there will be a change at the head of the force antidjihadiste Barkhane in the Sahel. The general Marc Conruyt will succeed at the end of July to the general Pascal Way to lead the biggest operation outside of the French armed forces with 5 100 men, announced on Thursday that the ministry of the Armed forces. Appointed for a term of one year, the future commander of Barkhane will have upon his arrival in the Sahel implement the objectives that will be determined at the end of June by the heads of State of the G5 Sahel (Niger, Chad, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali) and the president of france Emmanuel Macron, at a summit in Nouakchott on the fight antidjihadiste.
The appointment of Nouakchott must evaluate the effectiveness of the decision taken in January in Pau by the same heads of State to intensify the military operations against the upsurge of attacks in the region. Involved in inter-communal conflict, these attacks have left 4 000 dead in 2019, according to the UN.
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"It is still too early to declare victory"
a Graduate of Saint-Cyr, the general Conruyt ordered the infantry regiment's tanks marine (RICM). Patented of the War College of the Marine Corps, he has served on the staff of the armed forces, of which he was chief of the Africa bureau, and has been defence attaché to Senegal. He is currently the deputy director of the directorate of human resources of the army. For the past six months, the French army and its partners have intensified their offensive in the area called " three borders ", the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, claiming the "neutralization" of hundreds of fighters.
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at the Beginning of June, the French forces have killed the leader of Al-Qaeda in the islamic Maghreb (Aqim), the Algerian Abdelmalek Droukdal. "We are on the right track but it is still too early to declare victory ", has recently estimated that the French minister of the Armed forces, Florence Parly. The general Conruyt will also oversee the implementation of the force Takuba, a group of special forces in european that is designed to support the malian soldiers in battle.
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This force will start this summer its operations under command of Barkhane, with one hundred French soldiers and estonians, who should be joined in the fall by a contingent of Czech sixty men, before the arrival in early 2021 150 military Swedish, according to the ministry of the Armed forces.
