Violence Escalates in Northern Mali Amid UN Troop Withdrawal

Canadian infantry and medical personnel disembark from a Chinook helicopter as they take part in a medical evacuation demonstration on the United Nations base in Gao, Mali, on Dec. 22, 2018. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Mali’s military junta on Sept. 25 stated that presidential elections initially scheduled for February 2024—meant to return Mali to constitutional rule after military coups in August 2020 and May 2021—have been postponed to an unspecified date.

The junta stated that the decision to delay the vote was due to several factors, including a dispute with a French firm over a civil registry database.

Mali had been expected to hold the first round of the vote on Feb. 4, 2024, and a second round two weeks later.

There has been an uptick in violence between the Malian military and armed groups and separatists in the northern part of the West African state amid the vacuum created by the ongoing withdrawal of the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) peacekeeping force.

Five Malian soldiers were killed, 20 others were wounded, and 11 more were missing on Sept. 17, following clashes with militants of the Coordination of Azawad Movements, an alliance of armed groups dominated by Tuaregs who took up arms in 2012 seeking either autonomy or independence.

A military statement said seven rebels were killed and eight vehicles belonging to the rebel group were destroyed during the reprisal attack that followed.

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The rebels, who claim to have taken control of two army bases in the central town of Lere in the Timbuktu region of northern Mali, have declared a full-scale war against the junta.

The Malian military said in a statement that its forces remained mobilized to defend its positions and maintain the peace and security of the population.

It also confirmed that one of its aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing because of damage.

The renewed confrontation between the Malian military and Tuareg-dominated separatists coincides with the ongoing withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers, after 10 years of deployment.

An Islamist insurgency erupted in 2013 in northern Mali and quickly spread to other parts of the Sahel—a vast and dry stretch of land between the Sahara Desert and the savannah farther south.

At the request of the Malian leader at the time (Dioncounda Traore), France’s military intervened through Operation Serval, later replaced by Operation Barkhane.

Mali’s government—which seized power after coups in 2020 and 2021—pushed out France’s counterinsurgency force in 2022. The U.N. Security Council voted on June 30 to end its peacekeeping mission in Mali, after the country officially requested its complete withdrawal.

‘Recipe For Disaster’

Late last month, U.N. special envoy for Mali El-Ghassim Wane laid out the scale of the exit operation to the U.N. Security Council.

All 12,947 U.N. peacekeepers and police from 53 countries must be sent home, their 12 camps and one temporary base handed over to the government, and 1,786 civilian staff terminated by the Dec. 31 deadline.

Mr. Wane said the United Nations also needs to move out approximately 5,500 sea containers of equipment and 4,000 vehicles that belong to the U.N. and the countries that contributed personnel to MINUSMA, the fourth largest of the U.N.’s dozen peacekeeping operations.

Mali’s U.N. ambassador, Issa Konfourou, said the government is cooperating with the peacekeeping mission.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Mali’s request for the withdrawal of its peacekeepers by the end of the year is a “recipe for disaster.”

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield told the 15-member Security Council late last month that the transition government’s decision to close MINUSMA has already triggered “renewed violence” on the ground.

She warned of the potential for war, which she said could “unleash unspeakable, unthinkable devastation on the Malian people.”

The U.S. diplomat noted that increased instability could pave the way for the expansion of terror groups in the region.

MINUSMA remains the deadliest U.N. peacekeeping mission to date, with more than 300 peacekeepers killed in hostile acts during the past decade.

Many of those peacekeepers died because of improvised explosive devices, largely during road convoys. The year 2020 was the deadliest on record in Mali for civilians despite the U.N. presence.

Violence in the broader area has increased since 2015, with attacks by groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State spreading to Mali’s neighbors in the Sahel region. Thousands have been killed and more than 6 million displaced.

Questions on Mandate

MINUSMA’s mandate in Mali included supporting the political transition; supporting the implementation of a peace agreement and protecting civilians—but not the fight against terrorism.

Mali’s request for the withdrawal of peacekeeping troops comes as no surprise to Chris Kwaja, a member of the U.N. Working Group on Mercenaries in Mali.

“I consider the decision irrational in the context of the suffering that the people of Mali have been subjected to—first, the change in government was unconstitutional and secondly, the heightening state of insecurity that we see in Mali right now,” Mr. Kwaja told The Epoch Times.

“This insecurity might not just be defined from the perspective of bullets and guns—but also hunger, starvation, poor nutrition, water and sanitation challenges. These are all human security issues that aggravate the suffering of people. Mali is in that situation right now.”

Joshua Meservey, a senior research fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, said he believes that MINUSMA’s mandate was “totally misaligned” with the actual situation in Mali, rendering it “deeply ineffective” as it spent most of its force on protecting itself.

“It also, however, did not have a credible, competent national government with which to work, which is the Achilles heel of all the foreign security operations in the country,” Mr. Meservey told The Epoch Times in an email.

“While MINSUMA has been ineffective, it is also being scapegoated—as are the French—by the junta that used the country’s insecurity as a pretext for taking power.

“Russia’s Wagner Group has run extensive anti-French and anti-Western propaganda campaigns in Mali, which may have had an effect. While the French have served as the focal point of popular anger in Mali, there is also broader anti-Western sentiment in the country.

