Mali Looks for ‘Plan B’ to ‘Bolster Our National Defense’ As French Mission Exits, Leaving Chaos
23:47 GMT 20.09.2021 (Updated: 17:06 GMT 20.04.2023)
© REUTERS / PAUL LORGERIE
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As France ends its military cooperation with Mali, the Sahelian nation is looking for help fighting Daesh* and other militant groups. While Interim Prime Minister Choguel Maïga named no country, Western journalists and academics have decided Bamako is secretly preparing a new deal with a Russian military group.
Speaking to the press on Saturday, Maïga said Mali must "broaden our potential for cooperation to bolster our national defence" after its international partners “altered their policy” or "have decided to leave Mali to withdraw to other countries."
"If partners have decided to leave certain areas, if they decide to leave tomorrow - what do we do?" Maiga asked. "Should we not have a plan B?"
"There are zones that are abandoned that need to be occupied today so they're not left empty. There are not enough troops," he added.
His comments were an indirect response to a report by Reuters last week claiming “a deal is close” between the interim Malian government, which is dominated by the military but also contains civilian groups, and the Wagner Group, which the news agency falsely claims is tied to the Russian government.
The Reuters report cited several unnamed sources, and even admitted it “could not confirm independently” any of the reports it nonetheless published as factual and billed as “exclusive.” Their requests for comment by the Malian government were similarly rebuffed as rumors unworthy of a reply.
Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, said it was “critical that any partnership be carried out in full respect for human rights and international humanitarian law.”
"As UN, we do not interfere in sovereign prerogatives," he said.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters last week that "Wagner is a militia that has shown itself in the past in Syria and Central African Republic to have carried out abuses and all sorts of violations that do not correspond with any solution, and so it is incompatible with our presence."
French Colonial and Neo-Colonial Wars
Paris decided to cancel its longtime training program with the CAR military earlier this year, claiming the government had failed on its commitments by increasing its cooperation with Russia. Several hundred military advisors have been training CAR forces, but Western media have claimed without evidence that Wagner Group mercenaries are rampaging across the country, and are blaming Moscow for it. While nearly a decade of training by French and European Union troops has yielded little appreciable benefits to the CAR’s fighting ability, they have boasted of a spike in success since Russian instructors took over.
In this file photo children search on February 5, 2013 in the ruins of a hotel destroyed by French air strikes in Douentza, as he town was retaken by French and Malian troops in January.
© AFP 2023 / PASCAL GUYOT
However, Paris has also decided to cancel its military cooperation with the interim government in Mali for reasons unrelated to conversations between Bamako and Moscow. In May, now-Interim President Col. Assimi Goïta mounted his second coup d’etat in less than a year, arresting the interim president, prime minister, and defense minister and forcing their resignation after a cabinet reshuffle reduced the balance of power of the interim government in favor of civilian parties. Other international partners also backed away from cooperation with the government, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) trade bloc.
Maïga, who was appointed after the coup, is from the June 5 Movement - Gathering of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP), an umbrella political alliance of civilian parties that led the mass protests in the summer of 2020 against then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, who the military forced from office that August. The interim government has promised to return to democracy by holding elections in February 2022.
Shortly after the May 2021 putch, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Operation Barkhane was over and would be replaced by a smaller, more carefully defined mission, dubbed the Takuba Task Force, which will operate primarily in the tri-border area between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The end of both the CAR mission and of Barkhane were announced shortly after Macron unveiled his 2022 reelection campaign amid flagging popularity.
The French presence in Mali has long been reviled by the public. Invaded by French forces in the late 19th century, Mali became part of the French Sudan colony, although anti-colonial resistance continued. The irrigable land was used for cotton and nut plantationing, while forced labor by Malians was used across the Empire. The country became independent in 1958.
More recently, a military coup in 2012 allowed Touareg tribes in the country’s north to take over much of the country, after which the government appealed to Paris for aid. The anti-rebel mission became Barkhane, a War on Terror-style conflict run from N'Djamena, Chad, and waged across five countries. Much like the US’ War on Terror, France has become known for bombing weddings instead of terrorist camps, as well as generally failing to subdue the insurgency. Mass protests in both France and Mali have demanded French forces leave.
As Sputnik has reported, the three coups in 2012, 2020 and 2021 were all carried out by troops trained by US Africa Command, an institution with a long list of coups across the continent carried out by troops with whom it has worked.
*Daesh (IS/ISIS/ISIL) is a terrorist organisation banned in Russia and other countries.
