UN Peacekeeping Troop Rotations to Resume in Mali

Bamako, Mali — 

The U.N. peace­keep­ing mis­sion in Mali, MINUSMA, is to resume con­tin­gent rota­tions start­ing Mon­day under fresh approval pro­ce­dures, the Malian for­eign min­is­ter and a U.N. spokes­woman have said.

“MINUSMA agreed to the new pro­ce­dures and com­mu­ni­cat­ed them to all coun­tries con­tribut­ing troops. There will be no excep­tion,” For­eign Min­is­ter Abdoulaye Diop said Sat­ur­day, after the Sahel state sus­pend­ed the rota­tions last month for “nation­al secu­ri­ty” reasons.

The peace­keep­ing force’s spokes­woman Myr­i­am Dess­ables con­firmed the news and said: “Rota­tions are to resume from Monday.”

The announce­ment came after Ger­many said Fri­day it had stopped recon­nais­sance oper­a­tions and heli­copter trans­port flights in Mali until fur­ther notice after Bamako denied fly­over rights to MINUSMA.

Those rights were refused despite assur­ances to the con­trary from the Malian Defense Min­is­ter Sadio Cama­ra in a call with his Ger­man coun­ter­part Chris­tine Lam­brecht Thurs­day, the Ger­man defense min­istry spokesman said.

Diop said the var­i­ous con­tin­gents pre­vi­ous­ly had to seek approval direct­ly from the Malian authorities.

But now “all requests must go via MINUSMA, who will then pass them on to the for­eign min­istry,” the min­is­ter said.

The July 14 sus­pen­sion of rota­tions came four days after Mali arrest­ed 49 Ivo­rian sol­diers it lat­er described as mer­ce­nar­ies intent on top­pling the coun­try’s mil­i­tary-led government.

Ivory Coast said the troops had been sent to pro­vide back­up to MINUSMA.

The peace­keep­ing mis­sion acknowl­edged there had been what it called dys­func­tions in deploy­ing the Ivo­rian troops.

For­mer MINUSMA spokesman Olivi­er Sal­ga­do was expelled from the coun­try for pub­lish­ing what the author­i­ties deemed unac­cept­able infor­ma­tion on Twit­ter fol­low­ing the arrest.

MINUSMA, the Unit­ed Nations Mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Inte­grat­ed Sta­bi­liza­tion Mis­sion in Mali, was launched in 2013 to help one of the world’s poor­est coun­tries cope with a bloody jiha­di campaign.

It is one of the U.N.‘s biggest peace­keep­ing oper­a­tions, with 17,609 troops, police, civil­ians and vol­un­teers deployed as of April, accord­ing to the mis­sion’s website.

Mali has been ruled by a mil­i­tary jun­ta since 2020.

The jun­ta has turned away from France and toward Rus­sia in its fight against the jiha­di insur­gency that has claimed thou­sands of lives and forced hun­dreds of thou­sands from their homes.

France is pulling out the last of its mil­i­tary equip­ment from the country.

On Sat­ur­day, res­i­dents in the south­east­ern Mena­ka region said Islam­ic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) jihadis had attacked the Assay­lal dis­trict, “killing sev­en civil­ians and tak­ing with off their cattle.”

It comes after a sus­pect­ed jiha­di attack in the town of Tes­sit, near the bor­ders with Niger and Burk­i­na Faso, killed 42 Malian sol­diers on Sun­day last week. The army blamed ISGS.