US quietly reopens talks with Chad amid challenges in Africa posture

The U.S. has restarted talks over the future of its armed forces in Chad — the latest African country to express doubt over its relationship with the American military.

In the last month, senior leaders from the State and Defense departments have visited the capital of N’Djamena, where they met with members of the Chadian government and armed forces to discuss their security ties.

They arrived at a sensitive moment for the American military’s work in the country and on the continent more broadly. Earlier this year, the government in N’Djamena said it wanted to renegotiate its agreement that allows the U.S. military access to its territory, leading the U.S. to withdraw a unit of 75 or so special operations forces operating from a disputed base near the capital.

That request came as its neighbor, Niger, was in the process of ordering the American military out — a departure that all but ended in earlier this month, when the U.S. handed control of a $100 million base to Niger’s ruling junta.

Niger was once a top partner in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel — a much more mature relationship than America has with Chad. Still, the U.S. had around 100 special operations personnel there before April , and the country has been a valuable companion in the fight against terrorism in the region.

“We don’t expect to return in the exact same footprint that we had before,” a senior U.S. defense official said in an interview late last month July.

Instead, the official said America would do better to start from the ground up: sharing its own goals for the region, listening to Chad’s and then deciding what kind of presence made sense in the country.

“What we’re hearing from a lot of African partners is they want to lead and they’re interested in our facilitation,” the official said. “That’s different than a handful of years ago, where the U.S. was conducting operations.”

Going forward, the new presence may not include the personnel withdrawn in April, the official said, a choice a Pentagon spokesperson labeled at the time a “temporary step.”

The Defense Department’s head of special operations and low-intensity conflict was more hopeful on their return.

“This is fundamentally what we’re talking about to the Chadians,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Chris Maier told reporters during an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group in Washington. “There was probably some rationale on their removal that had to do with their presidential election that now is over, and so may give us an opportunity to have more, if you will, effective talks with them again.”

‘No West Africa policy’

To that end, the State Department announced a late-July visit to Chad by John Bass, its acting head of political affairs, holding a short press conference afterward . The Defense Department did not follow suit until a little over a week later, sending Maj. Gen. Kenneth Ekman, America’s top military officer for West Africa, according to a brief write-up of the encounter on the website of the Chadian Air Force .

Ekman’s host was Chad’s air chief, who first called for the ouster of the American personnel in April.

U.S. Africa Command usually notes when its senior leaders visit different countries in the region. The decision not to, another American defense official said, is a sign of internal government pressure to be discreet when discussing security ties at a moment of such uncertainty — and as different parts of the administration trade blame for the withdrawal from Niger.

“There is no West Africa policy from the White House,” said the official, allowed to speak anonymously to be candid.

U.S. Africa Command said that there was a “small contingent” of American personnel in Chad supporting a counterterrorism mission. It also confirmed that Ekman visited the country in August “to engage with military and civilian leaders on a whole-of-government approach to the shared security challenges in the region.”

Africa Command deferred to the State Department on the status of that security relationship. And State wouldn’t offer more specifics, instead saying the U.S. “is committed to working closely alongside our partners across the region to advance our mutual security interests and bolster peace and stability in the Sahel and Lake Chad Region.”

Those shared interests started to fray this April. Chad’s air chief abruptly sent a letter to the U.S. embassy telling it to halt operations at a base near the capital and saying it wanted to review the two countries’ military agreement. Soon after, the American military complied.

The Pentagon agreed to start negotiations after Chad’s elections in May.

Meanwhile, the threat of terrorist groups continues to grow in the Sahel, a belt of countries across northern Africa where coups have recently become more common. The region’s share of global terrorist-related deaths rose from 1% in 2007 to 43% in 2022, according to the Global Terrorism Index.

That said, Maier cautioned that the threat may be contained to the region.

“I don’t think we’ve see an external operations threat emerge from there,” he said, while still arguing that U.S. officials and embassies in the Sahel could be at risk.

The senior defense official argued that the countries calling for a different relationship with the U.S. all have different motives and shouldn’t be seen as a pattern. Still, both that official and Maier acknowledged that U.S. posture would need to change, likely becoming smaller and more spread out.

Cameron Hudson, who studies African security issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argued those may be the wrong lessons. Rather than evaluating what kind of posture the U.S. should have there, he said, the U.S. should consider whether it’s necessary at all.

“Do we really need this footprint in this region?” Hudson said. “The jihadist threat [there] is not a threat to the U.S. homeland.”

