Given what’s happening in West Africa, and across Francophone Africa, with all these changes that we’re seeing and what seems to be popular opinion against the continued influence of France, there’s now a view across Africa that what we’re seeing in West Africa is something close to a revolution. But is that how the people of Mali see it?
Mali’s Foreign Affairs Minister gave an interview to Pan-African Review to discuss these issues.
Pan-African review: As a member of this new government, is it accurate to describe what is happening in Mali as a revolution, or are the changes we are seeing more evolutionary in nature?
Minister Abdoulaye Diop: To be honest, when the story started, our concern was to take over our own country. We realised that we were in a process that would only lead to the partitioning of our country, because we knew the background of the French presence, including the French intervention in 2012.
To understand what happened, it is important to understand the historical background of France’s relationship with and presence in Mali.
First of all, you have to understand that in Mali we have an Arab and Tuareg population in the north, who were convinced by the French that they should not be ruled by black Africans, that they should have independence. So there have been rebellions every 10 or 20 years since independence, which we have tried to resolve through peace agreements and by encouraging people to return to their homes. But conflicts would break out again; it has become a constant repetition.
Secondly, many Malian rebels were based in Libya, forming part of Gadaffi’s own Légion étrangère. When NATO wanted to intervene in Libya, the Western powers had to make a deal with some of these rebels to get information about Gaddafi’s whereabouts and help get rid of him. In return, the rebels were promised a homeland in northern Mali and given arms and ammunition to launch a new rebellion.
Worst of all, some of these rebels sided with Al-Qaeda, whose members were indigenous Malians, while others came from Algeria. In 2012, these different groups declared the independence of Azawad, which at one point in the last decade represented 60 per cent of Mali’s territory. In this territory, the Al-Qaeda-linked groups had much more firepower, which allowed them to drive out other rebel groups that went to settle in Burkina Faso. The terrorist groups took over.
In 2012, the French came to tell the Malian authorities that the leader of these terrorist groups wanted to march to Bamako, knowing full well that the Malian army was completely disorganised. The French told the Malian authorities to ask for help to stop the terrorists’ march towards Bamako, which was about 800 kilometres from the capital.
So the then interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, wrote a letter to the French in which he asked only for military air support, not ground support, but he was forced to amend the letter to ask for full military support. You have to remember that in 1960 Malians kicked out the French army, and the first president of Mali, Modibo Keïta, before he left us, said that one day one of our brothers would be persuaded to let them back. And we thought that was the moment the French wanted to come back to Mali and they needed this letter to have a legitimate reason for their presence.
Suffice it to say that during the joint operations of the French and Malian armies, we liberated two of the three main regions in northern Mali, Timbuktu and Gao. But when our troops were marching towards the third major region, Kidal, a stronghold of the Tuareg rebels, the Malian troops were stopped. They were told they couldn’t go into Kidal because they would commit genocide. And even though we had a military agreement with France, there were some parts of Malian airspace that we were not allowed to enter. That was our territory and our army. But we couldn’t do anything without France’s permission. It was a great humiliation for the Malians.
To understand how this episode and others led to a military coup, you should know that our current president, Assimi Goïta, was a member of the unit that was prevented from entering Kidal. In fact, the five colonels involved in the coup were all involved in military operations in the north since they were lieutenants twenty years ago. They know the reality of what the military has been through, and they were quite doubtful about continuing down that path of humiliation.
Meanwhile, the rebels that had been kicked out by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups began to mysteriously reappear. They had been brought back to participate in the process of negotiations which was conducted according to France’s wishes in parallel with the joint military operations.
Despite all these operations, terrorism continued to spread, reaching Togo and Burkina. The UN had deployed about 15,000 troops, with expenses running over a billion dollars yearly, but with no tangible results. The French operations cost about two million euros a day for 10 years, but during that time they offered no significant support to the Malian army.
We didn’t see a sincere desire to help Mali. Instead, the intention seemed to be to weaken our institutions and our army and to take control of whatever strategic interests France had in Mali.
After the coup, we gave France a chance to redeem itself. We told them that the way they were going about it was not in our interest to have a united country, a peaceful country.
We told them: “What you are doing is not helpful. This is where we have an interest, come and work with us, do A, B, C, etc.”
They said: “No, no, no. We are not here for that. This is not what we want to do.”
So Malians understood that the French were simultaneously involved with the rebels, the terrorists and the Malian government. France had no real intention of reunifying Mali, and we were in this situation for almost 10 years.
In this context, we realised that although the previous Malian authorities had asked France to intervene in 2012, those who created the problem could not be the ones to solve it.
So we had to break this cycle. That’s why, when we came in, we realised that we had to make sure that we had an army that was capable of playing its role, of defending the territorial integrity and unity of the country. But this search for independence and autonomy of course went against the interests of France, because they didn’t want an independent Mali. They always got what they wanted. Even when the coup took place, they told us who should lead the transition, who should be the prime minister, who should be the president, because that is what they have always done. They had the puppets to do what they wanted, but now they have someone who is not willing to do that. They will definitely have to fight us. We will have to fight them.
So this is where it all started. We didn’t wake up one day and say we were revolutionary. We just wanted to get our country back. We want our pride back. As citizens, as sons and grandsons of Modibo Keita and others, we could not accept this situation to continue. We fought only for the interest of our country — to have a country that is stable. We were not driven by ideology per se, but by a desire to see things change.
We want things to be different. But I don’t think the French ever saw us as partners, as people who had concerns that they needed to address. Their only response has been: “What if we remove you?”
So every day there is an attempt either to remove leaders or to create problems, but no real openness. They have always looked down on us. Their logic is: “These people are here for one month, two months, three months. We will get rid of them.”
If they had changed their attitude and said: “Let’s see what the legitimate concerns of Malians are and how we can change the way we do things,” this wouldn’t have happened. Their attitude led us to all the clashes you have seen. Since we are also determined to achieve our objectives, whatever steps they have taken against us, we have decided to respond, whatever the cost. This has led to a complete breakdown in our relations.
Many Africans see themselves in our struggle. I think that is why our struggle has gained popular support. But we have no plan to export what we are doing. This context is for you to understand where we are coming from. We fought for our own interests. But maybe that was in line with what was happening in many countries.
We have also been inspired. Because when we’re fighting, we see how the outside people, the Pan-Africanists and others, look at our struggle and the ideas they put forward inspire us and motivate us. In that sense, it went both ways because we felt that we were not alone.
Of course, we were rejected and sanctioned by governments and regional institutions, but at the same time, we felt a strong solidarity from the African people.
So we are not revolutionary per se or driven by ideology. We have simply looked through the lens of Mali’s interests. The objective is to have more autonomy, to defend our country, to control our resources. And perhaps many on the continent and in our region identify with our struggle because the economy, the political scene, and many other aspects of the lives of Africans have for years been controlled by foreign powers.
