at the heart of the Takuba force, deployed to compensate for the withdrawal of Operation Barkhane

In the Sahel, French military disengagement is now well underway. Emmanuel Macron wants to reduce the number of soldiers there from 5,100 to around 3,000. To compensate for this reduction, the government is counting on Takuba, a detachment of European special forces supervising Malian units.

>> Read also: How Barkhane withdraws from northern Mali

On the shooting range, 45 minutes off-piste from the French camp of Gao, the instructions are translated from Estonian into French or from French into Bambara and the exchanges between French and Estonian instructors are in English. Everything is punctuated by shots at 50 and 100 meters, the sun is burning, the guns too. Gama, one of the French operators, speaks “drill”, that is to say “do, undo, redo. And we start over, that’s how it fits”.

In the field, in training or in operation, this is the architecture of Takuba. French and Estonian special forces in Gao, or French and Czech special forces in Ménaka, supervise and accompany Malian soldiers in combat. In Ménaka, the boss of the Franco-Czech detachment, a marine commando, Luc, emaciated face eaten by a brush beard, describes a typical Takuba mission. “If we have identified areas of interest of an armed terrorist group (GAT), it will be able to drive them out or neutralize them from the area”, he explains.

Return to the large French camp of Gao, 200 kilometers from Ménaka. In the Malian influence takes place an official ceremony. It is the delivery of the Takuba patch to trained Malian soldiers. The authorities scratch the patch, then hang it on the shoulder or chest of the deserving soldier. A symbol for General Philippe Landicheff, the great chef of Takuba. “What we feel in these moments is the feeling of belonging to a family for which we will give everything. We are carried by the elders and gradually we also pass the torch on to the young people who return”.

A few meters further, Colonel Camara commands the military region of Gao. For him, he insists, Takuba is an exchange: “We bring human intelligence but also human flair, the fact of being able to blend into the environment and also the language of the environment.”

“This exchange is very important and it is what makes the operational combat partnership so successful.”

Colonel Camara

to franceinfo

Currently, Takuba, it is 700 French, Czech, Estonian, Swedish, Italian, British, soon Danish soldiers etc. Ultimately, they will be 2,000. Unless the Malian government hires Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group. Unflattering reputation, corruption, exactions, spoliation, their arrival in Mali would seal the end of Takuba. Takuba’s No.2, Swedish Colonel Hemrik, said nothing else: “Difficult to run an operation like Barkhane alongside a mercenary force hired by the Malian state. This is not a good thing.”

Because Takuba is as much a military tool as a political object. For less Barkhane, as Emmanuel Macron wants it, more Takuba is needed, with an ulterior motive, for the French government, the idea of ​​putting a European defense at attention rather than at rest.