Paris should formalize Thursday its military withdrawal, on a crisis background between the two growing Russian country and immixition.
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It is a fine without glory for an armed intervention started euphorically and ends, nine years later, on the bottom of crisis between Mali and France, two countries that thought a time bound by a Indefectible friendship. Paris should formalize Thursday, February 17 in the morning its military withdrawal from Mali.
The conclusion of the operation “Barkhane” as such and the reduction of the number of soldiers engaged in the Sahel were announced since the Head of State Signified, in June, “the Deep Transformation” and “The redeployment “of the French military presence in this region. But the choice to remove the approximately 2,500 soldiers currently present in Mali is a consequence of the accelerated degradation of relations between Bamako and its main partners, in the lead, in recent months. “We are at the crossroads of two trajectories. The first, which comes from afar, is the adaptation movement of our military posture to the Sahel. The second, more cyclical, is the rupture trajectory of the Malian transition authorities,” explained the ‘Elysee on the eve of this decision.
If it had to date in time this break, the moment when everything has stopped, no doubt that on May 24, 2021 and the days that followed were determinants. In Bamako, Colonel Assimi Goïta, Chef de la Junte who overthrown Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in August 2020, then wants to prevent a government reworking and stops the President of the transition and the Prime Minister that he had named nine months earlier . As soon as Emmanuel Macron denounces “a coup in the unacceptable coup, which calls our immediate condemnation”.
Then, the same week, during an official trip to Rwanda, the French president warns in an interview in the log of Sunday that the French soldiers will leave Mali if the authorities of Bamako come to negotiate with jihadist leaders and France “would not stay alongside a country where there is no more democratic legitimacy or transition”.
At his side, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the head of the diplomacy, loose in small committee his feeling of the five officers at the head of the Junta: “But what cons!” Like many in Paris, The most involved minister on the Malian record since January 2013 and the triggering of the “Serval” operation – he occupied the defense portfolio – watched until then with the hope that they remobilize their army.
In the stride, France announces the temporary suspension of its joint operations with Malian soldiers pending “guarantees” policies on the path taken by the transition. The decision is lived in Bamako as the beginnings of a depletion. This moment was born or strengthened the idea of turning to Russia and calling on the mercenaries of the Wagner group, which would now be nearly a thousand to operate on the ground alongside the Malian armed forces?
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