French troops to leave Mali, Paris confirms

By AFP

France announced Thursday that it was withdrawing troops from Mali due to a breakdown in relations with the country’s ruling junta, after nearly 10 years of fighting a jihadist insurgency.

The Mali deployment has been fraught with problems for France – of 53 French soldiers killed serving in West Africa’s Sahel region, 48 of them died in Mali.

“Multiple obstructions” by the military junta that took power in August 2020 meant that the conditions were no longer in place to operate in Mali, said a statement signed by France and its African and European allies.

The decision applies to both 2,400 French troops in Mali, where France first deployed in 2013, and a smaller European force of several hundred soldiers, called Takuba, that was created in 2020 with the aim of taking the burden off the French forces.

“We cannot remain militarily engaged alongside de facto authorities whose strategy and hidden aims we do not share,” President Emmanuel Macron told a news conference, saying that he “completely” rejected the idea that France had failed in the country.

Macron said that France’s bases in Gossi, Menaka and Gao in Mali would close within the next four to six months.

But, he vowed, the withdrawal would be carried out in an “orderly” manner.

The announcement comes at a critical time for Macron, just days before the president is expected to make a long-awaited declaration that he will stand for a second term at elections in April.

Macron’s priority will now be to ensure that the withdrawal does not invite comparisons with the chaotic US departure from Afghanistan last year.

France initially deployed the troops against the jihadists at Mali’s request in 2013.

But the insurgency was never fully quelled.

Jihadists scattered by French firepower regrouped, and two years later moved into the centre of Mali, an ethnic powderkeg, before launching raids on neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Now, new fears have emerged of a jihadist push toward the Gulf of Guinea.