EDWARD MCALLISTER and DAVID LEWIS, of Reuters, report the MINUSMA mission and what it’s end could mean…
Dakar, Senegal/Nairobi, Kenya
Reuters
Mali’s unexpected demand for the departure of UN peacekeepers may herald a sudden end to a decade-long mission that has struggled to protect civilians and its own troops, raising fears the country could slide deeper into chaos amid an Islamist insurgency and the possible revival of a separatist uprising.
The UN mission, known as MINUSMA, has been hobbled by restrictions on its air and ground operations since Mali’s ruling junta joined forces with Russian military contractor Wagner Group in 2021. That has limited its effectiveness against an Islamist insurgency that took root a decade ago and has since spread across West Africa.
United Nations peacekeepers at the MINUSMA base fight fires after a mortar attack in Kidal, Mali, on 8th June, 2017. PICTURE: MINUSMA/Sylvain Liechti/Handout via Reuters/File photo.
Despite the restrictions, MINUSMA’s 13,000-strong force has held the line in northern cities including Gao and Timbuktu that are surrounded by militants. It patrols camps for displaced people, which come under frequent attack, and provides medical evacuations for Mali’s under-equipped army.
And it has also helped to placate Tuareg-led rebels in northern Mali, who halted their separatist uprising with the 2015 Algiers Accord.
“If you leave, you have anarchy and civil war, especially against civilians and the weak. If you stay, you are almost discredited.”
– Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, a former Mauritanian foreign minister who served as a top UN official in West Africa and now runs a regional thinktank.
It is unclear how quickly UN troops could leave following Mali’s request on Friday. But, if and when they do, Bamako will be alone with about 1,000 Wagner soldiers to battle the militants linked to Islamic State and al Qaeda, who have killed thousands of civilians and soldiers and control large swathes of Mali’s desert north and centre.
“If you leave, you have anarchy and civil war, especially against civilians and the weak. If you stay, you are almost discredited,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, a former Mauritanian foreign minister who served as a top UN official in West Africa and now runs a regional thinktank.
A spokesman for the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), the Tuareg-led northern rebel alliance, said a UN withdrawal would be premature because the peace deal had not been fully implemented and would threaten stability across the Sahel. He said, however, the CMA had not yet reached an official position.
Relations between the UN and Mali’s junta, which consolidated power in two coups in 2020 and 2021, have frayed. Bamako wanted MINUSMA to become a more active fighting force to counter the Islamist threat, which the UN said was not part of its mission. UN officials, meanwhile, pushed for greater freedoms to protect civilians and investigate alleged rights abuses by militants, the army and, more recently, Wagner.
Ties reached breaking point last month when UN investigators released a report accusing the army and “armed white men” of massacring 500 people in the town of Moura in March, 2022. Mali, Russia and Wagner deny wrongdoing in Moura or targeting civilians anywhere in Mali.
The UN has repeatedly said that the constraints imposed by the junta have stopped it from fulfilling its mission. Mali frequently denied or delayed permission for MINUSMA to move in combat zones, it said, impairing its ability to defend civilians under attack or swiftly probe abuses.
Mali’s government and army did not respond to requests for comment.
German soldiers from the UN contingent MINUSMA stand together during a visit of German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen to Camp Castor in Gao, Mali, on 5th April, 2016. PICTURE: Reuters/Michael Kappeler/Pool/File photo
Frustrated by the restrictions, Western and African diplomats called for change this year. However, following a review of the mission in January, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week rejected a proposal for a surge of up to 3,600 more troops, which Mali’s African neighbours had pushed for, as well as an alternative proposal that would have shrunk MINUSMA to a political mission in Bamako.
Instead, he proposed extending the mandate for the force with only a few tweaks, including closing some small northern bases.
On 14th June, the Malian Government issued a statement rejecting all the proposals. Then on Friday, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told a UN security council meeting that there had been “a crisis of confidence betweenMalian authorities and MINUSMA” and the force should leave “right away”.
The 15-member UN Security Council was scheduled to renew MINUSMA’s mandate before it expires on 30th June. Reuters could not immediately determine whether the council – where Russia holds a veto – will now vote for a renewal, or how long it would take to conclude a withdrawal of the mission if there was no extension.
On Friday, in response to Mali’s announcement, MINUSMA’s head El-Ghassim Wane told reporters that peacekeepers can only operate with consent from the host country: without that, the mission is “impossible,” he said.
MINUSMA spokesperson Fatoumata Sinkoun Kaba declined to comment on the logistics of any withdrawal and said the mission would follow Security Council mandates.
