The German Minister of Defense, Christine Lambrecht, began a visit to Mali on Thursday, during which she will meet her Malian counterpart, Sadio Camara, and visit the troops deployed by Berlin in the framework of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).
The trip is the Minister’s first to Mali since Germany’s decision to withdraw its blue helmets as of next summer. Germany currently has some 1,200 Bundeswehr military personnel deployed in Mali as part of the above-mentioned mission.
However, in recent months there have been repeated disputes between the Malian government, which came to power in a military coup in August 2020, and MINUSMA, including Bamako’s denial of flight permissions to military aircraft and the Heron reconnaissance drone operated by German troops.
These tensions, coupled with criticism of the presence in Mali of mercenaries from the Wagner Group, owned by an oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, led Berlin to announce its decision on a phased withdrawal of its military from MINUSMA by May 2024.
However, Berlin is linking its continued presence in the next 18 months to a number of conditions. One of these is that the Bundeswehr must be able to carry out regular reconnaissance missions for the United Nations with the Heron drone. In addition, the junta must not postpone the elections again, this time scheduled for the first months of 2024.
At the beginning of December, the leader of the Malian military junta, Assimi Goita, called for a «change of strategy» of MINUSMA and «better coordination» with the army in carrying out its operations in order to «focus on the protection of the population».
