The West Abandons Mali
Why the West African nation is turning away from the United States and toward Russia
By Sam Savage
Sam Savage is a writer and former NGO worker living in California. He is currently working on his first film, a documentary about a band from Mali.
On July 22, Islamist terrorists in Mali carried out a series of unprecedented attacks across the country—including one on the country’s primary military base in Kati, just outside the capital city of Bamako. The attacks, which were later blamed on groups associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, killed 42 soldiers, according to Malian officials, and revealed the extent to which terrorist groups can now strike wherever and whenever they want inside the landlocked West African nation. On Wednesday of this week, the Associated Press reported that the Malian military conducted air strikes after militants associated with the Islamic State took over the town of Talataye.
As the region descends deeper into chaos, Mali’s battle with terrorists has implications for the United States. Three weeks ago, the outgoing commander of the U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, “acknowledged that the military takeover in Mali and cooperation with Russian forces is hindering Western attempts to contain terrorism” in the Sahel. What he failed to note is that the West hasn’t been able to contain this terrorism for the past decade, preceding Mali’s recent turn away from the French and the United States and toward Russia.
In fact, the United States arguably caused the steep rise in instability and terrorism in Mali through its ill-fated decision to participate in the NATO campaign against Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi. In March 2011, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1973 (Russia and China abstained during the vote) to implement a no-fly zone over Libya. NATO then led a military operation in the country under the guise of achieving what the United Nations Security Council hoped would be “an immediate cease-fire” to the Libyan Civil War. The truth of what prompted that operation would emerge later: The French, who long sought to oust Gaddafi, came to the Americans asking for their help to take him out. By this point, Gaddafi was no longer the firebrand he was decades before; while he still had grandiose visions of pan-Africanism, his days of preaching a cocktail of pan-Arabism, anti-imperialism, and Islamism while hijacking planes, among other international crimes and misdeeds, were long over. But the French wanted his head. President Obama was on the fence; Senior Advisor Susan Rice said don’t do it, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yes, and the rest is history: By October 2011, Gaddafi was dead, his murder caught on camera and his body soon paraded through the streets. The catastrophic consequences of that decision reverberate across the region to this day. In the ensuing decade, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have all experienced coups d’état (attempted coups). The slave trade has been reborn, terrorist attacks are increasingly common, and a growing number of refugees continue to flood across the Sahel.
After Gaddafi’s death, a power vacuum ensued, heavy weapons flooded the Sahara, and al-Qaeda sensed an opportunity. It entered the region in earnest, partnering with the Saharan Touaregs, a Berber group that had long sought independence from Mali’s central government. With al-Qaeda entering the picture, what had been small skirmishes usually consisting of brief exchanges of rifle fire between the Touaregs and Malian forces were replaced by battles with armored vehicles and heavy machine guns. Al-Qaeda used the Touaregs (and others, who recognized their mistake too late) for its own gain; the new regime began to seize significant territory throughout the country. The al-Qaeda-led coalition declared a new state, Azawad, and continued its offensive.
By March 2012, lawlessness was widespread, and the documentation of dead Malian soldiers became increasingly prevalent on the news and social media. That led a group of officers in the Malian army to overthrow the president. January 2013 saw the start of Operation Serval (later renamed Barkhane). French forces entered Mali and were treated as saviors; for perhaps the first time in Malian history was such a warm welcome bestowed on the country’s former colonists. With Islamist forces on the door of Bamako, the French helped repel the invasion.
Almost 10 years later, after two more widely popular coups, the same French soldiers, buttressed by U.N. soldiers, have maintained a near-constant presence in Mali. All along, there have been allegations of rampant corruption and misuse of resources by the different political factions (French government, Malian government, various tribal leaders), and the violence has only gotten worse. Due to Mali’s long history of being a rich empire, ethnic and tribal violence has been extremely uncommon, unlike in other parts of Africa. This peaceful multi-ethnic society is breaking down; the scale of intertribal violence is higher than it’s been in centuries. Regular occurrences of terrorist attacks and a growing number of both military and civilian casualties have become the frightening new normal.
With little to show for those 10 years, the Malian people increasingly distrust the French. Rumors, some true and some unfounded, swirl: the French propping up different factions in the North advocating for independence in order to slice up the country for their benefit, the French extracting valuable resources from the desert, the French directly giving terrorist groups weapons. From social media to the streets, and now all the way up to the highest levels of the government, the anger is palpable.
There is only one certainty here: the French and the West’s utter failure to stop the violence and contain the fallout of their own failed intervention. Perhaps the peace mission had been an impossible endeavor all along; the Sahara, like Afghanistan, is a hole so deep that no modern force can govern it, much less control it. In the past 10 years, the slave trade, resource extraction, and drug smuggling have boomed across the region. Who is benefiting? It’s hard to say, but it certainly isn’t the Malian people.
Recently, this distrust culminated in Mali’s latest military government (cheered on by much of the population) all but expelling the French troops from the country. “With the French on their way out,” The New York Times reported on July 22, there are some Malians who “worry that attacks like those of this week will become increasingly common.” The timing has been particularly unfortunate as the French expulsion coincided with Mali turning to Russia and its Wagner group for military support. The Ukraine war not only helped isolate Mali further but also might have capped Russia’s ability to provide military aid (despite their alarmist nature, reports are still showing a relatively small Russian force in the country).
Meanwhile, over the past decade, the West has taken zero responsibility for the catastrophe, as the U.S. and French governments continue to present themselves as noble actors, only there to help, if not for the Malian government and people getting in the way. “Reinvigorated, decisive action by the agreement’s international supporters could provide the support the Malian parties need to move forward,” Bisa Williams, the Carter Center’s special advisor on Mali and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of African Affairs, wrote last year in Al-Jazeera. She failed to acknowledge the justified skepticism Malians feel toward the international community that created Mali’s dire situation.