General Francois Lecointre, Chief of Staff of the French armed forces, recently told the Defence Committee of France’s National Assembly that it would take 10-15 years for France to resolve Mali’s security problems, with the caveat of: ‘if we can’. While this is a sobering announcement, it sheds a degree of realism over Mali’s complex and deep-rooted security situation.
One reason for this is because of the incompetence of Mali’s army. Indeed, one of the reasons why the Mouvement National de Libération de L’Azawad (MNLA) and the Islamists were able to takeover Azawad — northern Mali — so easily in 2012 was because of the army’s lack of equipment, poor training, and, most seriously, the corruption among its high ranking officers. In spite of more than five years of training by the European Union multinational military training mission (EUTM) established in Bamako in February 2013 — which itself has been subject to severe criticism — it seems that little has improved. Indeed, one reason why the French army commanders insist that Mali’s army is kept out of Kidal is because it will probably be defeated again.
In addition to all the regularly cited examples of its levity and laxity, much more serious charges of abuse and extrajudicial executions have now been brought by Amnesty International and numerous information services, including Sahel Intelligence.
Human rights group, Amnesty International, has denounced the fact that civilians are caught in a perpetual crossfire: on the one hand undergoing enforced disappearances and unlawful killings by Mali’s army, and on the other facing roadside bombings and kidnappings by armed ethnic groups. As a result, Amnesty has urged the Malian authorities to investigate the actions of their forces and bring all those responsible for alleged crimes to justice in ordinary civil courts.
In 2018 alone, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has recorded at least 85 major violent incidents and armed confrontations that resulted in at least 180 civilian victims — likely killed, although this is unconfirmed — including 15 women and 17 children. It said that it was ‘equally worried by the extent of intercommunal violence in the central regions, which has killed at least 50 people.’
This Mali report is from Sahara Focus — a comprehensive multi-country analysis of the Sahel. Contact our consultancy team for further details.
