G5 Sahel alliance appears moribund after Mali withdraws

News May 20, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

The effectiveness and need of the G5 Sahel military alliance became a question mark after Mali announced to pull out on May 16.

The military-led transitional government of Mali has made a lot of changes in the country’s defense and foreign policy since it came into power. Mali’s decision to quit the G5 Sahel met with a lot of backlash from not only other member states but also from other stakeholders in Africa including France.

The G5 Sahel joint-forces initiative was started in 2014 when Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania decided to create a joint military force in the wake of the increasing wave of Islamist terrorism in Western Africa.

Mali announced that it was quitting the G5 Sahel after being blocked from assuming the group’s rotating presidency due to the transitional military government. Mali administration blamed a ‘state outside the region’ for trying to foment divisions among the members of G5 Sahel. Analysts believe that ‘state outside the region’ was a reference to France and its interference in African affairs.

Since 2020, Mali’s ties with its former colonial ruler France have been deteriorating. The rift between France and Mali intensified further in mid-April after France accused Mali government-backed Russian mercenary Wagner group of carrying out a massacre in Moura, a Malian town of about 10,000 inhabitants.

Earlier this month Mali also ordered French forces off its soil. These forces were stationed in Mali to promote the peace process in the region. French Foreign Ministry condemned Mali’s decision to unilaterally cut defense ties. The brief statement from the French Foreign Ministry stated that France “considers this decision unjustified and formally contests any violation of the bilateral legal framework.”

While speaking about Mali’s pullout from the G5 Sahel, Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum said that this would mark an end of the alliance. President Bazoum stated that Mali had not sent any troops to secure its part of the ‘Three Border Area’, a point in the Sahel where the borders of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger meet.

^{Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum delivers a speech during a joint press conference with the French President at the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, on July 9, 2021. (Image Credit: Stephane De Sakutin/AFP/ via Africanews)}

Bazoum said the territory had since been taken over by the Islamic State fighters. “Our border with Mali is under the control of the Islamic State in the Great Sahara. Bamako has not invested in the outposts in this area,” he added.

A large part of Mali remains under the control of insurgent groups who started their campaign in 2012 in the northern part of the landlocked country, later spreading to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. The conflict has since caused a huge humanitarian crisis in the region, with thousands of deaths recorded and hundreds of thousands of people displaced from their homes. With Mali’s pullout from the already weakened G5 Sahel, Western Africa is expected to become a stronghold for terrorist groups.