the former Tuareg rebellion calls for an “emergency meeting” in a “neutral place”

The former Malian Tuareg rebellion is asking Algeria and other international mediators for “emergency meeting” in a “neutral place”to examine the agreement for peace in northern Mali which she recently denounced “deliquescence”.

The Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) is an alliance of Tuareg-dominated groups with an Arab component that fought the Malian state before signing the so-called Algiers peace agreement with it in 2015.

The CMA says to itself “grateful for the efforts made by the international mediation led by Algeria and which resulted in the signature” of the agreement “for nearly eight years”in a letter to Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtan Lamamra, dated Saturday, December 10 and received by AFP on Sunday.

She begs “an emergency meeting with all of the international mediation in a neutral place”, in this text signed by its president Alghabass Ag Intalla. This application “is justified by the need for a decisive examination of [la] viability” of the agreement signed in 2015, adds this text.

“Avoid a permanent break”

The CMA had “denounced” the “deliquescence” of this agreement and called on its international guarantors to “avoid a permanent break” between its parties, in a press release published Friday at the end of a meeting of its executive office held between Wednesday and Friday in Kidal, its stronghold in the north of the country.

“It is sad to admit” that “the peace agreement undoubtedly suffers from the obvious lack of effective commitments [des] crucial parties for its implementation, namely the successive governments of Mali, the mediation [algérienne] and the international community guaranteeing its full application”she said in this text.

Instead of independence, the agreement the rebels signed in 2015 with pro-government armed groups and the Malian state provides for more local autonomy and the integration of combatants into a so-called army. “reconstituted”, under the authority of the State. Its application remains fragmentary.

Mali, a poor and landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel, was the scene of two military coups in August 2020 and May 2021. The government has adopted a transition timetable to allow civilians to return to power in March 2024 .

But the political crisis goes hand in hand with a serious security crisis in progress since the outbreak, in 2012, of separatist and jihadist insurgencies in the north of the country. This violence, which spread to central Mali, then to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, caused thousands of civilian and military deaths as well as hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Mali.