With conflicts with Bamako’s ruling military junta and the arrival of Russian forces, Berlin has began withdrawing its troops from Mali, with the objective of completing the mission by May of next year.
Germany has committed some 1,000 troops to Mali, mostly to the region surrounding the northern town of Gao, where they will primarily undertake reconnaissance for the United Nations peacekeeping organization MINUSMA.
According to an interview published on Wednesday in the German daily Tagesspiegel, the German commander in Mali Colonel Heiko Bohnsack said that the military has begun transferring the initial components of around 1,300 container loads of equipment.
According to him, the initial stages of the evacuation would entail a progressive decrease in the quantity of material on site, while the troops would continue to employ all available resources to finish their duty.
On the same day, Berlin’s government approved the mission’s extension for another year, till May 2024. This resolution, however, must still be approved by the German parliament’s lower chamber.
There have been repeated incidences of conflict between the Malian government and the mission since its start in 2013 to assist foreign and local troops in their battle against Islamist militants.
MINUSMA now has around 12,000 military soldiers on its payroll. The top three aid-giving nations are Chad, Bangladesh, and Egypt.
Relations between Europe and Mali have deteriorated since a military coup in 2020 and the government’s invitation to troops from the Wagner Group, a private military organization with connections to the Kremlin, to assist in its struggle against terrorists.
As a consequence, after more than a decade in Mali, France chose to withdraw its troops in 2022.
