U.N. Report: Situation in Mali Continues to Deteriorate

ADF STAFF

A new United Nations report shows that the number of people killed in Mali continued to increase in 2022, despite pledges by the government to stamp out extremist violence.

On March 22, the U.N. mission in Mali, MINUSMA, published its quarterly report for October through December 2022 that showed security in the country continues to worsen. During that three months, 2,001 people were affected by acts of violence, including more than 370 people who were kidnapped or disappeared.

Extremist groups are the main perpetrators of violence in the country and are responsible for 56% of recorded violations, the report said. Civilian casualties as a result of violence more than doubled in Mali in 2022, according to data from the crisis mapping organization ACLED.

U.N officials are calling for Mali to investigate the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization, for what it is calling a “climate of terror and complete impunity” in the group’s activities in the war-torn country. At the same time, U.N. officials are warning that some countries are considering withdrawing from MINUSMA.

U.N. officials specifically want Mali to investigate reports dating to late March 2022, when Malian armed forces, accompanied by military personnel believed to belong to the Wagner Group, “executed several hundred people, who had been rounded up in Moura, a village in central Mali.”

The Wagner Group first appeared in 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The organization is reportedly financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman and a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In addition to Mali, Wagner forces have deployed to African nations including Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar and the Central African Republic. Through its propaganda, Wagner has been successful in shaping public opinion in Mali, and is now making overtures in Burkina Faso, which had two military coups in 2022, and possibly Côte d’Ivoire.

U.N. officials this year drafted a report that said the MINUSMA is “not viable” without increasing the number of peacekeepers, Agence France-Presse reported. The draft mentioned the possibility of withdrawing the troops if key conditions were not met.

The U.N. created MINUSMA in 2013 to help stabilize the country, which was threatened with collapse under terrorist pressure. Such U.N. missions also serve to protect civilians and defend human rights. But the security situation in Mali has not improved.

“MINUSMA is a peacekeeping operation where there is no peace to keep,” summarized U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in the draft, AFP reported.

The BBC noted that there is no evidence to suggest that the Wagner Group has slowed the rise of extremist violence throughout the region.

Mali’s security problems are affecting most of West Africa. In a February 2023 report, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) noted that since taking power in August 2020, “the military junta in Mali has alienated its regional and international security partners and pursued a strategy that has exacerbated the militant Islamist violence threatening the country, thereby accelerating the security crisis in the Sahel.”

The report noted that the ruling force in Mali has detained Ivorian Soldiers sent to support MINUSMA, expelled senior U.N. officials, and withdrawn from the regional Sahel G5 security framework.

“The Malian junta has repeatedly leveraged coordinated disinformation campaigns to soften the ground for Wagner’s arrival and for expelling or restricting statutory support to Mali,” the report noted. “More than 2.7 million people have been displaced by the escalating violence and insecurity in the Sahel.”

With the MINUSMA mandate expiring in June, the U.N. has proposed three options for the future of the mission:

• A larger mission that would require Mali to guarantee freedom of movement to the peacekeepers and to make progress toward a transition to civilian rule. This scenario, the ACSS notes, also entails an increase in troop contributions.
• The ending of uniformed arm of the mission, to be replaced by a special political mission.
• Maintaining the current troop configuration with a significantly reduced mandate for the mission.