Mali’s Junta Is Looking to Blame Anyone but Itself

Just three years ago, even after successive military coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali hosted a major UN peacekeeping operation, an EU military training operation, a five-nation West African regional military coalition, a French combat deployment, and Western militaries, including the United States, providing support. Mali was also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional bloc whose soldiers intervened in several political crises in West Africa.

These multilateral operations were deployed under the overlapping legitimacy of the United Nations and the African Union, and provided infrastructure support for security and development operations throughout a country smaller than Alaska. Although it is difficult to determine the price of these external initiatives, rough estimates indicate that the international community was spending about two billion dollars annually in Mali, or about 8% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Just three years ago, even after successive military coups in 2020 and 2021, Mali hosted a major UN peacekeeping operation, an EU military training operation, a five-nation West African regional military coalition, a French combat deployment, and Western militaries, including the United States, providing support. Mali was also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional bloc whose soldiers intervened in several political crises in West Africa.

These multilateral operations were deployed under the overlapping legitimacy of the United Nations and the African Union, and provided infrastructure support for security and development operations throughout a country smaller than Alaska. Although it is difficult to determine the price of these external initiatives, rough estimates indicate that the international community was spending about two billion dollars annually in Mali, or about 8% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Today, armed groups in Mali are expanding the territory they control or in which they enjoy complete freedom of action. They are putting economic pressure on Bamako by cutting off roads to the Malian capital, seriously threatening fuel supplies. The military junta has limited means of self-defense. Its armed forces, whose leadership has worn the mantle of savior from corruption, battlefield failure, and foreign interference, are manned by soldiers who cannot and will not fight the various rebel groups.

Its only allies are Russian mercenaries, whom it pays by draining its treasury and paying ransoms to mining companies. The United Nations completed the withdrawal of its 15,000 peacekeeping forces in December 2023. France’s Operation Barkhane withdrew in August 2022, with the United States simultaneously suspending its military assistance. The G5 Sahel, made up of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, was dissolved in May 2022.

In Western media, civil society, and academic circles, the failure of external interventions in Mali has often been explained by a focus on military action, at the expense of political dialogue and economic development. France, in particular, has often been accused of pursuing a counter-terrorism strategy without considering the root causes of the conflict or the need for state-building after military operations.

Despite initial successes, Operations Serval and Barkhane were seen as a form of neocolonialism motivated by geostrategic or economic “interests.” The coup leaders who seized power in Bamako in 2021 greatly amplified this logic. Supported by Russian disinformation campaigns, the junta mobilized domestic and international public opinion around the narrative that Western support for Mali was an expression of neocolonial hegemony.

A New York Times The story published in August tells the junta’s well-rehearsed narrative. After the alleged coup plotters were arrested, Financial Security Minister Daoud Ali Mohamedin said the plotters were working “on behalf of the French intelligence service, which mobilized political leaders, civil society actors and the military.” Even the Economic Community of West African States has been labeled an instrument of Western interests because its Protocol on democracy and Good Governance stands against a military takeover of power.

Assimi Goeta took power while serving as nominal vice president to President Bah Ndaw who staged a coup in 2020. In both coups, the military leadership and the civilian officials it selected claimed that security operations led by regional and international partners did not defeat violent extremist groups nor restore government authority throughout the national territory. Ismail Wague, spokesman for the 2020 coup leaders, explained the rationale for the coup in a televised statement at the time, saying: “Our country is sinking into chaos, anarchy and insecurity mostly due to the fault of the people responsible for its fate.” He may have been right in 2020, but his observation is still valid five years later.

It would, of course, be absurd to claim that the various military interventions carried out in Mali since early 2010 are beyond doubt. However, the focus on external actors in the financial crisis, widely reported by the military juntas of the Sahel coalition – which also includes coup-hit Burkina Faso and Niger – contributes to downplaying the role played by successive Malian governments in the deteriorating security situation.

In part, this bias can be explained by the fact that for outside observers, it is always easier to understand the policies and actions of Western actors than the goals of the national elite in a country like Mali. For US, UN, and European commentaries, policies are matters of public knowledge; Senior officials will provide informal briefings; Legislative oversight provides additional windows for key decision-making; Work can be done in French and English, with officials answering telephone calls and answering emails.

It doesn’t work that way in Mali. Financial leaders face no domestic or international accountability; They operate opaquely and beyond the reach of media or civil society inquiries. While they provide civilian ministers and spokespeople for their people as well as for the international community, these miserable figures do not speak for the military men who hold power.

