In Mali, the government is facing a protest movement skillfully led by Imam Mahmoud Dicko. Favorable to a strict Islam, its new stature worries the Elysee Palace which is closely monitoring the situation in the country, a key point in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel.
7:56 am, the hour of the international gaze of Jean-Sébastien Soldaïni, great reporter for the editorial staff of Europe 1. This morning you turn your gaze to Mali where a protest movement is mounting. Eleven people died last weekend in clashes in the capital, Bamako. And a new risky rally is scheduled for Friday. At the head of this movement is a very influential man, Imam Mahmoud Dicko.
His voice is calm, calm. Nothing in his attitudes suggests that Mahmoud Dicko is pulling the strings in a protest movement. If this imam had a creed, it would be ambiguity: able both to support a dictator and to elect the current president, happy to see France save the country but resentful towards Paris whom he accuses of wanting to recolonize his country.
This time, he denounces the inability of the government to resolve security concerns in Mali. In a single preaching, he can just as well gather the crowds as calm the heat. His obedience is rigorist Islam. He considers that the perpetrators of the attack on the Radisson hotel in Bamako in 2015 are envoys of God who have come to punish the Malians for their homosexuality. Mahmoud Dicko has his contacts with the jihadists in the north of the country, he talks to everyone. Ten years that he has discreetly extended his influence. And if it comes out of the wood like today, it is because something is happening.
A Prime Minister to be resigned, a reform too favorable to women that must be canceled: what he wants is not a party of Islam but although Islam infuses all parties. This is why he never poses as a candidate. Mahmoud Dicko prefers his role of moral authority, at the crossroads between politics and religion, a form of national-Salafism.
This protest movement worries Paris as well as the countries of the region. It must be said that this is bad.
The G5 Sahel summit was just two weeks ago. President Emmanuel Macron was in Mauritania with his counterparts in the region to close the ranks a little: confirming the commitment of French and European troops but also ensuring that the anti-French feeling that we see emerging here and there does not not increase. Mali is at the center of these criticisms, it is there that the French presence exasperates most. Mali is the key point in the fight against terrorism. The Takuba force, the special forces, is now beginning operations there. If Mali falters in a dispute brought by a rigorous imam, that does not bode well.
Especially Jean-Sébastien that it could give ideas to the neighbors.
The Elysée is also looking towards Burkina-Faso. The country is not making any noise for the moment, but a presidential election, scheduled for the end of November, could change the situation. The fear is that similar political movements are forming and taking advantage of the electoral campaign to find an echo, while taking inspiration from what is happening in Mali. We are not there yet, but seven years after the French intervention in the Sahel, the region must still be watched like milk on fire.