It was not supposed to turn out like this. When French troops intervened in Mali in January 2013, it was intended to be President François Hollande's great foreign policy 'success story'. Here was a resolute president taking a rapid decision, showing that France remained a great nation capable of sending its troops around the world, fighting against fanatical Islamists to preserve democracy, while at the same time distancing itself from the old demons of 'Françafrique', the neocolonial approach in which Paris meddled in its former colonies and did deals with unwholesome and sometimes corrupt regimes. But two years later Mali has become one of those forgotten wars that no longer make the front pages, but which instead prevails over the crumbling of a country amid general indifference, in particular from those who were behind the intervention in the first place (see also Afghanistan, Libya, the Central African Republic and so on...).
The peace that was supposed to have returned with the ending of France's Operation Serval military intervention and the deployment of the United Nations' Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) force today appears a fragile one. The north of the country is still a no-go area for Mali's own military, who are forced to let France's special forces operate there and to watch as Tuareg militants establish their own form of order. Armed clashes and attacks, against civilians as well as against Malian soldiers or multinational forces, are growing in number in the regions of Gao, Timbuktu and Mopti. At the beginning of March there was an attack for the first time in the capital Bamako, killing five people in a bar frequented by foreigners and middle-class Malians.
The non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch issued a warning about the situation in Malin in a report published on April 14th, 2015. “Two years after a French-led military intervention in the embattled country, there remains widespread lawlessness and insecurity,” it wrote.
The report continued: “In the north, a brief renewal of fighting in mid-2014 provoked the withdrawal of Malian soldiers and civil servants, including judicial officers. This left large swaths of territory devoid of state authority in which Tuareg separatists, Islamist armed groups, pro-government militias, and bandits have committed abuses with impunity. Since January 2015, a new Islamist armed group has committed a spate of attacks against civilians in central Mali.”
To this assessment should be added one of the best-guarded secrets of recent months: MINUSMA is in the process of becoming one of the most deadly missions in the history of the UN, with 46 deaths in under two years.
In the capital Bamako the central government headed since September 2013 by President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK) continues to make Malians despair over its inaction, the continuance of corrupt practices and clientelism, and endless political squabbles which have seen three prime ministers in just 18 months (see Mediapart's analysis in December 2014 here: Plus ça change…the stark reality of Mali's bright new future). Unfortunately, and it is a peculiarity of deteriorating situations, the more time goes by, the worse things get.
“It is quite worrying to observe that, month after month, nothing changes while everyone is aware of the fact that everything has to be resolutely changed to put the country back on its feet,” says a European diplomat who has been in post in Bamako for several years. “It's as if the impact of the invasion of the north [of Mali] by jihadists in 2012, then that of the French military intervention, which were real shocks for the population, have finally been absorbed by a blanket of old habits and bad practices…” Meanwhile a Malian political opponent of IBK notes: “If I had to sum up what I observe in Bamako, it comes down to two things: a lack of vision about what needs to be done for the country, and a great deal of incompetence.”

