Accusations of Mali against France, the latest in a long series

Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop during a press conference with his Russian counterpart in Moscow, May 20, 2022. AFP - YURI KADOBNOV

Text by: David Baché

2 mins

Abdoulaye Diop wrote on Monday August 15 to the members of the United Nations Security Council to denounce the behavior of the French army accused by Bamako of supplying intelligence and weapons to terrorist groups.

Accusations which are not new for the French army, but which had never been made by a member of the Malian government, well almost.

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The transitional Prime Minister, Choguel Maïga, had already accused France of having " 

" and even of having created a "

 " there.

It was last October - there have been other similar outings - but the head of the Malian government was then playing the card of ambiguity since he was talking about former leaders of Ansar Dine, linked to Al-Qaeda. , who broke with Iyad Ag Ghaly in 2013 to found the HCUA, a group that signed the 2015 peace agreement with the Malian government and whose members - some have even become deputies - are currently interlocutors of the transitional authorities.  

France has also been often criticized - and this is still the case - for having allied itself in 2013 with the MNLA, an armed group which then had claims for independence and which many Malians considered, for this reason, as " 

 ”, even if the MNLA then supported the French soldiers against Al-Qaeda. 

Mr. Diop says he has evidence

On social networks, the French army has also been the subject of countless accusations of the kind, by simple individuals or by trolls, fake accounts created specifically to misinform: French soldiers are thus regularly accused of being accomplices jihadist groups but also to plunder the gold of Mali or to carry out nuclear tests there. 

But today, it is the head of Malian diplomacy who seriously and seriously accuses France of informing and arming the jihadists.

Unequivocally since a week ago, after the attack on Tessit - 42 Malian soldiers killed by the Islamic State group - the Malian army was already pointing to "

 " and " 

 ". 

►Also read: Why does Mali accuse France of supporting jihadists?

In his letter to the UN, Abdoulaye Diop claims to have proof, without revealing it.

No doubt he's saving them for the emergency meeting he's asking the Security Council for.  

Paris categorically denies these accusations: the French embassy in Bamako insists that France has “ 

”, the terrorist groups present in Mali, neither al-Qaeda nor the Islamic State group.

The embassy recalls that these two groups have also carried out attacks on French soil and that the French army has killed several hundred jihadists in the Sahel over the past nine years, including very senior officials.  

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• mali

• France

• Defense

• Terrorism