AFRICA STORIES: AREAS OF NORTHERN MALI HELD BY THE MILITARY JUNTA IS LIKELY TO BE LOST.

I dislike writing about events as they are unfolding, especially when they are unfolding at breakneck speed. As I said yesterday, the military junta of Mali has never had full control of its territory, especially in the North. But the military junta did have control of some cities and towns in Northern Mali, some of which Russian fighters had captured after braving sandstorms to fight the Tuareg separatists and outright jihadi terrorists.

The mainstream media and France-aligned commentators have been gloating, claiming that the whole shit show happening in Mali can be attributed to the removal of "superior" French troops and their replacement with "inferior" Russian mercenaries (who eventually transformed into Russian government paramilitaries).

On the opposite end, we have the "anti-imperialist" alternative media and Russia-aligned commentators claiming that the loose rebel alliance is actually some kind of French intelligence-backed group that is sowing chaos in Mali as payback for the humiliating manner in which the French Ambassador, French military bases and French troops were kicked out of the African country.

As always the truth is far more complex than the simplistic nonsense presented by both sides.

ADDRESSING THE CLAIMS OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Mainstream media and France-aligned commentators obviously are being disingenuous. French troops were stationed in Mali for nine years, starting January 2013 to August 2022, when the current ruling military junta expelled them. In that nine year-period, French troops and allied multinational EU troops fought the jihadi terrorists and even suffered casualties doing so. However, the neither French troops nor other EU forces were able to permanently eliminate the terrorists because of the harsh desert terrain of Mali.

French forces were notorious for refusing to fight during desert sandstorms--- which is common in Northern Mali---because the low visibility is when they tend to suffer the most casualties and even lose helicopters to either accidental crashes or anti-aircraft fire of the jihadi terrorists. Fortunately for the motorcycle-riding jihadi terrorists, the sandstorms provide the perfect cover to advance rapidly and expand territory under their control. When jihadi terrorists capture villages, towns and cities, they tend to terrorize and masscre the civilians, making these Islamic extremists feared and hated in equal measure.

The failure of French troops and the elected civilian government of Mali to secure the lives and properties of ordinary Malian citizens made both extremely unpopular. Already nursing a deep-seated resentment at France's non-stop meddling in their country's internal affairs, many ordinary Malians welcomed the May 2021 overthrow of the civilian government and its replacement with a military junta that expressed strong anti-French sentiments.

Emmanuel Macron's condemnation of military junta and his withdrawal of French donor aid packages resulted in the expulsion of the French ambassador and the closure of all French-funded NGOs in Mali. Widespread perception that French troops and allied European forces were not "fighting hard enough" to defeat the terrorists set the stage for the initial expulsion of multinational EU troops and then finally the removal of French troops and the closure of military bases in 2022.

ADDRESSING THE CLAIMS OF ALTERNATIVE MEDIA

When it comes to reporting on complex events unfolding on the African continent, I find that most alternative media outlets often have no idea what they are talking about. I cannot tell you how many times, I have read pundits claiming that Algeria is puppet state of the United States---a ludicrous claim that is likely to shock both the Kremlin and the Algerian government given that Algeria is one the most consistent allies of the Russian Federation and before that, the Soviet Union.

70% of Russia's trade with Africa is just with four countries namely, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, and South Africa. The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is the second largest trade partner of Russia after Republic of Egypt. After his removal from the Ukrainian theatre of operations, Russian General Surovikin was sent to Algeria to help facilitate the transfer a hefty shipment of advanced weaponry to the Algerians.

The Algerians received S-300s and SU-35 fighter jets ahead of Iran, which ordered them first. In fact, Iran had to threaten to sue the Russians before the Kremlin finally ended its foot-dragging antics and finally supplied the S-300 that the Iranians had paid for many years, earlier. The Iranians are still waiting to receive SU-35 fighters. As stated earlier, the Algerians had received those advanced jet fighters despite the fact that Iranians ordered first.

It is absolute nonsense to say that Algeria is a western puppet. It is the staunchest ally of the Russians in the African continent, ahead of Egypt and South Africa.

There are tensions between Algeria and Mali because of the refusal of the Malian military junta to implement the terms of the 2015 peace agreement meant to grant wide-ranging political autonomy to the Northern Mali, which is the homeland of ethnic Tuaregs who have been fighting for a separate country since the 1960s.

The Tuaregs never wanted to be part of Mali and demanded that the French Colonial Empire partition its artificial colonial contraption then called "French Sudan" into two separate countries. Charles De Gaulle refused and granted nominal independence to "French Sudan", which subsequently became the "State of Mali". The State of Mali merged with the State of Senegal to form the short-lived Mali Federation (1959-1960).

After the dissolution of the Mali Federation in 1960, the Republic of Mali emerged under the presidency of Modibo Keita. Meanwhile, the disgruntled ethnic Tuaregs started an armed rebellion to seize control of Northern Mali and create an independent country for themselves. Despite the military situation in the country, President Modibo Keita requested that France remove all their military bases. The French leader Charles De Gaulle was pissed, but he complied with the request. Modibo Keita also discarded the CFA Franc and printed his own national currency, the Malian Franc.

