France and its European partners are to begin a military withdrawal from Mali after more than nine years fighting a jihadist insurgency, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, confirmed on Thursday.
Asked at the Élysée 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. The intervention successfully stemmed the insurgents’ advance and returned key cities such as Timbuktu to government control, but extremists swiftly regrouped.
In recent years, jihadists have taken over swaths of territory in the former French colony, exploiting political turmoil, poverty and the weakness of local authorities.
Macron said French forces would remain in the region but would be based in neighbouring Niger, from where they could help other countries suffering from jihadist activity.
“The heart of this military operation will no longer be in Mali but in Niger … and perhaps in a more balanced way across all the countries of the region which want this [help],” he said.
Niger has its own significant problem with Islamic extremism, as does Burkina Faso, where thousands of people have died and more than a million been displaced in recent years.
Despite Macron’s statement, observers will nonetheless see the withdrawal as a humiliating end to a flagship overseas mission.
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.”
Critics of French strategy in Mali have long accused policymakers in Paris of focusing on military force at the expense of politics.
Relations between France and Mali have deteriorated after two coup d’états and the new military regime’s reluctance to agree to an immediate transition to civilian rule. The French ambassador to the former colony was expelled earlier this month, prompting celebrations in Bamako. 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.
Mali’s armed forces spokesperson Souleymane Dembele shrugged off France’s announcement, saying European troops had failed. “I think that there has been no military solution, because terrorism has engulfed the entire territory of Mali,” he said.
Macron said al-Qaida and Islamic State had made the Sahel region of west Africa and the Gulf of Guinea nations “a priority for their strategy of expansion”.
Most experts say the dozens of factions and coalitions in the Sahel, a wide band of scrub and bush along the southern fringe of the Sahara, are only loosely associated with al-Qaida or IS and are primarily driven by local motives.
However, there is no doubt that French and other European officials see Islamic militant activities in the Sahel as a significant long-term threat.
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 has 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.
About 18,000 United Nations peacekeepers will remain in Mali, one of the biggest and most expensive such deployments in the world. The UN forces and hundreds of personnel in the European Union’s EUTM and EUCAP training missions have relied on French troops for medical, aerial and emergency support. About 300 British troops have also been sent to Mali.
France’s army spokesperson Pascal Ianni said Paris would for now continue that support as long as local authorities allowed it.
