Mali: Bundeswehr mission must be ended early

Since the end of last week, the Bundeswehr has had five months less time to withdraw from Mali. At the request of the Malian government, the UN Security Council did not extend the mandate for the MINUSMA blue helmet mission last Friday and decided to withdraw all soldiers involved in the international mission by December 31 of this year. The federal government had actually planned not to complete the withdrawal from Mali until May next year.

Mali welcomes end of MINUSMA

On Friday, all arms went up at the United Nations Security Council meeting in New York when the end of the UN mission MINUSMA (Multidimensionnelle Intégrée des Nations Unies pour la Stabilization au Mali) was voted on. This means that the end of the mission, which has been running since 2013 and has been looming for some time, was unanimously sealed. The representative of the Malian military government, which came to power in a coup in May 2021, welcomed the result.

Laut der verabschiedeten Resolution (2690 (2032)) ist das Mandat von MINUSMA zum 31. Juni 2023 erloschen. MINUSMA soll demnach ab dem 1. Juli alle Operationen einstellen und in Absprache mit der malischen Regierung mit dem Abzug des Personals beginnen, der am 31. Dezember dieses Jahres vollzogen sein soll.

The federal government wanted to stay longer

Recently, during the last extension of the Bundestag mandate on the participation of German forces in the mission, there was a debate about the timing of the withdrawal. While the CDU/CSU parliamentary group advocated a withdrawal by the end of 2023, the traffic light advocated for the German contingent to remain until the end of May 2024 in order to be able to support the presidential elections in Mali scheduled for February 4, 2024 if necessary (ES&T reported). Now the almost 1,100 German soldiers and with them around 12,000 other blue helmets and around 2,000 police officers will have to withdraw from the country in the Sahel zone within the next six months.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who spoke out in favor of the German contingent remaining until May 2024, wrote on Twitter on Friday: “We wanted to continue to contribute to the security of the people in Mali. But the military government has made this increasingly impossible. The abrupt end of the entire MINUSMA mission is bitter news for the people of Mali to whom the mission gave protection and hope. The Bundeswehr will now withdraw quickly and in an orderly manner.”

Long-standing tensions

Since 2021, tensions between the Malian military government and the UN mission have increased, especially because the Malians increasingly relied on the support of Wagner mercenaries from Russia. There were also flight bans for drones and aircraft, which also affected the Bundeswehr. There were also increasing reports of massacres of the Malian civilian population, which were reportedly committed by Malian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries.

Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had already said in May: “Due to the behavior of the transitional government in Mali, continuing the mission in its current form is practically no longer sensible.”

The end of major foreign missions?

With the Security Council's decision on Friday, another major foreign operation in which the Bundeswehr has been involved for many years is coming to an end more hastily than planned. Although there is currently no looming disaster comparable to that in Afghanistan two years ago, the MINUSMA mission has not achieved its ambitious goals either. The security situation in Mali has deteriorated increasingly in recent years. With the Germans withdrawing from the West African country, the era of extensive foreign missions as part of international crisis management for the Bundeswehr may now come to an end. Against the background of the return to national and alliance defense and the associated personnel and resource-intensive obligations, this should not be inconvenient for the planners in the BMVg.

Editorial / oh

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