On 10 June, French President Emmanuel Macron announced the withdrawal of the French forces from the Sahel region. Operation Barkhane started back in August 2014 after Operation Serval, which was deployed to support the Malian government in 2013. Operation Barkhane was based on the partnership between France and the countries of the Sahel G5, namely Burkina-Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, to address the rising presence of Islamist terrorism in the territory. The main strategy was to give the possibility and the means to the Sahel G5 countries to develop both national and regional strategies to fight terrorism autonomously (Ministère des Armées, 2019). The French approach was based not only on security in a strict way but also on politics and development in a broader sense.