Mali claimed it has evidence of France backing terrorist groups operating on its territory.
The diplomatic tug of war between France and its former colony is intensifying.
Two days after the end of the withdrawal process of the French Barkhane force from Mali, Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council denouncing violations of his country’s airspace.
The head of Mali’s diplomacy also accused the French army of supporting jihadist groups active in Mali and more generally in the Sahel.
“The government of Mali has several pieces of evidence that these flagrant violations of Malian airspace have been used by France to collect intelligence for the benefit of terrorist groups operating in the Sahel and to drop arms and ammunition to them,” Diop said in the letter dated August 15, the day French Barkhane soldiers announced their final withdrawal from Malian territory.
Since the beginning of 2022, Malian transitional authorities say they have documented “more than 50 deliberate cases of violation of Malian airspace by foreign aircraft, operated by French forces in various forms.”
These were “drones, helicopters, or fighter planes” that flew over Mali “without authorization.”
The Malian Minister of Foreign Affairs denounced “espionage activities” and “subversion” through the publication of illegally collected images “showing civilians killed” last April in Gossi (North), not far from a base handed over to the Malian army by the French military.
“The results of the judicial investigation conducted by the competent Malian services establish that the bodies had been deposited there well before the arrival of Malian forces in Gossi,” Abdoulaye Diop explained.
For its part, Paris claimed to have filmed white men in fatigues, presented as mercenaries from the Russian group Wagner, burying bodies near the Gossi base.
Paris’ reaction awaited
France has not yet reacted to the new accusations from Mali.
But its response should not be long in coming, given the diplomatic war being waged between the former colonial power and the former French Sudan.
The government of Mali recalled that it was “because of suspicions of destabilization maneuvers by France (that it) firmly opposed France’s request for air support to the MINUSMA,” the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali.
In fact, Bamako did not want Paris, under the cover of the UN Mission, to conduct “subversive operations aimed at further weakening” the Sahel region.
While asking the UN Security Council to hold an “emergency meeting on these issues,” Mali reserves “the right to use self-defense” in the event of “persistence” by France “in this posture which undermines (its) stability and (its) security.”
France has been present militarily in Mali for nearly a decade to fight jihadism, and has come into conflict with the ruling junta.
Described as “illegitimate,” the authors of the coup against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020 are accused by President Emmanuel Macron of having favored the arrival of Wagner, a group of Russian mercenaries.
This is one of the reasons why Paris ordered the withdrawal of the Barkhane force last February.
ODL/id/fss/as/APA