The Sahel region, stretching across the breadth of Africa from Senegal to Sudan, faces a multitude of interconnected colonial challenges today. One of the main challenges is the colonial borders that separate us from perceiving these problems as simply multiple faces of the same thing.
The 600-plus years of colonial assault and occupation of Africa initiated by the Portuguese created a single worldwide economy based on the colonial mode of production, falsely presented as a capitalist economy.
Mali was made fragile by the downfall of Gaddafi’s regime
In April 2012, The Spear reported on the upheaval in Mali. Captain Amadou Sanogo, the leader of the 2012 coup against the government of General Amadou Toumani Toure, argued that the ousted government had failed to provide the national army with adequate means to defeat the rebellion against the Tuareg people and “Al Qaida affiliated Jihadist forces” in the north of Mali.
What the bourgeois press does not say is that NATO—of which the French army is an integral part—had worked with the same Al Qaida and Tuareg forces to dismantle Gaddafi’s regime in Libya. These forces were not only armed to attack Gaddafi’s government but were also rewarded with the military arsenal captured after the fall of Gaddafi’s regime.
Technically, the transition government put in place after the coup in Mali was no different from the one deposed by the coup. The Malian government was still incapable of stopping the military advance from the Tuareg and Islamist forces.
François Hollande attempts to rescue French imperialism. In January 2013, François Hollande, the unpopular French President at that time, announced in a televised address that he was sending French troops into Mali under the pretext that he received a request from then-Malian interim president Dioncounda Traore. Make no mistake, this was colonialism as usual. He made it plain and clear that this “operation to combat terrorists” would last “as long as necessary.” This military counterinsurgency operation was known as Operation Serval.
In 2014, Operation Serval was later changed and broadened to Operation Barkhane, which then expanded to include many of NATO’s other forces including Holland, the UK, Germany and more.
In 2013, under the French military presence, the Malian transitional government organized the presidential election. Pro-France candidate Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta won. He would be re-elected in 2018.
French imperialism allies with jihadist forces in Mali
In the meantime, the military situation has deteriorated. A sector of the army officers became frustrated and outraged by what they considered to be a collaboration between the French army and the jihadists that they were supposed to be fighting against.
The high toll of Malian soldiers dying on the frontline and the growing mass protests against the corrupt government of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta became a factor in Malian national politics. It is no surprise that in August 2020, Asimi Goita and his comrades in arms ousted Keïta and seized power.
A new transitional government was put in place: Goita became the vice president under transitional President Bah Ndaw, who is a well-known neocolonial military officer and served multiple neocolonial governments in Mali.
In May 2021, nine months after the August 2020 coup, Goita ousted Bah Ndaw and became the interim president. That is how the spat between the French president’s leader and the Malian new rulers went viral almost regularly.
While current French president Emmanuel Macron and his allies were demanding the return of the civilian government in Mali, the new Malian president was negotiating an alliance with the Russian government. It is at this time in June 2021 that France decided to begin to scale down its military presence in Mali.
African ruling class rejects the traditional submission to French imperialism
One highlight was when in September 2021 at the UN General Assembly, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, then Mali’s interim prime minister, accused France of a “sort of abandonment in full flight” over its decision to reduce its military deployment in the region.
In October 2021, the same Choguel Kokalla Maïga told the Russian media he had evidence that France has been training “terrorist” groups operating in the West African country.
From these public disputes, it became clear that a sector of the Malian petty-bourgeois leadership had rejected any submission to the French State and the ruling class and was ready to look elsewhere.
On December 21, French leaders condemned the deployment of troops from Russia’s Wagner Group in Mali. On January 7, 2022, the Malian government announced that the Russian troops will begin the training of Malian soldiers in bases evacuated by the French.
Shortly after, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) condemned the postponement of elections in Mali and the presence of Russian troops, and it imposed a series of sanctions on Mali with the support of the U.S. and the European Union.
Later that January, Denmark deployed troops alongside French troops in Mali after a “clear invitation” allegedly from the Malian government. The Malian government replied by requesting the immediate withdrawal of the Danish troops.
France led the wild condemnations from different colonial powers against Mali. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign affairs minister, called the Malian government illegitimate and irresponsible. Mali’s authorities retaliated by expelling the French ambassador in Mali.
This expulsion was welcomed throughout West Africa and caught the imagination of all colonized peoples everywhere. This has an immediate practical implication in West Africa.
The assassination of the anticolonial movements and leaders by France is also well-known and remembered.
After a decade of French intervention, the Malian army officers concluded that France was not an ally in the war against the “jihadists and Touaregs.” This is also the conclusion that army officers, who had enough of French duplicity with the jihadists and separatist forces, have come to in Niger and Burkina Faso.
The new leadership in Mali switched to an alliance with Russia to deal effectively with the Jihadists and Tuareg insurgents. This alliance with Russia and the departure of French troops from Mali have become one sign of the irreversible decline of Western power in Africa.
One Africa! One Nation! Uhuru!
