Recent protests in Mali pose the greatest threat to the regime of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who has led Mali since 2013. Endemic corruption, Keita’s failure to curb the militant threat in the north of the country, and accusations of electoral fraud have spawned a disparate protest movement, the M5RFP, led by influential cleric Mahmoud Dicko. The responses by foreign powers, especially France, could help determine Keita’s fate. Like many other leaders in the region, including Idriss Deby and Mohamedou Essoufou in neighbouring Niger and Chad respectively, Keita owes his survival, to a large extent, to French and American support. Mali is, after all, the epicentre of the militancy in the Sahel, and currently the home of the second largest UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA), comprising over 15 000 UN personnel (13 000 military troops and 2 000 police). […]
Since April 2019, following the massacre of over 100 Fulani people the previous month, numerous protests have occurred against the government’s inability to restore stability to the country. Teachers and widows of soldiers killed on duty also protested, calling for salary and pension increases. Keita’s inability or unwillingness to oppose French designs for the country has also caused much dissatisfaction. Most Malians are critical that militancy in the country has grown despite the presence of UN, French and regional troops in the country. Huge protests opposing France’s presence occurred in 2019 and 2020, resulting in the French president, Emmanuel Macron, summoning Sahelian leaders to Pau in January 2020. A poll in Bamako in December 2019 saw Keita’s approval at twenty-six per cent; over eighty per cent of the participants had a negative view of France and wanted Paris to leave the country. Significantly, Bamako, home to most of the country’s population, was previously seen as a Keita stronghold. […]
An attack on a military convoy on 13 June, likely by Jama’a Nusratul Islam WalMuslimin (JNIM), killed over twenty Malian soldiers. Further, the UN reports that between January and June, around 300 Fulani and Dogon people were killed in communal violence in the country’s central regions. Keita’s attempts to negotiate with militant groups, which was mandated by the 2017 National Conference of Understanding (NCU), but which had been delayed because of government intransigence and pressure from outside powers, has stalled. Seeking to benefit from the growing anti-French sentiment, JNIM stated that it would only begin negotiations after France pulled troops out of the country, and referred to Mali as French-occupied territory. Läs artikel