- UN says France’s planned military withdrawal from Mali is “bound to impact” the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the Sahel region
In a joint announcement from the Élysée Palace on Thursday, France and allied nations announced that they were withdrawing troops from Mali due to a breakdown in relations with the ruling junta after nine years of fighting a jihadist insurgency.
After a French-led military intervention ousted jihadists who were taking control of northern Mali in 2013, French troops remained to provide support for anti-terrorist operations. But deteriorating relations with Mali’s new military leaders, who seized power in a 2020 coup, prompted France to reconsider its role in the country.
The Mali deployment has been fraught with problems for France. Out of the 53 French soldiers killed serving in West Africa, 48 of them died in Mali.
“Multiple obstructions” by the ruling junta meant that the conditions were no longer in place to operate in Mali, said the statement, signed by France and its African and European allies. “We cannot remain militarily engaged alongside de-facto authorities whose strategy and hidden aims we do not share,” President Emmanuel Macron told a news conference, adding that he “completely” rejected the idea that France had failed in the country.
The withdrawal applies to both 2,400 French troops in Mali and a smaller European force of several hundred that was created in 2020 with the aim of lessening the burden on French forces.
Macron said that French bases in Gossi, Menaka and Gao would close but vowed the withdrawal would be carried out in an “orderly” manner.
African and Western leaders met in Paris late Wednesday to begin fleshing out plans for how to continue fighting Islamist militants in the region amid new fears of a jihadist push toward the Gulf of Guinea.
Recent coups in Mali, Chad and Burkina Faso have weakened French alliances and emboldened jihadists who control large swathes of the region.
Germany ‘sceptical’ over future of its training mission in Mali
Germany’s Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Thursday she was “very sceptical” whether Berlin would remain part of a European military training mission in Mali, hours after France said it was withdrawing its troops.
“We have taken note of the French decision to leave Mali and end its mission there, which will of course have repercussions for its partners,” Lambrecht told reporters.
“I have to say I am very sceptical whether there will be an extension of the mandate for participation in EUTM,” she added, referring to the EU military training mission.
Germany has around 1,500 soldiers in Mali – about 1,200 for the United Nations’ MINUSMA peacekeeping mission and the rest for the EU training mission
UN says French, allied pull-out from Mali will ‘impact’ peacekeepers
France’s planned military withdrawal from Mali is “bound to impact” the UN’s peacekeeping mission in the troubled Sahel state, the United Nations said on Thursday. Olivier Salgado, the spokesman for the MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in Mali, told AFP that the UN was studying the impact of the pull-out and would “take the necessary steps to adapt.”
Mercenaries from the Russian private military company Wagner are in Mali “to secure their business interests and the junta” in power in Bamako, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. “This is the hiring by the Malian junta, using financing which they themselves will have to explain to the Malian people, of mercenaries who are essentially there to secure their own business interests and protect the junta itself,” Macron told a Paris press conference.
Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo on Thursday said it was important that a UN peacekeeping force continue to operate in Mali even after French forces pull out of the country and are re-deployed elsewhere in the Sahel.
The United Nations have managed the peacekeeping mission MINUSMA since 2013.
“The heart of this military operation will no longer be in Mali but in Niger,” Macron told a press conference in Paris. Macron added that France’s Sabre special forces would remain posted in Burkina Faso, where a military junta is also in power.
The fight against Islamist insurgencies in the Sahel cannot be the sole responsibility of African countries, Senegal’s President Macky Sall said on Thursday during the same news conference. “We have agreed with Europe that the struggle against terrorism in the Sahel cannot be the business of African countries alone, there’s a consensus on this,” Sall said in Paris, standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron.
FRANCE 24
