Mali

French troops were on Monday handing back a military base in northeastern Mali ahead of a final withdrawal from the Sahel nation, France’s army said, after nine years fighting a jihadist insurgency. The UN emissary there warned that the French withdrawal could leave Menaka, where they were based, vulnerable to jihadist attack.

Long-term uncertainty related to the length of the transition period in Mali has made it even more difficult to achieve progress on implementing the 2015 peace agreement, the top UN official in the country told the Security Council. El-Ghassim Wane, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Mali, urged ambassadors to support the renewal of the mandate of the UN Mission there, MINUSMA, which he heads.

[…] To address emerging challenges, enhance the ability of the G5S-JF and sustain its support, this report proposes four possible options that could fill the gap resulting from the current security vacuum being created following the possible withdrawal of some of the external military forces from Mali, and Mali itself from the G5S-JF.

Two Egyptian peacekeepers serving with the UN Mission in Mali, MINUSMA, were killed on Friday - the second fatal attack this week on a peacekeeping convoy in the West African country. 

Mali's military junta will take 24 months from March 2022 to restore civilian rule after an August 2020 coup, its spokesman said on Monday, the latest move in negotiations with regional bloc ECOWAS to lift sanctions crippling the economy

[…] For roughly an hour, the convoy came under direct fire from suspected members of a terrorist group using small arms and rocket launchers.  Four Jordanian peacekeepers serving with the UN Mission in Mali, MINUSMA, were injured in the attack, one of whom died from his injuries after being evacuated. 

Civilian deaths and rights abuses attributable to the Malian armed forces and backed by “foreign military elements” have surged in the first quarter of 2022, a United Nations report has said, with the killings seeing a 324 percent rise during the previous quarter.

The EU will leave its military training mission in Mali suspended, but will not terminate it for the time being, the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Tuesday (May 17).

Terrorism in the Sahel is a slow-burning, mortal threat, a senior United Nations peace operations official told the Security Council today as speakers expressed alarm about the recent departure of Mali from the region’s security architecture.

A colonel reputed to be close to Mali's ruling junta has been arrested following what the authorities describe as an attempted coup, two sources said Tuesday. The junta late Monday announced that last week it had thwarted a would-be putsch led by army officers and "supported by a Western state."