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Florence Parly meets her counterpart in Mali on Monday, in a context of tensions between Paris and the junta, accused of wanting to recruit mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary company Wagner. Bamako had said that it was up to him to “decide which partners he can solicit or not”.
The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, is expected, Monday, September 20, in Mali, where the transitional government dominated by the military plans to join the services of the Russian paramilitary company Wagner. Ongoing talks between Mali and the sulphurous Russian company has generated tensions with Paris, which is reducing its military presence in the country.
“My objective is to succeed in clarifying the position of the Malian authorities and to reiterate messages”, explained Florence Parly before meeting her Malian counterpart, Colonel Sadio Camara. “We will not be able to live with mercenaries,” she warned.
Recourse to Wagner to train the Malian armed forces and ensure the protection of the leaders would be “incompatible” with the maintenance in Mali of French troops, who have been fighting the jihadists in the Sahel for eight years, had already warned the head of French diplomacy, Jean -Yves Le Drian.
Mali invokes its sovereignty
The sulphurous Russian private company, suspected of belonging to a businessman close to the Kremlin, Evguéni Prigojine, has already concluded, in 2018, a contract with the Central African Republic, where it is accused of abuses and looting of mining resources and customs.
But the Malian government retorted in a statement that it would not allow “any state to make choices for it, let alone decide which partners it can call on or not.” “There are partners who have decided to leave Mali to fall back on other countries, there are areas which are abandoned”, argued the Prime Minister, Choguel Kokalla Maïga.
The negotiations between the junta and Wagner indeed take place at the time when France began to reduce its military system in the Sahel in favor of a tightened presence, centered on targeted strikes against jihadist leaders and executives and support for the armies. local.
The French soldiers are due to leave the bases of Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu, in northern Mali, by the end of the year, and the number of French troops deployed in the Sahel is expected to increase from more than 5,000 troops currently to “2,500 or 3,000” by 2023, according to the general staff.
Florence Parly, who had started her Sahelian tour with a stopover in Niger on Sunday, reassured the continuation of French efforts in Mali and more broadly in the Sahel despite the ongoing reduction in staff. “France is not leaving”, it “will maintain its commitment to support the Sahelian armed forces”, she stressed. “The situation remains precarious, we know it is a long struggle.”
France worried about pending elections
In addition to the Wagner case, the French authorities are concerned about the reluctance of the colonels, who overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta on August 18, 2020, to organize elections to return power to civilians in February 2022.
“The Malian leaders probably want to extend the transition despite the commitments made to ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States)”, people fear in Paris.
With AFP