Faced with rising tensions in the north of the country, the Malian junta canceled the festivities surrounding the anniversary of independence. The head of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta, “decided to postpone the festive activities of September 22, 2023 marking the commemoration of the independence of our country, which will be celebrated in sobriety and in the spirit of national resurgence”, indicated the Council of Ministers in a press release on the evening of Wednesday September 13.
The authorities installed after the double putsch of 2020 and 2021 had initially said their intention to celebrate the anniversary with great fanfare. But Colonel Goïta, inaugurated president after the second coup, ordered the government to allocate the funds planned for these festivities to help the victims of a series of recent attacks and their families, the text says.
Mali, plunged into turmoil since independence and Salafist insurrections in the north in 2012, has seen a resumption of hostilities against the army from predominantly Tuareg armed groups since this week. This escalation is testing the capabilities of the Malian army, faced with an additional adversary, as well as the junta’s assurances of recovery of the security situation.
The separatists launched an offensive on Tuesday against the garrison town of Bourem, which the army said it had repelled. The two camps provided contradictory reports, but reporting dozens of deaths.
This renewed military activity by Tuareg separatists goes hand in hand with a succession of attacks attributed mainly to the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), affiliated with Al-Qaeda. It coincides with the ongoing withdrawal of the UN stabilization mission, Minusma, pushed out by the junta after ten years of deployment.
Several attacks claimed by the GSIM against army positions have killed a number of soldiers recently, including in Bamba on September 7 and in Gao the following day. Another attack on a passenger boat on the Niger River, blamed on jihadists, killed dozens of civilians last week.
A plane shot down
The Malian general staff said in a statement that it carried out a series of airstrikes on Wednesday against “terrorists” in the north, in the Ber and Almoustarat sectors. The separatists, for their part, claimed to have shot down a Malian army plane in Almoustarat. These assertions from both sides are very difficult to verify.
Colonel Goïta expressed his “deep affliction” at the losses caused by “the savage and barbaric attack against the boat Timbuktu” and “the assaults on the camps in the towns of Bamba, Gao and Bourem,” said the council of ministers. This is the first time that the head of the junta has publicly reacted to the attack on the boat.
The council of ministers added that it had addressed the question of mobilizing reservists. He adopted a draft decree which will “determine the state of the reservists and the conditions of their mobilization,” says the report. Reservists are supposed to provide “capital backup in the event of a crisis, natural disaster or war,” he says.
The junta pushed out the French anti-jihadist force in 2022 and the UN force in 2023. It is widely considered to have enlisted the services of the Russian paramilitary company Wagner, despite its denials. The gradual departure of Minusma by December 31 is believed to have contributed to heating up tempers in the north. Minusma hands over its camps to the Malian authorities, but in the ongoing territorial struggle between all the armed actors in the north, the separatists believe that these UN holds should return to their control.
The subject will become even hotter by the end of the year, with the evacuation by Minusma of a certain number of camps, including that of Kidal, a Tuareg stronghold town. “The bases of Tessalit, Aguelhok, Kidal, we will take them,” swore the Prime Minister, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, on state television Wednesday evening.
