Pgo or stay? Without openly asking for her departure but pushing bad manners to the point of humiliation, the junta in power in Bamako is forcing France to ask itself the question of its military presence in Mali, where it arrived in January 2013, at the request of the authorities of the time, to repel a jihadist offensive.
In an increasingly difficult context, aggravated by a first coup in 2020 then a second in 2021, three recent events hastened the break: the establishment, at the invitation of Bamako, of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, today numbering a thousand men according to two French sources; the expulsion of the Danish contingent, just arrived, member of the European force under French command “Takuba”; and that, Monday, January 31, of the French ambassador. For a country whose commitment alongside the Malian armed forces cost the lives of 53 of its soldiers, that’s a lot.
Go or stay? “The question does not arise in these terms”, we want to believe in the Elysée. To leave ? Get thrown out by putschist colonels, abandon the field to jihadist groups and let Russia settle in, as it did in the Central African Republic? Out of the question. France thinks it has good reasons to remain engaged in the Sahel: the security threat; the links between its population and the diaspora; the strategic stake with the growing activism of Russia and Turkey.
Resentments from the past
But to ask the question, even in more nuanced terms, is already to recognize the failure of a strategy which, if it was able to produce results in the first years with the “Serval” operation, is no longer adapted to the situation in the Sahel. The jihadist threat now extends north to the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea. States there are increasingly fragile, as shown by the putsch that has just taken place in Burkina Faso. People’s disillusionment with democracy runs deep. France, suddenly, remains associated with failing leaders who do not fail, when it serves their interest, to divert popular anger towards the former colonial power: the resentments of the past have not been erased by a blow of magic slate.
In Paris – that can be understood – we prefer to talk about “end of a cycle” that he “must manage”, rather than failure. As in Afghanistan, we plead the end of a model of external intervention, too heavy, too visible. But unlike Afghanistan, assures the Elysée, the results are not totally negative: Mauritania, the first Sahelian nation targeted by jihadist terrorism at the end of the 2000s, and Niger have, so far, better considered only Mali and Burkina Faso.
You have 53.35% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.