The last French soldiers left the Gao camp on Monday, without an official ceremony, ending an anti -terrorist operation started in 2013.
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leave by announcing it, but without noise. This seems to have been the watchword of France to put an end to a sequence of nine years of military intervention in Mali. Monday, August 15, “the last detachment of the force” barkhane “present on the Malian soil crossed the border between Mali and Niger”, announced the staff of the armies.
The first had been deployed in Mali in 2013 as part of the anti -terrorist operation “Serval”, which became “Barkhane” the following year. The last French soldiers, who left on Monday, were based at the Gao camp. This northeast city is located in the so-called three borders area adjoining Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, epicenter of the activity of Sahelian armed groups linked to the Islamic State or Al-Qaida organization. Gao constituted the main basis of the French operation in the Sahel, a total of 5 100 men in total, present in Mali, Niger and Chad.
The French military withdrawal from Mali began at the end of 2021. Gradually, “Barkhane” returned to the Malian army the keys to its bases of Kidal, Tessalit, Timbuktu, Gossi then Ménaka. But this time, Paris and Bamako seem to have spared any official transfer ceremony. Gao was however the largest French base in Africa. This departure on the Catimini is a sign of tension between the two countries, whose relations have gradually deteriorated since the military coup of August 2020.
On July 28, on an official visit to Guinea-Bissau, Emmanuel Macron judged that fighting terrorism was “no longer the objective” of the Malian military junta. “This is what presided over our choice to leave the Malian soil,” he added. Bamako had denounced this “neocolonial, paternalistic and condescending” posture.
The “rearilation of the” Barkhane “operation system, under the terms used by the Elysée, should allow us to refocus on Niger. “France remains engaged in the Sahel, in the Gulf of Guinea and the Lake Chad region,” said the French presidency. For Paris, “the efficiency [of French soldiers] has been demonstrated by the neutralization of most senior executives in the hierarchy of Malian terrorist groups”. Even if these groups are still active.
On August 7 in Tessit, in the Gao region, at least 42 Malian soldiers were killed, recalling the firepower of the jihadists. Especially since the threat progresses south, approaching Bamako. The neighboring countries, bordering the Gulf of Guinea, are no longer spared.
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