Germany and Mali agreed Thursday to pursue a “smooth withdrawal” of German troops from the troubled African nation after the UN decided to end its decade-old peacekeeping mission there, Berlin said. Mali’s defence minister Sadio Camara assured his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in a telephone call of Bamako’s “support with the relocation of the troops”, the German defence ministry said. “It was a productive call at the right time,” the ministry quoted Pistorius as saying. “We agreed to stay in contact in order to ensure a smooth withdrawal of the German army from Mali.”
With memories of the chaotic exit from Afghanistan in 2021 still fresh, the German government had initially said it would pull its 1,110 troops out of the UN mission in Mali by next May. But the ministry said Thursday the German army would now halt the mission by the end of the year, when the UN withdrawal is set to be completed. Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop had stunned the Security Council last month by calling the major UN operation known as Minusma a “failure” and urging its end.
Bowing to the principle that peacekeepers need the consent of the host government, the Security Council voted unanimously on June 30 to start immediately winding down the mission despite fears by Western powers of new instability in the African nation.
Mali’s relations with the UN have deteriorated sharply since a 2020 coup brought to power a military regime that also severed defence cooperation with France, the former colonial power. The junta instead has rallied behind Moscow and brought in the Wagner Group, the ruthless mercenaries involved in a short-lived mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.