Enlargement : Illustration 1

To make matters worse, the Malian political classes all seem to be waiting for the signing of the Algiers accord, the planned peace agreement negotiated between the Malian government and the armed movements in the north of the country. The talks have dragged on for months, first under the (not very effective) mediation of Burkina Faso, then of Algeria. The aim of the agreement is to open the way for calm to return to the whole country while at the same time granting greater autonomy to the north. This is a fundamental demand of the Tuareg groups who are at the heart of the body representing the northern militants, the Coordination des mouvements de l’Azawad (CMA), and who were the main trigger for the 2012 crisis in the first place.
Mali's government has now signed the peace plan, while the CMA has asked for a period of reflection, but the accord's numerous 'sponsors', the UN, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the European Union, Niger, Mauritania, Chad and, of course, Algeria and France, are calling for its ratification as soon as possible. This is despite the fact that the majority of those who have examined the agreement consider that it is a bad document which, in effect, sanctions the partitioning of Mali.
'The creation of another country with no debate or discussion'
The academic and Mali specialist Joseph Brunet-Jailly, who has dissected the contents of the agreement at length on his own blog on Mediapart, agrees that the accord “amounts in practice to Mali's partition. It does not tackle any of the fundamental problems that triggered the crisis, whether it be poverty, conditions in rural areas or the operation of the judicial system...” The diplomat cited earlier, who was not present at the talks, has a similar view. By agreeing to a major transfer of resources from Bamako to the northern regions – 40% of the budget – plus a right of inspection over the exploitation of underground resources and a levy of 20% of any revenues that comes from it, and by agreeing to the election by universal suffrage of regional governors who will be heads of their administrative area and have their own police force, “the Algiers accord contains the seeds of the dismantling of Mali,” says the diplomat.
“We're turning into another country without even knowing it, and that is being done with no debate or discussion,” says the opponent of IBK quoted earlier. He believes that the Malian government showed its weakness in Algiers and let itself get fobbed off by the mediators during bilateral discussions. This weakness on the part of the Malian state is one reason why the majority of observers predict a de facto partition of the country. “A regional governor in the north who is elected by universal suffrage, with control over their assembly and their administration, will have the same legitimacy as the president at a local level, especially in the context of a weakened central government,” says the Malian anthropologist Biram Diakon. Joseph Brunet-Jailly is even more worried. “Because of the notorious weakness of the state in Mali, these regions will de facto be independent: more precisely, they will be in the hands of foreign powers – states, multinationals or private armed groups – who will have an interest in colonising them through subsidies or their troops,” he says.
Some of the armed movements in the north are involved in smuggling networks, and old tribal allegiances are much stronger than democratic representation. As for the rebel group the Mouvement national de libération de l’Azawad (MNLA), one of the main components of the CMA coalition, it has since 2012 shown its openness towards Islamist groups, over whom it has exhibited great naivety. “[The Islamist groups] Ansar Dine and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) want to continue to destabilise Mali which they consider has become too committed to the West's side,” says Joseph Brunet-Jailly.

Enlargement : Illustration 2

The big question is: why would anyone want such an accord at any price when it is judged to be so bad? Most responses come down to a form of resignation. For example, the head of the delegation representing organisations from civic society in Mali, the influential religious leader Cherif Haïdara, considers that “Malians have no choice but to accept this agreement. The division of Mali has already happened. To appreciate this sad reality you just have to call Kidal to notice the absence of our military or administrators.” His Catholic counterpart, the archbishop of Bamako Jean Zerbo, who is also part of the group representing civic society, has a similar view: “A bad agreement is better than no agreement.”
“There's a kind of denial of reality in public opinion and among decision-makers in Mali,” says an advisor at the EU's offices in Bamako. “Everyone says 'We want peace!' and as a result seems ready to accept any agreement whatsoever provided that it promises peace...” Yet the growth in recent months in the number of small armed groups in different areas seems to suggest this peace may be elusive. For these groups, which have different and sometimes opportunistic affiliations – some say they are linked to Tuareg groups, others to Islamists, and yet others simply to criminal gangs – are not represented at the talks in Algiers. They thus have no reason to comply with an eventual agreement.
As for the 'sponsors' of the Algiers talks, they seem in a particular hurry to finish with them at whatever cost. “There's more to Africa than just Mali!” says a Malian politician close to the negotiations, with irony. “France and Algeria have had enough of seeing their ministries having to deal with this dossier, they want it to end quickly and well!” The EU advisor says: “To question the agreement today by saying that it is not a good one would turn Algeria, France, ECOWAS, the UN and so on against them. That's a lot of people and I doubt that the Malian government has the courage to do it...”
Today France's complete focus is on Operation Barkhane, which is portrayed as a massive transnational military operation hunting terrorists in the wider Sahel region of Africa. In Mali itself Paris has handed over peacekeeping to the UN's MINUSMA and to Chad's president Idriss Déby, whose soldiers are battle-hardened, control of the peace talks to Algeria, and control of shoring up Mali's army and institutions to the EU and the World Bank.
Officially, all is for the best in the best of all worlds... That is how it is portrayed in a recent edition of Society magazine, who accompanied France's finance minister Michel Sapin on a recent trip to Mali, and where, as well as celebrating his 63rd birthday, the minister announced to Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta that Paris was cancelling a debt of 65 million euros. “It's my birthday but I want to give you a present, Mr President,” said Sapin, causing IBK to embrace him despite his persistent lumbago. Given that this debt goes back to 1984 and that Mali's bilateral debt to France remains at 130 million euros, this exchange is a good example of how Paris's relations with Bamako continue to be viewed. Whether it involves finance, military operations or the reconstruction of a country that it claims to have “saved from the brink”.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter