The head of French diplomacy, Jean Yves Le Drian, has announced in a media release that France would no longer fight terrorism in Mali.
The statement comes after a video conference meeting of European Foreign Ministers on Monday, February 14.
The continuation of military rule, the questioning of defense agreements and the arrival of the Russian private military company Wagner in Mali, are viewed by Paris as arguments to justify a possible withdrawal from Mali.
“We have a junta of colonels who have taken power in Mali and who say they will keep it for another five years. We cannot deal with these people who are themselves condemned by their neighbors,” Le Drian said. The President of the Republic wanted us to reorganize, but we are not leaving the region. It is about the fight against terrorism and the security of Africans themselves,” he explained.
He went on to say: “If the conditions are no longer met for us to be able to act in Mali, which is obviously the case, we will continue to fight terrorism alongside the other Sahel countries which are quite willing to do so,” the French Foreign Minister indicated.
The process is therefore underway and should lead at the end of this week to a series of decisions concerning the French and European presence in Mali.
The former colonial power, whose several thousand soldiers have been engaged since 2013 against jihadist groups active on Malian territory and in neighboring countries is about to leave Mali.
The G5 Sahel in Paris
If all he needed was an alibi to make such a decision, which many observers keep considering because of the obvious bogging down of the French army on the ground and the deterioration of relations between Paris and Bamako, the expulsion of the French ambassador by the Malian authorities on Tuesday, January 31, could provide one. “The situation cannot remain as it is,” said French government spokesman Gabriel Attal on Tuesday, February 1, giving the impression that France is now considering all options, including a withdrawal of its troops from Mali.
As such, Emmanuel Macron invited the heads of state of the G5 Sahel to a meeting on Wednesday, February 16, notably Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum, Chad’s Mahamat Idriss Déby and Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Ghazouani; a meeting to which the French president did not invite the transitional authorities of Burkina Faso and Mali.
The President of the African Union Macky Sall and the current President of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Ghanaian Nana Akufo-Addo will be part as the European Council Charles Michel, and the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
At the end of this meeting, Paris and its European Union partners will inform the AU and the Ecowas of the decisions taken on their commitment to Mali. The reorganization of the mechanism in other neighboring Sahelian countries and its extension to the countries of the Gulf of Guinea are also under consideration.
Citing national sovereignty, the Malian transitional authorities intend to remain in power for several years, the time it takes to “rebuild the foundations of the state and restructure the armed and security forces” of a country bedeviled since 2012 by a serious security crisis linked to the presence of several jihadist groups in a large part of Mali’s territory, particularly in the North and the Center.
An inflexible junta
During the first months after the army took power in Bamako, Paris was conciliatory towards the Malian putschists. But relations between the two parties suddenly deteriorated when, in May, the colonels, who had meanwhile installed a president and a prime minister at the head of a transitional government, decided to dismiss both men and entrust the presidency of the state to the head of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goita.
The crisis was then aggravated when, a few days later, France threatened to withdraw its military personnel involved since 2013 in Mali and the Sahel as part of an operation to fight jihadist groups, before finally retracting the threat and announcing a simple reduction in its troops and a restructuring of its military presence on the ground.
Citing “an abandonment in mid-air,” the authorities in Bamako threatened to call on other external partners, thus giving credence to what was at the time a simple rumour that they would like to solicit Russia to send elements belonging to the nefarious Russian private military company Wagner, accused of abuses in Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic. France, which has never hidden its hostility to such a prospect, has not stopped warning Bamako and Moscow against this possibility, which has recently become a reality, according to several Western diplomatic sources in Mali.
The muscular outbursts of officials from both countries, which have become almost daily in recent weeks, have not helped to ease the tension.
Commenting on the decisions taken against the junta by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), which imposed a series of severe diplomatic and economic sanctions on Mali on January 9, Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, Minister and spokesperson for the Malian government, He accused France of seeking to divide the Malians, of “exploiting” sub-regional organizations and of maintaining its “colonial reflexes. The Malian colonel then summoned French Minister of the Army, Ms. Parly to stop talking.
CD/fss/abj/APA