On August 15, as the last French troops withdrew from Mali, the West African foreign minister, Diop, signed a letter to the United Nations Security Council accusing France of "aggression" and "solidarity" and asking the Security Council to convene an emergency meeting to end France's relevant behavior. Nine years ago, France sent troops to fight terrorism at the request of the Government of Mali and subsequently expanded its campaign against extremist groups to many countries in West Africa in the Sahel region. In the process, France consolidated its influence over non-traditional. But after two military coups in Mali in the past two years, France's relations with the West African ally have plummeted. Mali has staged a "French retreat and Russian advance", and relations between Russia and Mali are heating up rapidly, reflecting that in recent years, Africa has increasingly become a stage for great powers to compete for influence. France is saving, Russia is attacking, the United States is stirring up trouble, and this is a scene that just happened in Africa not long ago.
On the 17th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Mali released to the media the letter from Foreign Minister Diop to the United Nations Security Council, which listed France's violations of Mali's sovereignty, support for extremist organizations and espionage activities, and demanded that the Security Council convene an emergency meeting to end France's behavior.
Diop said in the letter that French military aircraft frequently violated Mali's airspace, and since the beginning of this year, French aircraft of various types have crossed Mali's airspace more than 50 times to engage in "espionage operations", and Mali believes that the French army is collecting intelligence for terrorist organizations in the Sahel region. If France continues these actions, Mali "reserves the right to use legitimate defence".
Diop signed the letter on August 15, the day the French army completely withdrew from Mali. The French military issued a statement on the same day saying that the last French army unit stationed in Mali and participating in the "crescent dunes" operation left Mali and entered Niger.
This marked the end of France's nine-year campaign against terrorism in Mali, and France's relations with the traditional West African ally had bottomed out. This scene was placed 9 years ago, and France could not have dreamed of it.
In early 2012, several towns in northern Mali were attacked by the Tuareg Separatist Movement (Azawad National Liberation Movement), a Tuareg separatist force, resulting in numerous civilian and government soldier casualties. Founded in October 2011, many of its members have been involved in the Libyan civil war. The Crisis in Libya is a springboard for the accelerated expansion of the extremist branch in West Africa, while northern Mali is one of the "hardest hit areas" of terrorist activities, in addition to the Islamic State, there are also extremist groups such as the Al-Qaida branch of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
In the face of chaos in the north, mali's Weak Government in Dore provoked massive protests, culminating in a coup d'état in March 2012 to overthrow the Durr government. By that time, however, a large area of northern Mali had been lost, covering about two-thirds of the country. Subsequently, Malian government forces confronted various rebels, and in early 2013 they launched an offensive that briefly pushed into bamako, the southern capital.
In a critical situation, the president of the Transitional Government of Mali, Traoré, sent a letter to France requesting urgent military assistance. In January 2013, then-French President François Hollande decided to send troops and weapons to Mali to join the Malian government forces in fighting the rebels. French intervention quickly reversed the situation in Mali, and The Malian government forces were able to retake the northern cities of Gao and Tunbutu in a short period of time. In February 2013, Hollande visited Mali; In August of the same year, after the situation had stabilized, general elections were held in Mali, and Keita, who had served as Mali's prime minister and speaker of parliament, was elected president.
Operation Serval lasted about a year and a half, and france decided to expand its counterterrorism operations in the region due to the spillover effects of the Libyan crisis, which led to rampant activities by extremist groups in the Sahel region, launching a military operation code-named "Crescent Dunes" in August 2014. The Sahel region is a 3,800-kilometre-long strip of land on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, stretching from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Red Sea coast in the east, spanning Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea from west to east.
With the impetus of France, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania formed the Group of Five Sahel and in 2017 a joint counter-terrorism force. At the beginning of the same year, the Franco-African Summit was held in Mali. In May 2017, Macron visited Mali less than a week after he became President of France, which showed that the relationship between the two countries was hot at that time. Accompanied by Keita, Macron inspected the French base in Gao and declared that he would continue France's counterterrorism policy toward Mali and the Sahel.
France's military presence in the Sahel-central and western countries exceeded 5,000 at its peak, more than 50 French soldiers were killed there, and 600 million euros were spent annually on operation "crescent dunes", but the counter-terrorism efforts were relatively limited, and there were more and more doubts in France.
Scattered extremist groups frequently launch small-scale attacks, causing more civilian casualties. According to statistics, more than 23,500 civilians in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have lost their lives in counter-terrorism operations since 2015. Since 2019, the number of displaced persons in these three countries has grown rapidly, reaching about 1.4 million. More than 2,000 civilians have been killed in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso so far this year.
In 2017, attacks on civilians by extremist groups in the Sahel accounted for 20 percent of all violence, reaching 42 percent by 2021. An assessment by the U.S. Department of Defense's Center for Strategic Studies in Africa shows that incidents of violence related to extremist groups in the Sahel increased from 1,180 to 2005 in 2021.
In January 2020, an anti-French march broke out in Malian capital Bamako, with demonstrators holding signs bearing Mali and Russian flags demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Mali.
The long-standing French military presence and the continued instability of the local security situation have increasingly caused discontent among the Malian population. In early 2020, a massive anti-French march broke out in Bamako, the capital of Mali, demanding that the French troops leave and end the "crescent dune" operation. Over the past two years, such anti-Legal activities have been staged in Mali.