MINUSMA launched in 2013 after the separatist rebels and al Qaeda-linked insurgents occupied northern Mali. French troops forced the militants to retreat but they bounced back. More than 170 peacekeepers have died in fighting, making MINUSMA the UN’s deadliest combat mission.
Violence has spread into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, creating one of the world’s fastest-growing humanitarian crises.
Mali’s junta promised stability when it snatched power; it took an anti-French stance and deepened ties with Russia. By the end of 2021, Wagner had deployed.
Within weeks, Mali imposed the flight restrictions. Reuters was unable to determine whether the move was linked to Wagner’s presence. It mirrors past UN flight restrictions in Central African Republic, where Wagner also operates.
Bamako and the Kremlin say Russian troops, not Wagner mercenaries, are present in Mali but only to train the army and supply equipment.
Mali’s army spokesman, Colonel Souleymane Dembelé, told Reuters this year that restrictions on MINUSMA were retaliation for a no-fly zone imposed by French forces last year. Paris denies this.
UN peacekeepers patrol in Kidal, Mali, on 23rd July, 2015. PICTURE: Reuters/Adama Diarra/File photo.
By mid-2022, restrictions prevented the UN from operating unscheduled flights over 70,000 square kilometres ofMali, according to an internal UN report from the middle of last year, reviewed by Reuters. Nearly 500 UN flight requests – one in four – have been denied this year, according to Security Council figures.
“MINUSMA is another peacekeeping lame duck. The mission couldn’t fulfil the expectations of the population,” said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer foundation.
Frustrated, countries including the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden, which provided some of the best-trained soldiers, announced troop withdrawals amounting to more than 20 per cent of the mission. France, which had a separate task force in Mali, withdrew its remaining 2,400 troops in 2022, including the air support it gave the UN.
The majority of MINUSMA’s remaining soldiers are supplied by African nations.
Three of four units of MINUSMA’s elite mobile task force are not operational, the Security Council said in March. In July, Egypt suspended its MINUSMA activities because of attacks on its troops. For nearly a year, its 1,072 soldiers have been in barracks.
A document prepared in April by the UN Department of Peace Operations listed several units that MINUSMA lacked – from armed helicopters and airfield support to infantry and intelligence.
MINUSMA still plays a significant role in Mali. Its $US1 billion budget has created thousands of jobs and provided local support by erecting streets lights or police stations in a country whose economy has been crippled by coup-related sanctions imposed by its neighbours.
It helped organise a constitutional referendum on Sunday meant to pave the way to presidential elections next year.
Crucially, it has coordinated peace talks between rival armed groups in the north following the 2015 Algiers Accord, which marked the official end of a four-year armed uprising that seized large parts of northern Mali, the UN and security officials said.
A senior UN official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation, said Tuareg leaders had indicated that the withdrawal of the UN mission could lead to the collapse of that dialogue – with repercussions felt across the region.
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Ould Mohamed Ramdane, spokesperson for CMA rebel alliance, said that in addition to its role in talks, MINUSMA had brought “calm and security” to areas where it was deployed and had dispensed a lot of humanitarian aid in northernMali.
“We all think that its withdrawal will have a major impact on the northern localities but also on stability throughout the Sahel,” Ramdane said.
“The threat of resumption of violence with the former separatists is looming again,” said Yvan Guichaoua, senior lecturer at the Brussels school of international studies, referring to the fallout from MINUSMA’s expected departure. In addition to the loss of its security forces, the withdrawal of UN investigative teams would increase the risk of impunity for human rights abuses, he said.
Members of the MINUSMA Guinean contingent pull their stranded escort vehicle during a logistic convoy from Gao to Kidal, Mali, on 17th February, 2017. PICTURE: MINUSMA/Sylvain Liechti handout via Reuters/File photo.
Attacks on civilians surged in the year after Wagner arrived. At least 750 were killed during joint operations carried out by Wagner and Mali’s military during that period, according to data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a US-based research group. Sixty civilians died in military operations in the year before Wagner came.
Restrictions in MINUSMA’s movements have meant the mission has become more and more focused in recent years on protecting itself. A US official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation, said 90 per cent of troop operations are focused on securing its own bases and defending peacekeepers.
The UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, disputed that figure in a post on Twitter on Monday, saying it had “no basis”.
“Protecting peacekeepers and protecting civilians are not either/or. Most often they go hand in hand,” he said.
Still, MINUSMA has struggled to counter a tide of anti-UN posts online, losing the battle for public opinion in Mali. In a recent survey of nearly 2,300 Malians conducted by German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 72 per cent blamed MINUSMA for not protecting civilians.
Over 90 per cent said they had confidence in Russia to support Mali in the fight against Islamists.
