Solution for troop exchange: Bundeswehr flies soldiers to Mali in civilian aircraft

The government in Mali has been refusing to allow Bundeswehr aircraft to fly into the country for days. Some of the German soldiers were to be routinely exchanged with them. You are now using a civilian machine.

The Bundeswehr has sent a civilian machine for the troop rotation of the soldiers in West African Mali, which has been hampered by conflicts. The authorities there had given permission for a flight this Thursday, said a spokesman for the operations command near Potsdam. The plane took off from Cologne at 5:47 a.m. On board were 88 soldiers from the UN mission MINUSMA and 5 soldiers from the EU training mission EUTM Mali, according to a briefing for the Bundestag.

There are also civilian flights between Mali’s capital, Bamako, and the camp on the outskirts of the airport in the city of Gao. It was the first flight for a change of personnel for the German mission contingent after the Malian transitional government suspended the contingent change of the UN mission MINUSMA on July 14, it said. It is also planned for German soldiers to fly back to Germany from Mali.

The civilian flight was an alternative to flying in a military transporter, for which the Malian interim government had not given permission. The Federal Foreign Office had previously stated that 16 troop-contributing countries had written a letter to the United Nations demanding that the UN “now do even more to ensure that working conditions in Mali are now normalized again as quickly as possible”. On Monday, France withdrew the last soldiers of its anti-terrorist operation “Operation Barkhane” from Mali and thus also left the camp in Gao.

Mali, with around 20 million inhabitants, has experienced three military coups since 2012 and is considered to be extremely unstable politically. Since the recent coup in May 2021, it has been run by a military government that has been criticized by Western states for its close ties with Russia. The Bundestag had extended the Mali mandate for the Bundeswehr in May. The upper mandate limit was increased to 1,400 out of 1,100 soldiers.