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

美国已重启与乍得就其驻乍得军队未来问题进行的谈判——乍得是最新一个对与美国军方关系表示怀疑的非洲国家。

上个月，国务院和国防部的高级领导人访问了首都恩贾梅纳，与乍得政府和武装部队成员会面，讨论了两国的安全关系。

他们抵达的时机对美军在该国乃至整个非洲大陆的军事行动都十分敏感。今年早些时候，恩贾梅纳政府表示希望重新谈判允许美军进入其领土的协议，导致美国撤回了驻扎在首都附近一个有争议基地的约75名特种作战部队成员。

提出这一请求之际，其邻国尼日尔正在命令美军撤离——本月初，美国将一座价值 1 亿美元的军事基地的控制权移交给尼日尔执政军政府，美军的撤离几乎已经完成。

尼日尔曾是美国在萨赫勒地区反恐斗争中的重要伙伴——这种关系比美国与乍得的关系成熟得多。尽管如此，在今年4月之前，美国在尼日尔仍驻扎着约100名特种作战人员，该国一直是该地区反恐斗争中的重要伙伴。

“我们预计不会以和以前完全相同的方式回归，”一位美国高级国防官员在上个月底（7 月）接受采访时表示。

这位官员表示，美国最好从基层做起：先提出自己对该地区的目标，听取乍得的意见，然后再决定在该国采取何种形式的存在才是合理的。

这位官员说：“我们从许多非洲伙伴那里了解到，他们希望发挥主导作用，并且对我们的协调工作很感兴趣。这与几年前美国主导行动的情况截然不同。”

这位官员表示，未来新的驻军可能不包括 4 月份撤回的人员，五角大楼发言人当时称此举为“临时措施”。

国防部特种作战和低强度冲突负责人对他们的归来抱有更大的希望。

“这正是我们与乍得方面讨论的根本问题，”美国国防部助理部长克里斯·迈尔在华盛顿国防作家协会主办的一次活动上对记者说。“他们被撤离可能有其原因，与他们的总统选举有关，而现在选举已经结束，这或许能给我们一个机会，再次与他们进行更有效的对话。”

“不奉行西非政策”

为此，美国国务院宣布其代理政治事务主管约翰·巴斯将于7月下旬访问乍得，并在访问后举行了一场简短的新闻发布会。国防部则在一周多之后才采取类似行动，根据乍得空军网站上对此次访问的简要报道，国防部派遣了美国驻西非最高军事官员肯尼斯·埃克曼少将。

埃克曼的东道主是乍得空军司令，他早在四月份就呼吁驱逐美国人员。

美国非洲司令部通常会公布其高级领导人访问该地区各国的行程。另一位美国国防官员表示，此次决定不公布，表明美国政府内部存在压力，要求在当前局势如此不明朗的情况下，对安全关系的讨论保持低调——与此同时，美国政府内部各部门还在就从尼日尔撤军一事互相指责。

一位不愿透露姓名的官员坦言：“白宫没有西非政策。”

美国非洲司令部表示，有一小队美军人员驻扎在乍得，支持一项反恐任务。司令部还证实，埃克曼于8月访问了乍得，“与军方和文职领导人就如何以全政府视角应对该地区共同面临的安全挑战进行了磋商”。

非洲司令部将该安全关系的现状交由国务院负责。而国务院拒绝提供更多细节，仅表示美国“致力于与我们在该地区的伙伴密切合作，以增进我们共同的安全利益，并加强萨赫勒和乍得湖地区的和平与稳定”。

今年四月，这些共同利益开始出现裂痕。乍得空军司令突然致函美国大使馆，要求其停止在首都附近一处基地的行动，并表示希望重新审视两国之间的军事协议。不久之后，美军照办了。

五角大楼同意在乍得5月份大选后开始谈判。

与此同时，恐怖组织的威胁在萨赫勒地区持续增长。萨赫勒地区位于北非，由多个国家组成，近年来政变频发。据全球恐怖主义指数显示，该地区在全球恐怖主义相关死亡人数中所占的比例从2007年的1%上升至2022年的43%。

尽管如此，迈尔也提醒说，这种威胁可能仅限于该地区。

“我认为我们还没有看到来自那里的外部行动威胁出现，”他说道，同时仍然认为美国官员和驻萨赫勒地区的使馆可能面临风险。

这位高级国防官员认为，呼吁与美国建立不同关系的国家各有不同的动机，不应被视为一种模式。不过，这位官员和迈尔都承认，美国的姿态需要改变，规模可能会缩小，覆盖范围也会扩大。

战略与国际研究中心研究非洲安全问题的卡梅伦·哈德森认为，这些教训或许是错误的。他表示，美国与其评估应该在非洲采取何种姿态，不如考虑是否真的有必要在非洲采取这种姿态。

“我们真的需要在该地区部署这种力量吗？”哈德森说，“那里的圣战分子威胁对美国本土并不构成威胁。”

诺亚·罗伯逊是《防务新闻》的五角大楼记者。他此前曾为《基督教科学箴言报》报道国家安全新闻。他拥有弗吉尼亚州威廉斯堡威廉与玛丽学院的英语和政治学学士学位。