By Angelique Chrisafis in Paris and agencies
Asked at the Elysée if the withdrawal marked a failure for France and its policy of fighting terrorism in west Africa, Macron said: “I completely reject that term.”
France first deployed troops against jihadists in Mali in 2013 under the Socialist president François Hollande, but the insurgency was never fully quelled, and there are now fears of a jihadist push to the Gulf of Guinea.
Relations between France and Mali have deteriorated after two coup d’états and the military regime’s reluctance to agree to an immediate transition to civilian rule. The presence of Russian mercenary forces from the private military Wagner group has increased tension, with the EU accusing Mali’s military regime of using them to shore up their own power.
“Multiple obstructions” by the ruling junta meant conditions were no longer in place to operate in Mali, France and its African and European allies said in a statement.
The withdrawal applies to 2,400 French troops in Mali and a smaller European force of several hundred, which was created in 2020 to reduce the burden on French forces.
Macron said the forces would be withdrawn over four to sixth months and would remain in the region, based in Niger, to help other countries in the Gulf of Guinea to counter jihadist activity. He said that al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group had made the Sahel region of west Africa and the Gulf of Guinea nations “a priority for their strategy of expansion”.
Speaking alongside Macron, the Senegalese president, Macky Sall, said fighting “terrorism in the Sahel cannot be the business of African countries alone”.
The Mali deployment has been fraught with problems for France. Of the 53 soldiers killed serving in its Barkhane mission in west Africa, 48 of them died in Mali.
Macron’s withdrawal statement comes before his expected announcement that he will be standing for re-election in April’s presidential race. His opponents on the right have said France had been “humiliated” in Mali.
Macron denied that France’s intervention had been in vain. “What would have happened in 2013 if France had not chosen to intervene? You would for sure have had the collapse of the Malian state,” he said, hailing his predecessor’s decision to order troops in.
The daily paper Le Monde wrote: “It is an inglorious end to an armed intervention that began in euphoria and which ends, nine years later, against a backdrop of crisis between Mali and France.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
