French President Emmanuel Macron said Frances military withdrawal from Mali does not mean the mission was a failure. The anti-insurgency operation will continue, but based in other countries.
African leaders, meanwhile, warn that they cannot fight the insurgency on their own. And the UN says the withdrawal is bound to have an effect on its peacekeeping mission in Mali.
"We cannot remain militarily engaged alongside de-facto authorities whose strategy and hidden aims we do not share," Macron told reporters on Thursday, after a joint statement was released, signed by France and its allies involved in Mali, announcing a coordinated troop withdrawal from Mali.
The announcement comes amid a breakdown in relations between France and Mali’s ruling junta, which has been in power since May 2021.
Macron said he rejected the idea that France had failed its former colony.
"I completely reject this term," Macron said.
France has had troops in Mali since 2013, when the government requested their help to push back a growing jihadist insurgency that was headed towards the capital.
Macron said that in doing so, France had prevented the state from collapsing.
"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.
France to remain in the region
France’s military withdrawal will take four to six months, and Macron’s priority will be to ensure it does not devolve into chaos like the United States’ departure from Afghanistan last year.
This is especially concerning for the president, less than two months ahead of France’s presidential election, in which he has not yet declared he will run for re-election.
And Macron insisted that the withdrawal does not mean France is abandoning its anti-terrorism mission.
"The heart of this military operation will no longer be in Mali but in Niger," he said Thursday. France's Sabre special forces will also remain posted in Burkina Faso.
Macron warned that Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State armed group have made the Sahel region of West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea nations "a priority for their strategy of expansion."
Africans call for support
Senegal's President Macky Sall, who is serving as the Chair of the African Union, said Thursday that Africans alone cannot fight against Islamist insurgencies in the Sahel.
"We have agreed with Europe that the struggle against terrorism in the Sahel cannot be the business of African countries alone, there's a consensus on this," Sall said at the same press conference with Macron, before the two were to head to Brussels for a two-day AU-EU summit.
"The departure of Barkhane and Takuba creates a void," Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara told RFI on Wednesday.
In the Sahel and Gulf of Guinea, "national armies will have to deal with problems on our national territories, and that's our philosophy".
The United Nations warns that the withdrawal will have an impact on 14,000 UN peacekeepers involved in the Minusma mission in Mali.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (Minusma), started in 2013, as the country and its neighbours were struggling to contain the emerging jihadist insurgency.
Minusma spokesperson Olivier Salgado, told AFP that "there is bound to be an impact" on the operation by France’s withdrawal, as the two operations often worked in parallel.
(with wires)
