towards a departure of French troops, what conclusions can we draw?

As France prepares to withdraw its troops from Mali, the former French ambassador to Mali, Nicolas Normand, recalls that in 2013, “the French army arrived at the invitation of the Malian authorities in a situation of extreme urgency, when the jihadists who already occupied all of northern Mali descended south and threatened Bamako“. The president at the time, François Hollande, had decided to extend this operation after the reunification of the country.

“He made the decision to hunt down the jihadists who had dispersed after Operation Serval. But it was an impossible mission, in reality“, continues the former diplomat, convinced that it would have been wiser to withdraw at that time, while providing second-line support to the Malian army. “We could perhaps stay three years, but beyond three years, a foreign army is necessarily felt as an army of occupation, even more when it comes to the former colonial power“, he believes.