In an effort to establish "order" in Mali, former French President François Hollande ordered Operation Serval in January 2013, a bombing mission against the armed groups based throughout the north of Mali. Thousands of civilians were killed in the name of restoring domestic stability, bringing democracy and preemptively protecting the West’s national security and interests.
The West’s "desire-to-please" rhetoric in general to the people of the African lands assures that Western military interventions are not against Islam nor their customs. Meanwhile, the continent’s people continue to live between the hammer of the West and the anvil of the dystopians.
Politics as usual
Hollande's justification for his act of war in Mali was to "liberate" Malian people from the al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist group AQIM. Didn't France go to Afghanistan two decades ago to eradicate this supra-national organization? That is, until Hollande brought his soldiers home in 2014 – an exit strategy approach United States President Joe Biden applied in August 2021, leaving Afghanistan in chaos and misery.
France’s Operation Serval and Operation Barkhane were more about reviving the agreement of reframing the sub-regional lands into microstates. The alibi of human rights and democracy has become senseless. Nonetheless, the majority of Malians were in favor of the assertion of Western interventions, as were Afghans, Iraqis or Libyans.
Since 2013, France has been fighting armed groups in Mali. Operation Serval and then Operation Barkhane were unable to defeat either them or the ethnic separatists in Mali and across the African Sahel because of France’s lack of credibility and its dark colonial legacy in the entire region. It’s this image that created the anti-French sentiment among the local population, elite and politicians alike. It’s also a narrative that pushed the military authorities in Bamako to shift the country’s military alliance doctrine toward Moscow.
Thus, a new strategy in the African Sahel is taking place following Moscow’s direct interference in the region and the ramifications of the post-ongoing Ukraine war that would reshape the entire balance of power in light of new world order parameters. A strategic mistake French President Emmanuel Macron did commit in Mali, instead of continuing to use his country’s intelligence skills and means, was cooperating closely with pivotal neighboring countries like Algeria and Nigeria. With this move, Paris opened another front of disagreement and cooperation with Algiers on this thorny issue. It consequently activated a new power struggle in the aftermath of the Libyan civil war and the decline of France’s prestige in the African Sahel and the Maghreb region.
War on terror by all means
As a result, France and its European partners in Mali unveiled the real objectives of the Serval and Barkhane missions. France currently holds the presidency of the European Union. It wants to position itself advantageously in the complex balance of power in Europe. Macron took a risk and went to Moscow and Kyiv, looking for a facilitator role in light of the diplomatic tensions between Russia and Ukraine that led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin is challenging Europe’s security and the United States’ active diplomacy in eastern Europe. Macron and Biden, however, look scornfully on the international power shift and its dynamic change from Westphalian, World War II and post-Cold War conditions. Yet Russia’s recent Ukraine invasion has created a new world order dynamic.
The relations between Mali and France have been recently at historic lows since the August 2020 coup in Mali, as Paris condemned the coup via the U.N. Security Council (UNSC). Recently, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued a call to impose further sanctions on the military authorities in Bamako.
Paris, however, has not explicitly recognized the new authorities in Mali and it is ironically calling them a "military junta," a term it does not use for the "military regime" in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. The political and military trajectory of tension between Mali and France clarified the French withdrawal from Mali and the end of Operation Barkhane in the next six months. Early last month, the Malian authorities expelled the French ambassador and the authorities in Bamako applied the reciprocity principal toward Paris’ move, responding to its decision to expel the then-Malian ambassador two years ago.
Exit strategy and diplomatic tragedy
Analysts argue that France's strategy could continue in the African Sahel without abandoning the core of the Serval and Barkhane missions; hence the Takuba Task Force, a European military task force activated to advise the Malian military. Last month, the French military chief-of-staff made a visit to Ivory Coast to discuss shared security concerns. Speaking at a newly opened counterterrorism training academy near the economic capital Abidjan, the French high-ranking officer confirmed that France would continue to support the Ivorian government in the fight against armed groups.
The withdrawal of the French and European Union troops from Mali raise the question of the U.N.’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and the new role of the Russian forces led by Wagner mercenaries in the post-Barkhane and Takuba era. It is an exit strategy that could provoke a diplomatic tragedy for Macon at home and with his European counterparts.
Paris is in a difficult position. It has to save Operation Barkhane and the Takuba Task Force and the EU training missions set to leave Mali. Nine years after Operation Serval and seven years after Operation Barkhane, this is happening under Macron’s watch. It is a severe blow to France and the EU alike.
Subsequently, there are 45 days left before a crucial presidential election that Macron will be facing. His foreign policy is a fiasco. Mali is a debacle, a quagmire that is pulling him and his ideologue Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian into a sticky situation. France has already cut troops in the African Sahel with the aim of reducing numbers from around 5,000 to 2,500-3,000 by 2023. Around half of its forces are based in Mali. The Takuba Task Force has about 600-900 troops, of which 40% are French, including medical and logistical teams. The "war on terror" is no longer a valid argument because, in the end, Paris, just like the U.S., allows the dystopian groups’ ideology and terrorism to thrive in Nigeria, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Mali. Who knows what country is next?
Any armed terrorist groups in the region are just as harmful as their agenda. The antidote is the dynamic of the change that emerged in the aftermath of the first and second Arab uprisings a decade ago. People toppled regimes and elected legal actors, who themselves are in the process of learning the "checks-and-balances" principals.
Macron must end his neocolonial strategy. If France believes it can keep up this endless war through the war-on-terror concept, Macron has not learned anything from his country’s shameful colonization footprint in southeastern Asia and in Africa.