Mali

Strengthening the social contract, tackling governance failures, and replacing a counterterrorism imperative with a focus on human security are long overdue in the Western Sahel.

Five Sahel countries work together to address common security challenges. The EU's Regional Advisory and Coordination Cell (RACC), a network of European experts, supports the security and defence cooperation of these five “G5 Sahel” countries’ by initiating and facilitating joint regional activities. The civilian and military CSDP Missions deployed in Mali and Niger play the central role in the concrete implementation of these activities.

Less than a week after a key summit gathering of France and its five regional military partners in the Sahel conflict, fresh casualties in Niger offered a reality check to the high-level discourse on achievements.  

Mali's interim Prime Minister Moctar Ouane has created a platform in order to open talks with the Islamist militants who have wreaked havoc in the north of the country. … France, Mali's former colonial power, has 5,000 troops in Mali in order to combat the ongoing insurgency. It has said in the past that it did not agree with Mali opening negotiations with insurgents who did not sign the 2015 peace deal.

The UN Secretary-General has underlined his concern for Africa’s Sahel region, where deteriorating security and violence are aggravating an already difficult humanitarian situation that is unfolding amid the COVID-19 pandemic and climate emergency. António Guterres addressed heads of State from the Group of Five for the Sahel, known by the diplomatic shorthand G5 Sahel’, meeting on Tuesday during their summit this week in Chad. 

President Emmanuel Macron has ruled out an immediate drawdown in France’s 5,100-strong Barkhane forces battling armed groups in the Sahel region of West Africa, describing a rushed exit as a mistake. Macron said he was pushing back a decision on a troop reduction after a virtual summit of the so-called G5 Sahel countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger – and their allies to discuss the future of their military campaign in the region.

Chadian forces head to flashpoint border zone between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso as violence rages.

Secretary-General António Guterres condemned  on Saturday, a “complex attack” against the UN mission in the West African country of Mali. An assault on Thursday by unidentified armed elements on a temporary operating base of the UN Integrated Stabilization Mission for Mali (MINUSMA) in Kerena, near Douentza in Central Mali,  resulted in the death of a Togolese peacekeeper and the wounding of 27 others.  

Some 20 UN peacekeepers serving with the UN Stabilization Mission in Mali, MINUSMA, were injured on Wednesday, after their temporary base came under attack in the restive central region of the country.

Since 2013, when it sent troops to Mali, France has led international efforts to root out Islamist militancy from the Sahel. Yet the jihadist threat has grown. Paris and its partners should reorient their military-centred approach toward helping improve governance in the region.