France presidential candidate meets with Idriss Deby to discuss fight against Islamist militants

Le Pen, among the frontrunners in the French presidential election, arrived in Chad on Tuesday and is using the two-day visit to meet French troops stationed in Chad and to outline her policies for the continent.

“We have of course discussed the cooperation between France and Chad in the fight against terrorism,” the National Front party candidate said after the meeting with Deby in Am-Djarass, near the borders with Libya and Sudan.

She said they had also discussed Libya, and she again condemned France’s role in helping to oust its longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, which she called “a serious mistake … with serious consequences.”

Chad has one of the region’s most capable militaries and hosts the headquarters of France’s 4,000-strong West African anti-militant operation, known as Barkhane.

Le Pen also travelled to Lebanon in February to get a sense of the Syrian crisis.

Among her foreign policy objectives Le Pen has called for closer cooperation in Syria with President Bashar al-Assad and a rapprochement with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

She also wants to increase the defence budget to two per cent of gross domestic product by 2018, up from about 1.78 per cent now, and three per cent by 2022.

NAN reports that the UN said that since early 2015, attacks in Chad by the jihadist group Boko Haram have killed hundreds, displaced more than 100,000 and damaged the regional economy of the Lake Chad basin.

Violence peaked in 2015 with suicide bombings in the capital and in the Lake region, and has since declined.
The UN also said that the violence Boko Haram unleashed has led to over 100,000 displaced and 7,000 refugees on Chadian territory by the beginning of 2017.