The authorities dispute that they were officially informed of the arrival in the territory of these soldiers who could have come in logistical support to the United Nations Mission in Mali.
Le Monde
The Malian transitional government considers “mercenaries” forty-nine military Ivorian arrested on Sunday at Bamako airport. He decided, Monday, July 11, to “make them available to the competent judicial authorities”.
“It has been established that the forty-nine Military Ivorians were illegally on the national territory of Mali (…) in possession of weapons and war ammunition, without mission order or authorization,” said the door -Government sharing, Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga in a statement read Monday evening on national television. “The fatal design of the people arrested was clearly to break the dynamics of the refoundation and security of Mali, as well as the return to constitutional order,” said Mr. Maiga.
Mali, a landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel, was the scene of two military coups in August 2020 and May 2021. It recently adopted a transitional calendar to allow a return of civilians to power in March 2024. The political crisis goes hand in hand with a serious security crisis in progress since the trigger, in 2012, of independence and jihadist insurrections in the North.
“National elements of support”
The spokesperson for the United Nations Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) Olivier Salgado had hinted earlier than the soldiers arrested were part of “national support” (NSE) logistics at MINUSMA. The NSE, said Salgado on his Twitter account, are “national staff deployed by the troop contributing countries, in support of their contingents”, “a practice commonly applied in peacekeeping missions”. “According to our information, their succession of July 10 was previously communicated to the national authorities,” he also said.
The Malian authorities note for their part that their Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not been informed by the official channels. Bamako also noted a “blatant violation” of the Malian Criminal Code “incriminating the attacks on the external security of the State including the attack on the integrity of the territory”.
Part of the Ivorian soldiers selected came to Mali on the basis of an agreement to work on the logistical basis of the company Sahelian Aviation Services (SAS) on behalf of MINUSMA, said to the France- Press (AFP) An Ivorian diplomat on condition of anonymity.
Bamako says for its part that four different versions have been put forward by the soldiers arrested to justify their presence on Malian territory: “The confidential mission, rotation within the framework of Minusma, securing the logistics base of the Airline Sahelian Aviation Services and the protection of the German contingent “. The Malian government has thus decided “to put an end, with immediate effect, to the protection activity of the company” Sahelian Aviation Services “by foreign forces and demand their immediate departure from the Malian territory”.
Viral diffusion
The information of the “arrest” of Ivorian soldiers began to be broadcast on Sunday on social networks before becoming viral, some accusing these soldiers of being “mercenaries” who came to Mali ” State “. Monday evening the Ivorian authorities had not yet officially reacted.
In January, the power junta in Bamako had asked Denmark to remove her troops just arrived but deployed “without her consent”. Copenhagen had denounced “a dirty political game”. She turned away from France and its partners, and turned to Russia to try to stem the jihadist propagation which won the center of the country as well as Burkina Faso and Neighboring Niger. The resulting violence left thousands of civil and military deaths as well as hundreds of thousands of displaced. With its some 13,000 soldiers, MINUSMA – created in 2013 to support the Malian political process – was extended by one year, June 29.