“Even though MINUSMA is a U.N. operation and not Western per se, I think it is getting lumped in with the West.”

Mr. Kwaja said he thinks that it would be unfair to judge the failure or success of MINUSMA operations in Mali unless some key questions are answered.

“For example, did the troop-contributing countries contribute? How much did they contribute in terms of financial resources? To what extent did the government of Mali cooperate with the MINUSMA contingent?” he said.

“It is on the basis of our ability to respond to these questions that we can authoritatively say with certainty that MINUSMA failed.”

The U.N. operates based on an assessment of the reality on the ground, according to Mr. Kwaja.

“Typical of how the U.N. deploys its own peacekeeping force, there are revisions on the basis of reviews be it from the U.N. Security Council, the actors on the ground, or calls by other regional groups or countries themselves to say we have a restrictive mandate and peacekeepers will not be able to function on the basis of this mandate,” he said.

Sahelian States on Precipice

No fewer than 60 armed groups currently operate in Mali; the country’s stability is crucial for international peace and security.

U.N. experts said in a report last month that Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, while al-Qaeda-linked rivals are also capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement.

An al-Qaeda affiliate last month declared war on Mali’s ruling military junta and has since blocked roads and waterways into Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and cradle of Islamic scholarship.

This has triggered fears and acute shortages among residents of the historic Malian city.

A spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general said last week that three rockets had been launched at its Timbuktu compound, although there were no injuries.

A MINUSMA official cautioned against “drawing a straight line between [MINUSMA’s] impending withdrawal and the current situation,” noting signs earlier in the year that the security situation was deteriorating.

Mr. Wane told the Security Council that the first phase of the withdrawal focused on closing the smallest and farthest outposts—Menaka, Ber, Goundam, and the temporary base in Ogossagou—which was completed on Aug. 25.

The looming end of the U.N. mission and the logistical support provided to the G5 Sahel Joint Force has raised fears that other countries in the region will become more vulnerable to terrorist groups.

Daniel Matan, a researcher at the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre—an Israeli-based research group that tracks both ISIS and Al-Qaeda—said foreign intervention didn’t end the episode of Jihadist activity in the Sahel region; it escalated it.

“The jihadist groups involved did change as a result of unifications and separations within the jihadist sphere in the Sahel [notably] al-Qaeda (through JNIM organization) and Islamic State (ISIS-Sahel) elements,” Mr. Matan told The Epoch Times in an email.

He also said the jihadist activity “expanded” to countries such as Benin, Ivory Coast, and Togo—countries that, until recently, were outside the areas of the conflict.

“The withdrawal of foreign forces ... from the Sahel will surely hamper the ability to tackle the problem and will bring more insecurity to the region,” Mr. Matan said.

Peace Process Stalls

Like Mr. Meservey, Mr. Matan said he believes that the U.N. mission—and other Western endeavors in Mali—is simply “a victim and a scapegoat” of the change of leadership following the coup.

“The new administration which rose to power following the coup used already-fulling grievances against the inability to tackle security threats, especially originating from jihadist activities,” Mr. Matan said.

“Parts of the Malian public saw the U.N. and its mission as a foreign force and as a part of the failure of the previous administration to restore security and peace. This claim, of course, is disregarding the fact that MINUSMA doesn’t have the mandate nor the means to accomplish this goal.”

The Tuareg rebels put down their weapons in 2015 as part of a peace deal in exchange for a larger say in how their region was ruled. But the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CAM), which is a coalition of Tuareg groups demanding greater autonomy, was angered by the junta’s decision to expel the U.N. troops.

It was also one of the many groups that objected to sweeping constitutional amendments pushed through by the junta in June.

A MINUSMA report in March acknowledged the “continued impasse” in the peace process between Mali’s government and CAM.

Some critics attribute the origins of the decade-long violence in Mali and the wider Sahel region to the NATO intervention in 2011 that toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The flow of weapons and insurgents to the Sahel in the aftermath of the civil war was instrumental in exacerbating the crisis in Mali that has since spread elsewhere in the region.

“The increasing violence in the Sahel and the recent spate of coups should prompt self-reflection and reform in how the United States operates in that region,” Mr. Meservey told The Epoch Times. “But America is not responsible for the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in Mali.

“It is the fault of those who have chosen violence to achieve their goals, and of those who have misruled Mali for decades, creating an environment that makes it more likely for people to use violence.”

Regis Hounkpe, a Beninese geopolitical scientist and the director of Interglobe Conseils, a company specializing in global politics, concurred, saying that MINUSMA has neither been the cause of nor the solution to Mali’s woes today.

“MINUSMA results are mixed. It was out to restore the authority of the state and the territorial integrity of Mali while supporting the peace agreements. [But] today, we are very far from it because Mali has been cruelly marked by ever-increasing political and security instabilities,” Mr. Hounkpe told The Epoch Times.

“Mali is currently reassessing all its international partnerships with countries like France ... and the end of these foreign missions and operations will [only] be beneficial if [authorities] manage to, as much as possible, tactically and operationally eradicate the spread of armed terrorist groups.

“Only [Malian authorities] will be able to save Mali [from chaos]. It won’t be another country or paramilitary group.”