DLEM: 2023 DIO Training in Madagascar | French Foreign Legion Information

From September 12 to October 2, 2023, a detachment of the Foreign Legion Detachment in Mayotte (DLEM) provided a military training mission for the graduates of the military academy and the national school for non-commissioned officers in Antsirabe, Madagascar, a large island in the Indian Ocean located south-east of Mayotte.

Part of the Franco-Malagasy military cooperation agreement, these training missions have been organized by the DLEM’s Operational Training Detachments (DIO) since the early 2010s. Apart from Madagascar, the legionnaires train also other armed forces in the neighboring regions of the Indian Ocean, e.g. the Comoro Islands, Seychelles, and even Botswana in Southern Africa.

Welcomed by the academy’s most senior staff officers, the twelve DLEM instructors were given the freedom to conduct the training program carefully prepared before leaving their military camp in Dzaoudzi, Mayotte. Among other things, they familiarized the Malagasy graduates with mission and tactical orders up to platoon level, tactical combat shooting procedure, infantry combat in urban areas, and combat first aid.

The military academy in Antsirabe is located in Madagascar’s Highlands, about 100 miles (170 km) south of Tananarive, the capital.

The Legion has been stationed in the region since 1956. First in Madagascar, later in the Comoros and Mayotte (since 1966). In the late 1890s, the legionnaires were an important fighting force within France’s contingent sent to pacify Madagascar and include the country in what was then the French Empire. They returned to Madagascar in the late 1940s, to suppress a local revolt (see more in Foreign Legion in Madagascar in 1947-1951).

DLEM: 2023 DIO Training in Madagascar

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