MACRON EXPECTED TO ANNOUNCE FRANCE’S TROOP PULLOUT FROM MALI

Wed 16 February 2022:

As per reliable sources, French President Emmanuel Macron will announce this week that French troops will be withdrawn from Mali and redeployed elsewhere in the Sahel following a breakdown in relations with the country’s military regime.

Several security sources told AFP that Macron’s decision to end the nine-year French mission in Mali will coincide with a European Union-African Union summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

France first sent troops to northern Mali in 2013 to fend off advancing jihadist fighters.

However, the extremists regrouped and moved into central Mali in 2015, an ethnic hotspot, before launching cross-border attacks on neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.

Now, sporadic raids on southern countries have fueled fears of a jihadist push into the Gulf of Guinea.

The expected withdrawal represents a major strategic shift for France, precipitated by a breakdown in relations with Mali, a former colony and traditional ally, following two military coups.

The withdrawal will bring to an end a mission that successive French presidents have argued is critical to regional and European security.

“If the conditions are no longer in place for us to be able to act in Mali – which is clearly the case – we will continue to fight terrorism side-by-side with Sahel countries who want it,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Monday.

Macron, who was already planning to reduce the nearly 5,000 troops stationed in the Sahel region, is expected to announce redeployments to other French bases in neighboring countries such as Niger.

According to diplomatic sources, he will host allied African leaders for informal talks in Paris on Wednesday ahead of the summit.

With a presidential election in April, Macron is keen to avoid comparisons to the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last year – or any suggestion that the deaths of 48 French soldiers were in vain.

In recent years, fellow EU nations had joined France in the Sahel, sharing the military and financial burden and – Paris hoped – limiting long-standing allegations of French interference in its former African colonies.

But the bell is tolling for this mission. .

Denmark announced it was withdrawing its contingent of elite soldiers in late January and Norway has abandoned a planned deployment.

“It’s impossible to continue in such conditions,” Estonian Defence Minister Kalle Laanet told the Postimees daily on Saturday.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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