Meanwhile, in August 2020 and May 2021, there were two consecutive military coups in Mali, the previous Keita government was overthrown, and the military-controlled Transitional Government of Mali was at odds with France, and relations between the two countries took a sharp turn. In January, Mali demanded a deadline for the French ambassador to leave the country, declaring a breakdown in relations between the two countries. Subsequently, france announced its withdrawal from Mali on February 17. On May 2, Mali announced its withdrawal from the 2014 Treaty on Defence Cooperation with France. At the same time, Mali has withdrawn from the Sahel Group of Five.
On January 21, 2013, French soldiers from Operation Serval Cat entered the Malian city of Gao.
[France is saving, Russia and the United States are fighting]Due to its colonial history, France has traditional influence in West and North Africa, and the countries of the region maintain relatively close political, economic, energy and cultural ties with France. Over the past 20 years, France has launched at least 10 military interventions in Africa, and Africa has always occupied an important position in France's diplomatic strategy.
Among the three pillars of france's joint counter-terrorism operations with the five Sahel countries — Mali, Niger and Chad — the French army has established a large integrated operations and logistics base and two temporary operational bases on the ground. In April last year, France's key ally in the Sahel, then-Chadian President Déby, died of wounds while commanding troops at the front lines in combating armed groups, casting a shadow over the regional counterterrorism situation.
In addition, France is also proposing that European countries set up special teams to participate in anti-terrorism operations in the Sahel region, but major European countries, including Germany, have not responded positively, and finally the "Takubat Detachment" formed by France, Estonia, Sweden and other countries began to assist in the fight against extremist groups in July 2020.
On March 17, 2016, French and Malian soldiers of Operation Crescent Dunes were on official duty.
Although French forces have completely withdrawn from Mali, the French military said it would retain 2,500 troops in the Sahel, more than 1,000 of whom are deployed in Mali's neighbor Niger. However, Mali's "withdrawal from the group", which plays an important role in regional counter-terrorism, has undoubtedly hindered the operation of the Sahel-five mechanism.
Compared with macron's enthusiasm when he first came to power five years ago, the Relationship between France and Malaysia when he opened his second presidency is frozen, which means that France's policy toward Africa has suffered a lot of setbacks. To save, Macron made his first trip to Africa after re-election at the end of July, visiting Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau.
Although Cameroon is the largest economy in Central Africa, its northern region is deep along the shores of Lake Chad, connecting the Sahel region and bordering Chad and Nigeria, so security issues are an important topic of Macron's visit. This is also the second time that a French president has visited the country in seven years.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, on the evening of July 25, and Cameroonian Prime Minister Ngut went to the airport to greet him.
Benin, one of the gulf coastal states bordering burkina faso and Nigeria, which has been plagued by terrorism in recent years, is bordered to the north by the Macron government, which plans to provide military assistance to Benin to avoid the spread of extremist groups to the Gulf of Guinea coast. Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, currently holds the rotating presidency of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is an important body dealing with inter-State affairs and counter-terrorism operations in West Africa.
The Elysee Palace, the French presidential palace, said Macron's visit was to ensure the continuity and stability of the process of restoring relations between France and Africa. Earlier, Macron had said he would revisit France's military deployment in Africa by the fall of this year to forge closer ties with African troops over a longer period of time.
Some French media also believe that Macron's visit is also hedging the influence of "other countries in Africa". At the same time that Mali and France are withdrawing, Russia is stepping in.
Before Russia's influence expanded to Mali, the Central African Republic, also in the Sahel region, became an important springboard and success story for Russia's involvement in security affairs in the region, around 2017, when the protagonist was the Wagner Group, a private Russian military contractor.
On 22 July, the town of Kati, near the Malian capital, Bamako, was the site of two military coups in Mali. (Xinhua News Agency)
Mali has been in turmoil for the past two years, especially after the second military coup in May 2021, when Mali was sanctioned by France and THE WESTERN Community, cutting off Mali's trade and financial flows with West Africa. In its isolation, Russia extended an olive branch to Mali and provided defense support to mali through the Wagner Group.
Mali asked Russia for help last November to stabilize the domestic situation, which received a positive response from the Russian side. In May, during a visit to Moscow, Mali's foreign minister Diop said that Mali's cooperation with Russia had produced good results, "with the help of Russia, Mali is able to conduct reconnaissance independently and has the ability to deal with air combat." At present, military operations in Mali are fully coordinated by Malian national armed forces. ”
In March, Russia provided Mali with a number of helicopter gunships and other weapons and equipment, and sent military training teams. On August 9, a new batch of fighters and helicopter gunships provided by the Russian side arrived in Mali. The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Mali's transitional President Goita and agreed to continue to strengthen cooperation.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov (right) and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken
Russia will host the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg in 2023, and Putin said he hopes to strengthen friendly relations between Russia and Africa. To this end, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov visited Egypt, Congo (Brazzaville), Uganda and Ethiopia in late July, while Macron was also visiting Africa.
The United States is also ramping up its offensive against non-diplomacy. Following the July 20 Africa-U.S. Business Summit in Morocco, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Greenfield visited Uganda, Ghana, and Cape Verde from August 4 to 7, followed by U.S. Secretary of State Blinken's visit to South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda from August 7 to 12 to warm up for the U.S.-Africa Summit to be held in Washington, D.C. in December.
For France, influence over non-influence is one of the fundamental diplomatic imperatives it must uphold. However, in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Africa, which has basically not "taken sides" on this issue, is becoming a new "battlefield" for Russia and the United States to compete for influence, which is bound to affect or even weaken the process of Rebuilding and consolidating France-Africa relations in France, and become a major diplomatic challenge for Macron's second term.