France Moves to Rebuild Military Ties with Chad, Sends Fighter Jets for Training ‎

France is working to repair its military relationship with Chad. Two years after N'Djamena pushed French forces out, Paris is sending warplanes back to Chadian soil.

The French army announced on Thursday that two Mirage 2000 fighter jets and a CASA transport aircraft will make a technical stopover in Chad "very soon".

Xavier Rival, spokesman for the French chief of defence staff, said the short visit will also be used for training activities. He added that French forces would help develop the capabilities of the Chadian air force.

The stopover will fall within a joint military exercise in November involving the armed forces of Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon and France.

The move marks a sharp turnaround. In 2024, Chad ended a security arrangement with its former colonial power that had lasted about six decades and ordered French troops to leave. That decision placed Chad alongside Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where French forces were also shown the door.

Relations have since been on the mend. President Emmanuel Macron hosted Chadian leader Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno for talks in mid-October, and the two sides signed a declaration of intent to structure their defence cooperation "on a renewed basis".

The Elysée says security cooperation was restored at the beginning of the year, covering military training, equipment supplies and intelligence sharing. Rival stressed that the resumption is "in full respect of Chad's sovereignty".

Analysis
The emphasis on sovereignty is deliberate. French officials know that the old model of permanent bases and troop presence became politically toxic across the Sahel.

Training missions and short deployments are a lighter footprint, one that lets N'Djamena present cooperation as partnership rather than dependence.

Chad is also a strategically important state.

It sits between the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin and Sudan's war zone, and it is a key player in the fight against Boko Haram and ISWAP. For Paris, keeping a foothold there matters as its influence shrinks in the AES states, where Russia and Türkiye have gained ground.

For Chad, the calculation is also practical. Air power, training and intelligence are costly to build alone, and diversifying partners gives N'Djamena leverage rather than tying it to one patron.

The test will be whether this renewed cooperation delivers real gains in capability without reviving the resentment that ended the earlier arrangement.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/Science communicator, Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,United States Institute of Peace (USIP), [email protected] +233555275880

Source: TRT Afrika / AFP.