(Bamako) The UN mission in Mali left its Kidal camp on Tuesday, leaving the predominantly Tuareg separatist rebellion to take control and outpace the Malian army in the race for territory between the central state and the groups armed from the north.
The junta in power in Bamako, gaining momentum, finds itself faced with the question of the response to be given to this new act of insubordination on the part of rebels of whom Kidal is the stronghold and who have just taken up arms, while its mantra is the restoration of territorial sovereignty in a country prey to jihadism and instability since 2012.
Kidal’s disengagement also sheds a harsh light on the degraded conditions in which Minusma leaves Mali at the junta’s injunction after ten years of deployment.
Minusma, constrained by the deterioration in security between all the armed actors vying for control of the field (separatists, jihadists, regular army), accelerated its withdrawal to the great irritation of the junta. She left her positions in Kidal without waiting for the army to arrive.
The Blue Helmets left their camp in Kidal in the morning in a long convoy made up of dozens of white vehicles towards Gao, a large city in the north about 350 km away, sources within the mission said. This is the third and last camp evacuated by Minusma in the Kidal region, after Tessalit and Aguelhok.
Minusma initially planned to leave Kidal around mid-November.
The rebels quickly occupied the premises, a local elected official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The Permanent Strategic Framework (CSP) “now takes control of the areas abandoned by Minusma in Kidal,” this alliance of rebel groups said in a press release.
“A lot of regrets”
The Malian army noted on social networks, “once again and with great regret”, that Minusma was leaving without handing over the camp to the authorities.
The delicate Kidal evacuation operation had been anticipated for weeks as the most flammable of those carried out by Minusma since August.
Kidal is in fact under the control of the rebellion. These groups, which concluded a peace agreement with the government in 2015, have just resumed hostilities. They are opposed to Minusma handing over its camps to the Malian authorities.
The insubordination of Kidal, a region where the army suffered humiliating defeats between 2012 and 2014, is an old source of irritation in Bamako.
The army dispatched a large convoy towards Kidal on October 2 in anticipation of the departure of Minusma. The column would still be in Anéfis, approximately 110 km south of Kidal. The army also sent reinforcements to Tessalit, about 200 km from Kidal.
Kidal is the eighth camp that Minusma has left since August in the north and center out of 13, after the junta demanded its departure “without delay” in June.
UN officials admit that breaking away from the Kidal region was even more complicated than expected, due to the military escalation, but also the obstacles put by the junta.
Retention
At the same time as the separatists resumed fighting, the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a jihadist alliance affiliated with Al-Qaeda, increased attacks against army positions and Minusma convoys. .
The initial conditions “were extremely difficult and trying,” Minusma said in a statement. She cites the deterioration in security, but also the “challenges linked to the conduct of air operations”, a thinly veiled allusion to the non-issuance of flight authorizations by the authorities.
This detention forced her to undertake long and dangerous journeys by road.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary General, told the press in New York that the convoy leaving Kidal had hit two improvised explosive devices on the way, which did not cause any injuries.
The convoys leaving from Tessalit and Aguelhok with around 500 Chadian peacekeepers collided with four of them, causing four minor injuries, he reported.
Minusma also said it destroyed or put equipment out of service because it was unable to remove it because 200 trucks did not receive permission from the Malian authorities to move from Gao to Tessalit, Aguelhok and Kidal.
Minusma, whose numbers hovered around 15,000 soldiers and police and more than 180 members of whom were killed in hostile acts, is supposed to have left by December 31. Since July, it has withdrawn nearly 6,000 civilian and uniformed personnel from Mali, she said.