Regional rebels in Mali who signed a peace deal in 2015 have withdrawn their representatives from the capital, a move signalling a widening rift with the country’s ruling military, one of their leaders said on Thursday. The Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) brings together predominantly ethnic Tuaregs who in 2012 mounted a revolt in northern Mali, abetted by jihadists who have since taken their own insurgency deep into the Sahel.
In 2015, the CMA and other parties signed a historic peace agreement with Mali’s then-civilian government that brought the curtain down on the regional rebellion. The deal remains in place with the junta that seized power in 2020, although the rebels complain key provisions on autonomy remain unimplemented.
Their strained relations have fanned fears that the agreement could be torn up, further dividing a country already battered by the jihadist campaign. Attaye Ag Mohamed, who heads the CMA mission in Bamako, told AFP his delegation had quit the capital on the orders of the leadership. “Our leaders believe we are no longer safe in the capital and the reasons for our being there on behalf of the CMA have been completely compromised,” he said. “The Malian authorities have clearly shown that they are essentially working on opening a front between the northern movements who signed” the 2015 pact, he said.
Tension between the junta and the CMA ramped up in June, when the ex-rebels accused the regime of pushing through a new constitution that they said undermined the 2015 agreement. The CMA also charges the armed forces with seeking to take over bases in northern Mali that are to be vacated by the UN’s peacekeeping force MINUSMA — a move, it says, that would breach the terms of a ceasefire reached in 2014. The junta pushed the UN Security Council in June to withdraw MINUSMA by the end of the year.
Ag Mohammed said that the CMA was also angered by the loss of two of its men last week in an attack that it blamed on the Malian army and its Russian allies, the Wagner paramilitary group. It was “one provocation too much,” he said. Regional agitation in Mali, an ethnic mosaic, is a major source of irritation for the junta, which has pounded out a nationalist message since taking control. Its hardline approach and alliance with Russia prompted France in 2022 to withdraw its military forces from Mali, ending a nine-year-long anti-jihadist mission there.
