French disengagement in the Sahel under high tension

Audio 02:23

A man walks past the entrance (guarded by an armored vehicle) to the place where the French convoy was parked, near Kaya, on November 20, 2021. AFP - OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT

By: Cyril Payen

3 min

Direction the Sahel where the French intervention started in 2013 is changing and reorganizing against a backdrop of strong political tensions on the ground.

Kidal, Tessalit then soon Timbuktu, three outposts in northern Mali are transferred to the Malian Forces.

Barkhane: is this the beginning of the end? 

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The end is not, certainly, rather, a redefinition of the substance and the form of the French presence in the Sahel whose operations, by the staff's own admission in Paris, have had their day.

The decision, enacted last June by President Emmanuel Macron, therefore implies a withdrawal of forces in the far north of Mali for a strategic refocusing towards the area known as the “Three Borders” which borders Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali and where the civilian populations , in particular, pay a heavy price, the war against the Sahelian jihad, caught in a way between a rock and a hard place, collateral victims of a conflict of which no one sees the end.

The most advanced post in Tessalit has just been evacuated and Timbuktu will be in early December, are these operations taking place in a calm climate? 

The idea is to reduce the number of French soldiers to 3,000 or even 2,500 within the next few months against the 5,100 present today who, in any case, faced with the vastness of the Sahel and a protean enemy symbolized more in addition to the theme of the 

this Italian novel which deals with the expectation by soldiers of a great final battle that will never happen.

In this regard, the transfer of the Tessalit outpost, in this Berber-speaking region of the Adrar des Ifoghas a few tens of kilometers from Algeria, also symbolized this page of French engagement which turns with the handing over, in mid-November, of the key to the base to FAMa, the Malian Forces who, along with the UN soldiers, will be almost alone in the face of the desert.

The French Mirages can come to their rescue from Niamey if necessary ... 

However, this plan of reorganization of Barkhane is undermined by the political turbulence which shakes certain countries of the region? 

Geopolitics, it is well known, has a horror of a vacuum, and the French withdrawal is widely commented on by the public opinions of the G5 Sahel, especially as the confirmed rapprochement of Bamako with Moscow and the open secrecy of the arrival of the sulphurous mercenaries of the Wagner group have nothing to appease the spirits. The Kaya convoy affair in Burkina Faso in recent days is the perfect illustration of the tension that reigns on the ground. Because for the first time, hundreds of Burkinabe demonstrators blocked a convoy from Barkhane which linked Abidjan to the logistics base of Gao via Burkina Faso and Niger. Misunderstanding in the face of a recent massacre despite the French presence, general fatigue from violence, manipulation of information, if the military convoy was finally able to leave during the night from Thursday to Friday,the paradigm shift of French intervention in the Sahel is taking place in a most critical context.

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• G5 Sahel

• Sahel

• France

• Mali