Damien Zinsou Degbe, told Peoples Dispatch.
There is an increasing awareness of this among the Beninese soldiers, Noudjenoume added. The sentiments against French troops raging like wildfire among the Beninese people is also permeating the army ranks. If the relatively smaller demonstrations currently underway snowball into “a large revolutionary protest movement, it is highly likely the army will side with the people”, possibly ousting the government of Talon and making an alliance with the AES countries.
Perhaps aware of this danger, Talon’s government is cracking down on the anti-colonial movement, trying to stop even small meetings organized to pay tribute to the fallen soldiers.
Crackdown on the sovereignty movement
On January 16, CoJeP leaders Parfait Gnanmi and Razak Salaou, motorcycle taxi drivers by profession, were arrested from their union office in Parakou in northern Benin after a rally paying tribute to the fallen soldiers and reiterating the demand for the expulsion of French troops.
Two days later, the “police stormed the Labor Exchange and blocked a meeting organized by trade union confederations to pay tribute to the martyrs of terrorism,” CSTB said. “Is this not a brazen act of betrayal akin to that of enemies of the homeland?”
On January 21, Gnanmi and Salaou were brought to trial at the Court of First Instance in Parakou. The Prosecutor of the Republic has sought three years imprisonment accusing the duo of “participating in an unarmed and unauthorized gathering and of spreading false information among the population. According to the prosecutor, the presence of French military troops on national territory is unverified,” CoJeP said in a statement.
Stressing that the prosecutor did not assert in court that there are no French troops in Benin, but only that the claim is unverified, CoJeP President Damien Degbe insists, “This is just one of the many proofs of the presence of French troops in Benin.”
Talon maintains that there are no French bases in the country. “While.. there are no autonomous French military camps,” French military personnel, dispersed across Beninese bases, are training, equipping and directing the Beninese army’s counter-terror operations, PCB maintains.
Read: A new military strategy of French neo-colonialism in Africa: reorganizing under the cover retreat
The credibility of its claim was reinforced in part by French President Emmanuel Macron only two days before the terror attack.
“We are opening a new security and defense partnership, where we will have strategic bases… [provide] more training, more equipment, more information, more contracts… we will also forge new relationships, as we have done in recent years with Benin,” Macron explained in a statement on January 6 about the reorganization of French deployment in West Africa.
Nevertheless, accused of spreading false information for pointing this out, Gnanmi and Salaou, remain in custody. However, their arrest seems to have done little to deter further protests. Only a day after their trial began, students organized under the banner of the General Coordination of the university sections of the CoJeP gathered at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin’s primary public university in the southern city of Abomey-Calavi.
“These fallen soldiers were our classmates, parents, brothers… Our hearts are bleeding! We are outraged! We are revolting!,” read their statement, calling on “the entire student community of Benin to organize for the “unconditional departure of French troops stationed on our territory, serving as a back base for terrorist networks”.
Three days later on January 25, the trade union confederation, whose earlier meeting on January 18 was stopped by the police, reconvened at the labor exchange.
Several other smaller demonstrations have also been organized across the country since the terror attack. Noudjenoume maintains that this momentum indicates a build-up toward mass protests that may soon deal another blow to the French military that has been forced on the retreat from one country after another in Francophone West Africa since the turn of this decade.
