how the last French soldiers in Tessalit camp experience their isolation

If the plant bushes were blown away and rolled in the dust on the empty esplanade of the Tessalit camp, one could believe oneself in a western. And the last 80 French soldiers would be the forgotten garrison of a fort placed in a sandy plain, bordered to the east by the Adrar des Ifoghas, a desert mountainous massif and overheated.

>> Three questions on the end of Operation Barkhane in Mali

This morning of October 12, 2021, a French officer left with long strides the entrance to the camp where, for an hour, he watched a hundred armored vehicles and civilian trucks take away most of the Tessalit installations. His name is Florent, he is a captain, and he is the “committee“, the boss of the camp.”Symbolically, this status of being the last of Tessalit, everyone is keen on it “, he explains, returning to the buildings of his operations center, the “CO “. Indeed, the days preceding the departure of the removal convoy, soldiers spontaneously presented themselves as”the last head of the Tessalit oil depot“, where the “Tessalit’s last resuscitator“.

“It’s something to see all the comforts leaving. Our last days here are going to be rustic.”

Captain Florent, last boss of the Tessalit camp

to franceinfo

The kitchens, showers, fridges, 60 air-conditioned tents were packed and moved to Gao. One of the two mortars, detection equipment and base protection were also loaded onto heavy goods vehicles. “We’re gonna be rough“, smiles the captain. Tessalit will close by the end of November, Timbuktu in December, and the French flag has already disappeared from Kidal. At the end of the year, only five French bases will remain active in Mali.

The day before, Tessalit was a noisy camp, where we could hear the forklifts loading containers by emitting a series of beeps, where the meals mingled with the noises and conversations of table football and the playlists of the soldiers who had come to slump a few moments on saggy sofas. The day before, while getting into his P4, a Peugeot 4×4 in service since the 1980s, Captain Florent took us on a tour of an overactive base, where his 200 men were busy and the 100 who had come to move the camp. .

“We are going to leave the French camp, and go to the Minusma camp, the United Nations mission in Mali.“, comments the one who turns into a guide. The blue helmets – less than 1,000 in Tessalit, out of the 15,000 deployed in the country – live in a hold that includes the French part.”Here you have the Nepalese contingent, the demining specialists, who intervene when an artisanal mine, an IED [“Improvised explosive device” pour “engin explosif improvisé”] is discovered, or when a vehicle exploded while driving over it, like this one“, he said, pointing to a destroyed armored vehicle.

The IED is the invisible enemy of northern Mali where jihadist groups no longer seek direct confrontation. They trap the roads, the patrol routes: “On can try to avoid them at best, but once we rolled over, we rolled over“, tells, fatalist, Thibault, sergeant-chief, who, aboard his light armored vehicle, regularly leads outings out of the camp. The non-commissioned officer is in his third Mali, and prefers an enemy”visible“, like the one he met while deployed to Menaka:”The enemy in front, with his kalach, I can act on it, support my HK416 and shoot.“An enemy for whom Florent says he has respect. “As an alpine hunter, he explains, we respect the man capable of living in an environment as inhospitable as the Adrar des Ifoghas is. “

“The enemy IED is an enemy that does not exist. Until … I prefer to see an enemy stationed 100 yards from me, a visible enemy.”

Staff Sergeant Thibault

to franceinfo

It is from the Adrar that the blows come. From the mountains, a little over three miles from the base, the enemy, “for whom we have no stupid hatred“, adds the captain, observes and strikes the French camp. It is not only the IEDs, there are also the indirect attacks, shells and rockets. Florent stops his P4 near the position of the French mortars,”our deterrence and response insurance “.

On July 15, an hour after attacks on the bases of Menaka and Gao, Tessalit received 14 shots from the Adrar, between 7.22 am and 7.34 am. “We knew about the other attacks, so we put ourselves in an attentive posture, not wait-and-see, and we watched the historical areas of the blows. “ Under enemy fire which became more and more precise, the officer ordered his mortar section to retaliate. While going to inspect the targeted areas later, the French soldiers found, among other things, a pair of binoculars, abandoned. For Florent, the action of his mortars was effective: “The enemy hasn’t pulled back on us since. “

The adversary, in a few days, will be the business of Captain Sidibé. This Malian will take command of the hold left by Barkhane, he is Florent’s successor. The two men, accompanied by their assistants, sit on October 11, at the end of the afternoon, around a table made of an old plywood door. A fan runs fully and circulates the hot air. The French assured the Malian that even after his departure, Barkhane’s planes will still provide support and support to the Fama of Tessalit. The Malian asks the French to multiply for his men the “right-of-way defense scenarios “. “Twice a week ? “, suggests Florent.”Three, and even four “, insists Sidibé. The political tensions between Bamako and Paris, the two capitals, do not affect the two captains.

Outside, the conveyors who will be leaving Tessalit the next day are doing the final preparations and taking the final instructions. They fold up the sunshades stretched between the vehicles. In the morning, all you have to do is repack the cots and mosquito nets. Chief Warrant Officer Quentin, strong and black beard, recalls his forty convoys in the Sahel, including some Tessalit, the longest in Barkhane, with its 600 and a few kilometers, or 5 to 7 days on the road on average. He will not return to Tessalit again. It’s his last night here, before joining Gao, before spending a few nights in the desert “where the stars seem so close, where you can no longer hear a noise “.

At 5 o’clock on October 12, the leader of the convoy summons his non-commissioned officers, who line up in a square around him. Course, dangers of IEDs, galley of punctures and silting up, the briefing lasts a few minutes in the light of the headlights of vehicles ready to leave. At 7 am, the last heavyweights, escorted by the last armored vehicles, extract themselves from the chicane which marks the exit from the camp. The remaining 80 French soldiers are somewhat in solitary confinement.

“We are alone in the world, we can only count on us, we are far from everything, far from the means, far from the leaders, resumes Thibault. But that’s where we reveal ourselves and it’s quite beautiful to see that. “ Florent continues on the pride of being a soldier “on an isolated site, in particular in Tessalit, Algeria’s lock, historical crossroads of Tuareg trafficking, with the mythical Adrar des Ifoghas “. He already has in mind the speech he will deliver on the day the French flag descends from the flagpole installed on the small square. While waiting for this day, and unless an emergency calls for it, the chief doctor Julien will continue to climb on the roof of a building to admire the light of the afternoon sky on the neighboring mountains. The doc, keen on local history and geography, “as an amateur “, tells the story of the French camel officers of the last century installed in Tessalit, where they already crossed the “noble and bellicose Tuareg families “. This is how the 80 soldiers of Tessalit can see each other: the last camel drivers of the “northern Malian “.