This skews reporting away from local actors and hides the fact that long before the French intervention in 2013, the Malian government had developed a hidden strategy, consisting of supporting global initiatives such as the war on terrorism in exchange for military and development aid. Far from being powerless, President Amadou Toumani Toure and his aides have been actively involved in presenting Mali as a source of terrorist threats in their conversations with representatives of the US government.

The attention of the media and political commentators to the problems faced by the military interventions in Mali also contributed to concealing their basic objectives. The dominant media focus on foreign-backed military operations in Mali has been on tactical progress on the battlefield against violent extremist organizations. However, the disintegration of Mali did not occur due to a lack of foreign military support; It happened in spite of him.

The government chose not to make concessions to the Tuareg separatists who helped start the rebellion, and then fueled Islamist violence by targeting civilians it deemed disloyal. Although Western “conditionality” has become a mere adjective in African circles, an examination of the first UN Security Council resolution authorizing the Mali mission, or MINUSMA, demonstrates the failure of successive Malian governments to address the crisis.

Security Council Resolution 2100, adopted in April 2013, does not explicitly impose conditions, but reading the UN’s normative discourse sets largely clear and reasonable expectations. Most importantly, the resolution says that the UN’s role was to support the re-extension of state authority throughout Mali’s national territory, making clear that the Malian government was primarily responsible for this task. More clearly, the Security Council said: “The transitional authorities in Mali bear the primary responsibility for resolving the interconnected challenges facing their country and protecting all its citizens, and that any sustainable solution to the crisis in Mali must belong to Mali.”

Resolution 2100 was in many respects a classic transition from war-fighting to peace-building. France intervened to rile up Malian public opinion when Islamists took control of large parts of the country and threatened the capital itself. After achieving stability on the battlefield, France turned to the United Nations to supervise the implementation of the peace process, which culminated in the signing of the Algiers Agreement in 2015.

This quickly turned into a widespread expectation that the UN’s mission was to reclaim rebel-held territory. MINUSMA was not authorized or equipped for such a role, nor would the countries that supplied MINUSMA forces have allowed it to embark on such a mission. As analyst Michael Shurkin has explained, the best thing an intervening power like France could do in a post-colonial environment is to buy Mali some space and time to implement the political reforms it has accepted as conditions for billions of dollars in military support.

These political reforms were never implemented. Instead, successive Malian governments, whether elected or installed through coups, have outsourced their country’s security to external actors, focusing on plundering the country and narrowing their political support base to the Bambara-speaking southern regions. Mali’s main source of revenue was the gold mines of Bambouk, which had produced wealth since at least the Malinke kingdoms in the 13th century. Recently, Canadian mining companies have been the main operator, but the need for the Wagner Group to pay for what the West provided for free prompted the junta to expel the Canadians in favor of Russian interests.

Later in Resolution 2100, the Security Council makes clear that the reunification of Mali must be a consensual process based on an inclusive political dialogue among all stakeholders. The resolution stresses the importance of “comprehensive dialogue and active engagement with Malian political groups, including those that have previously called for independence.” Little progress has been made in this direction. The Algiers Agreement between the Malian government and Tuareg separatists was a miserable failure, due to the lack of commitment of the signatories, and dialogue with the jihadists was not seriously viewed as a viable option to end the war.

Western countries, in turn, were understandably unwilling to play the only trump card they had – disengagement – ​​given that the consequences would be a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe, as well as the victory of violent extremists linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Instead of leaving Mali after the military successes of early 2010, they adopted a “sunk cost” approach in trying to recoup a small portion of their investment. By giving Mali the means to achieve peace – political, military, and economic support – the West has also, paradoxically, given it equal means to refuse to make peace.

So where might Mali end up in 2025, with the global war on terrorism largely over for the international community in the Sahel? Will the jihadist seizure of power lead to another international military intervention? Will France take the lead, will the United States participate, and will the United Nations support it? Will the threat of new migrant flows through the Sahel prompt the EU to re-engage? Less than ten years ago, the answer to these questions would have been “yes,” but today Mali will likely have to live with the consequences of its decision to expel its traditional security partners.

The world has changed since the French intervention in 2013 to halt the advance of rebels and jihadists towards Bamako, and the conditions that led to the mobilization of a free regional and global coalition no longer exist. Mali’s current military junta is betting that a group of Russian mercenaries and their remaining military allies, not bound by the rules of engagement or the laws of war, can stem this tide. As jihadist groups gradually approach Bamako, one does not need the genius of Barbara Tuchman, who has written about the delusion of government, to understand the folly of this bet. In Mali, the question is who, if anyone, will process these pieces.

The opinions and descriptions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States Government.