Divorce has not yet been sanctioned, but a further step has been taken in the ongoing crisis between the Malian government and France, even though Mali is now also at odds with its main African neighbors.
On January 18, Paris confirmed that it had received a request for a review of the military agreements regulating the presence of French forces in Mali. The request is being examined, the foreign ministry specified without adding any comment.
The revision of the agreements is the culmination of a process of degradation of Franco-Malian relations which at present seems difficult to stop. The crisis is parallel to the nature of the Malian regime, its international alliances, the difficulties in the fight against the jihadists and finally, even more complex, the French colonial legacy.
As the political scientist Niagalé Bagayoko explained on Tv5-Monde, “there is a latent resentment, which has always been present but which did not prevent France from being welcomed with open arms when it intervened in 2013”.
Breaking point
Could all this lead to the departure of the French from Mali? For a long time the French authorities did not believe in this possibility, but today it is a real scenario. Of course it would be a failure with heavy consequences.
On Christmas Eve, a trip by French President Emmanuel Macron to Bamako was still envisaged to meet the leader of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta. But it was an error of assessment, because the breaking point had already been reached.
The point had been overcome in May, with the second coup in Mali within a few months, the one that brought the colonel to power. France, like African countries, demanded that the junta keep the calendar of the return to civilian life, with elections scheduled for February 2022. The military leaders, on the other hand, decided independently, announcing a five-year transition.
That the tear was now impossible to mend was confirmed when rumors began to circulate about the arrival in Mali of the mercenaries of the Russian company Wagner, close to the Kremlin. Paris indicated that it was unwilling to accept it, but the Russians are now present in Mali and the French warnings have had no effect. The crisis is overt.
After nine years of French intervention, this is a political rather than a military failure, even if it is the increase in insecurity that has produced the current crisis, undermining French credibility.
On January 14, at the invitation of the junta, the population took to the streets to protest against the sanctions imposed by neighboring countries. Several slogans called for the departure of the French. Colonel Goïta, like a new Patrice Lumumba, has become the hero of an anti-imperialist front which France is paying for.
Whatever the case, after Afghanistan last year, events in Mali sound the death knell of Western military interventions of this kind. It is time to draw the necessary conclusions.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)