|
|
France announced Thursday that it will begin to withdraw forces from Mali after a nearly 10-year anti-terror campaign in the country.
Paris has been locking horns with the military junta that took over Bamako in 2020. France said most of its forces will be sent to Niger, Mali’s neighbor to the east. Paris said these soldiers will continue to fight terrorists in the Sahel region.
France’s departure comes amid a diplomatic rift between the junta and Western countries in general.
Tension also broke out between the junta and Denmark, which resulted in Copenhagen announcing that it planned to pull its forces from the country. (See “MALI JUNTA: DENMARK GO HOME.”)
Copenhagen sent 105 military personnel to Bamako to join the counter-terrorism force in the Sahel called Takuba Task Force. The task force was organized in March 2020 as a counter-terrorism operation.
European Union countries have expressed publicly their dismay over the fact that there have been no countrywide elections since the coup.
Al Jazeera reported that back in 2013, French troops were embraced as liberators that protected Bamako from armed groups advancing on the capital.
The report said the feelings have changed in the country and the blue, white, and red French flag is now seen as a “neocolonial symbol” and French flags are being burned during anti-France protests in the former French colony. The troops are now accused of “splitting the country and training militias.”
The French troops were in the region to ostensibly fight against Islamic terrorism. But the diplomatic tension between the West and the junta has led the junta to turn to Russia. The Malian government hired a Russian private security firm to counter the threat of terrorism.
“We cannot remain militarily engaged alongside de facto authorities whose strategy and hidden aims we do not share,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. About 5,000 French troops are believed to be in the region and the withdrawal is expected to last about six months. “The fight against terrorism can’t justify everything,” Macron said.
The European and Canadian governments involved in the Operation Barkhane and Takuba Task Force wrote in a joint press release that “the political, operational and legal conditions are no longer met to effectively continue their current military engagement in the fight against terrorism in Mali.”
Some Malians believe that the French troops stationed in the country are training insurgents in order to justify their own presence in order to eventually “expropriate Mali’s natural resources,” Michael Shurkin, the director of Global Programs at 14 North Strategies, wrote in The Hill.
Mali’s junta asked France to withdraw troops from its territory “without delay,” according to Reuters.
TREND FORECAST: As we reported when the United States and France led the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the situation in Mali and the region has significantly worsened as a result of the U.S.-led destruction of the nation. (See “MALI: FRANCE WANTS ITS COLONY BACK,” “FRENCH AIR STRIKE IN MALI: MASS MURDER OF INNOCENTS” and “CHAD: MORE AFRICAN WAR DRUMS BEATING.”)
We have pointed out in previous issues that France has held a colonial-power relationship with Mali for 50 years in order to exploit its resources, particularly uranium.
This includes propping up government leaders who support the exploitation while opposing protesters in mining areas who are angered over environmental degradation and the outflow of resources to France. Paris has announced that it will also begin drawing down forces from Mali.
As economic conditions continue to deteriorate across the continent, civil wars will spread to regional war and the colonial powers of the past will again intervene in the name of bringing “Freedom and Democracy” to the war ravaged nations.
Also, as civil unrest escalates, so too will the migrant crisis as more people flee poverty, government corruption, crime and violence in their war ravaged nations. This in turn will intensify anti-immigration populist movements in safe-haven nations they are escaping to.
In the past 18 months, the African continent has experienced six coups in five countries, including Mali, Chad, Guinea, Sudan, and Burkina Faso.