However, the mismanagement of the economy, severe inflation crisis and inability to maintain its currency's value would eventually force Mali to abolish its own currency and embarassingly readopt the CFA Franc in 1984. Yes, CFA Franc is a colonial currency, but it is more stable that many African national currencies. Hence the reason, why Portuguese-speaking Guinea-Bissau and Spanish-speaking Equatorial Guinea, which were never French colonies, gave up their own national currencies and voluntarily adopted CFA Franc. Yes, that really happened. I bet many people who read alt-media have never heard of that. Read up on that.

Without French troops, the Malian armed forces of the 1960s attempted and failed to stop the Tuareg separatist fighters from seizing large swathes of the desert plains that constitute Northern Mali. Several attempts to settle the separatist conflict peacefully in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s failed because successive Malian authorities (military juntas and elected civilian governments) would not grant Tuaregs either independence or wide-ranging political autonomy.

Neighbouring Algeria was inundated with Tuareg refugees fleeing the heavy fighting between Tuareg separatists and Malian troops. Then Algeria itself descended into civil war after the January 1992 coup d'etat that prevented a moderate Islamic Party--- which had won the December 1991 parliamentary elections-- from creating a civilian government. An assortment of jihadi terrorists from other countries joined their Algerian terrorist brethren in fighting a shooting war with the Algerian military junta.

The Algerian Civil War (1992 to 2002) presaged the emergence of jihadi terrorists in the Sahel Belt. As I have written previously, after the civil war ended, defeated Algerian jihadi terrorists crossed the international border and settled in Northern Mali, where they married local women and began to build jihadi networks, which would eventually become the ISIS-aligned and Al-Qaida-aligned terrorist groups that we see today.

Because they faced a common enemy in the Malian government, the Tuareg separatists and the jihadi terrorist groups maintained a kind of uneasy truce, punctuated with military clashes between them. The separatists had a secular agenda, which was to convert Northern Mali into a sovereign Tuareg nation-state to be named "Azawad". The jihadi terrorists opposed partition of any kind, envisioning a single indivisible Mali to be ruled as revolutionary Salafist state once they defeat and eliminate the secular Republic of Mali.

As Algerian sponsored peace talks between ethnic Tuareg leaders and the civilian Malian government made progress, Tuareg separatists began to offer to fight the jihadi terrorists alongside government troops. By 2012, the jihadi terrorists were rampaging across the land, fighting separate battles with Tuaregs and government troops.

In 2013, French military bases returned to Mali for the first time since 1961. Peace talks between the Malian government and Tuaregs began to falter, and the military conflict degenerated into a three-way fight with French/Malian troops fighting jihadi terrorists, the jihadi terrorists fighting Tuareg separatists, and French/Malian troops sporadically fighting Tuareg separatists.

In 2015, Algeria brokered a peace agreement that would grant wide-ranging political autonomy to Northern Mali, which seemed to satisfy many (but not all) Tuareg separatists. Unfortunately, the peace agreement was never fully implemented. After the overthrow of the civilian government, the ruling military junta refused to implement the peace agreement and began to make spurious allegations against the Algerians who brokered the peace accords. The sort of unfounded accusations against Algeria that one sees clueless alt-media commentators parroting on social media.

With the evaporation of a peaceful settlement, the Tuaregs stopped fighting the jihadi terrorists and formed a loose rebel alliance with them. The combined forces of the loose rebel alliance, coupled with the harsh desert environment of Northern Mali were enough to thwart all attempts by French forces and the multinational EU force to eliminate the armed insurgency.

After the multinational EU force and French troops were expelled from Mali, Russian Wagner mercenaries were brought in as replacements. Many people across Francophone Africa had heard of the military successes of mercenaries thousands of miles away in Central Africa Republic. So, it was no surprise that a desperate Malian military junta signed a paid contract with Yevgeny Prigozhin to supply his mercenaries to work the same magic in Northern Mali.

But the fact of the matter is that the more serene climate and terrain of Central Africa is nothing like the harsh desert climate of arid Northern Mali, plagued by those notorious sandstorms that provided excellent cover for jihadi terrorists and their co-belligerents, the Tuareg separatists, to advance and seize more territory from the Malian junta.

Because I am planning to write an extended version of this article on Substack with videos and images explaining the actual situtation on the ground , I am just going to stop here and summarize as follows:

(1) The Kremlin has to pay more attention to the opinions of their Algerian allies who understand the Sahel region far better than Russians who have no historic relationship with the area prior to year 2022. Mali is not the same as historic Soviet allies such as Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Guinea.

(2) Russian paramilitaries are brave warriors, but they have no chance of winning total victory in Mali unless the more reasonable Tuareg secessionists are separated from the unreasonable jihadi terrorist crazies. The Kremlin would have to join Algeria in pressing the Malian junta to implement the peace agreement with the Tuaregs. If the peace accord is implemented, large swathes of Tuareg-held territory in Northern Mali will nominally come under the suzerainty of the ruling military junta. This will allow the Tuaregs to ally with Russians and Mali junta to fight the jihadists.

(3) Some Malian citizens are deeply upset that Russian paramilitaries and Malian troops surrendered certain government-held areas of Northern Mali to the advancing rebel alliance. The Kremlin would have to brace itself for accusations of "betrayal" from certain segments of Malian society disappointed that Russian paramilitaries are unable to wave a magic wand and eliminate Sahelian terrorism and crush a Tuareg separatist insurgency, that began when Vladimir Putin was still a child growing up in the Soviet Union.