The German government announced Tuesday that it will end its military deployment in Mali in May 2024, following in the footsteps of the United Kingdom and France despite the fact that Africa’s Sahel region is seeing a resurgence of terrorist activity.
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said Tuesday that a proposal will be made to Parliament for the mandate to be «extended for the last time in May 2023» for one year, until May 2024, with the aim of «bringing this deployment to a structured end» after ten years of Bundeswehr activity.
«This is to take into account in particular the elections in Mali, which are scheduled for February 2024,» he added at the end of a high-level meeting chaired by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) is a peacekeeping force created to reinforce security in Mali following the 2012 Tuareg rebellion, one of the first stages of the current armed conflict in the country.
The Bundeswehr participates in the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali. However, the European training mission EUTM has been discontinued. The plan is now to focus on operations in neighboring Niger, where German soldiers are already training local forces.
The gradual troop withdrawal from Mali is a further sign of the reluctance of much of the international community both with the Malian military junta and its alleged alignment with the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization.
Thus, with this measure, Berlin is following in the footsteps of Paris, which already announced in February that its troops in Mali would be transferred to Niger to continue from there its fight against jihadist activity in the region.
Mali’s military junta, headed by Assimi Goita, is facing increasing international isolation. In fact, Ivory Coast also recently announced the withdrawal of its troops from the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), a decision prompted in the case of Yamoussoukro by the arrest in July of nearly 50 Ivorian military personnel at Bamako airport.
