The withdrawal of French troops from Mali strengthens the jihadist threat in the Sahel

After several months of tension between Paris and Bamako, Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday 17 February the withdrawal of French troops from Mali. Operation Barkhane is due to come to an end in about six months' time, with the closure of its three bases in Gossi, Ménaka and Gao. The French president refused to talk of failure and reaffirmed his commitment to the fight against jihadism in the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea. After nine years of operations on the ground and the death of 59 soldiers, it is time to take stock of the French presence in Mali.

There have been many military successes since France responded to then interim president Diocunda Traoré's request for assistance in early 2013. The latter feared that the armed groups that had already taken control of the north of the country the previous year would launch an offensive towards Mali's main cities. Between January 2013 and August 2014, Operation Serval supported the Malian Armed Forces - which made it possible to counter jihadist offensives, guarantee the security of Bamako and restore the integrity of its territory to the Malian state - before being reconfigured to join the regional Barkhane mechanism. The latter also produced excellent results, such as the recovery of a large quantity of arms and drugs and, above all, the elimination of several dozen jihadist leaders, including Abdelmalek Droukdel and Adnan Abou Walid al-Sahraoui, respectively emirs of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara. How then to explain the extension of the jihadists' zone of influence, previously limited to the "three borders region" between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, and now threatening Togo, Benin and Côte d'Ivoire? In November 2019, General François Lecointre, then chief of staff of the French army, pointed to a flaw in the approach to the intervention in Mali, noting that the military only had part of the answer. 

The tactical achievements were certainly not followed up by a proper political capitalisation, neither by France nor by Mali. The French Development Agency became involved very late in the Barkhane operation, in 2015, and with mixed results, sometimes frankly negative, given the diversion of part of the aid, which ended up financing jihadism. Nor did the Malian government re-establish a satisfactory state presence in the territories recovered thanks to Serval and Barkhane, which have remained devoid of justice and public services while endemic corruption continues to rage. On these issues, France failed to impose the democratic guarantees and developmental efforts it sought to demand in return for its support. The attempt to establish a democratic model - seen by part of the Malian population as interference by the former colonial power - failed definitively with the two coups d'état of August 2020 and May 2021. After the military junta led by Assimi Goita came to power, Emmanuel Macron announced that the authorities' loss of democratic legitimacy led him to reconsider the modalities of the French presence, and joint operations were temporarily suspended. From the United Nations podium, Mlaïgue Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga denounced what he described as neglect and warned that he would forge new alliances.

Unsurprisingly, these new allies are Russian. While Mali has been imposing increasingly cumbersome conditions of engagement since last summer, endangering Barkhane and MINUSMA personnel, French officers were rumoured to have been expelled from meeting rooms and replaced by Russian instructors. On the other hand, mercenaries from the Russian private military company Wagner are at ease. They have the advantage of not having any governance requirements that might bother the Malian army. Their only promise is to ensure that the junta remains in power. In exchange, Wagner is asking for financial compensation that is difficult for a country's coffers to cope with at such a critical juncture, when he is not plundering the country's natural resources. The influence of Russia, whose 'troll farms' have been fanning the flames of anti-French sentiment for several years, is also notable in the virtual sphere. The plot theories they spread foster mistrust of Barkhane's soldiers, with very specific repercussions. There have been several absurd situations such as the blockade of several French convoys by civilians who suspected France of supplying weapons to jihadists or, more recently, the arrest of four soldiers in the Central African Republic, accused of planning an attack on the president, Faustin Archange Touadéra. Malians who welcomed François Hollande with cheers in 2013 are now celebrating the withdrawal of French troops by burning European flags. 

However, not everyone welcomes this news. France's departure calls into question MINUSMA's continued presence on the ground, given the risks posed to its personnel by the removal of French air cover. It should be recalled that the blue helmets have paid a heavy toll in Mali with 154 deaths caused by hostile action. As for Germany, it has expressed scepticism about renewing its commitment in this new context. Since most of the jihadist danger is in Mali, France's promised deployment of forces in neighbouring states does not compensate for its withdrawal from the Malian theatre of operations. The presidents of Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana have also expressed their concern about a possible consolidation and expansion of the jihadist focus in the Sahel.

The next card that Bamako could play is negotiation with the jihadists, which would allow it to satisfy its population by relieving the pressure that weighs on it. There are precedents at the local level between militias and groups affiliated with the Front for the Support of Islam and Muslims (known as JNIM or GSIM). At the national level, the issue remains unresolved. No real process has been officially launched, despite the requests expressed in this regard during two Malian national forums in 2017 and 2019. This willingness to engage in dialogue with terrorists consummated the rift between Paris and Bamako, as what for Mali represents an act of sovereignty remains taboo for a secular democracy like France. Beyond the conflict between these two national paradigms, realism forces us to admit that a negotiation would only be a stopgap that would be far from being equal to the immense challenge posed by jihadism in the Sahel.