Mali’s security crisis: the fallout from France’s departure

Across the vast, sun-baked expanses of the Sahel, along its endless tracks where conflict often unfolds unnoticed by the outside world, Mali is confronting a harsh truth: dismissing those who maintained the front line against encroaching instability carries significant repercussions.

The recent wave of tragic attacks sweeping across the nation is neither accidental nor predetermined. They represent the foreseeable outcome of a pronounced political shift, heralded by Bamako as an assertion of sovereignty. This proclaimed independence, fueled by anti-French rhetoric, served as a tool for internal legitimacy.

Bamako desired a French exit, and Bamako achieved it.

The final French convoys departed from Gao, Tessalit, and Ménaka amidst jeers from a segment of the public, inflamed by years of accusatory discourse. At that moment, operational realities seemed irrelevant. It mattered little that in 2013, when jihadist columns threatened to advance southward, it was French forces who halted the impending collapse of the Malian state.

President Emmanuel Macron underscored this reality with almost stark clarity: “Mali did not make the best decision in expelling the French army.” A simple, almost clinical statement, yet one that now resonates with undeniable strategic significance.

The French head of state has never denied Paris’s missteps. He acknowledges that France at times overemphasized military solutions without successfully implementing crucial local political reforms. However, on one point, the president remains consistent: without French intervention, Mali could have descended into chaos. He had previously stated unequivocally: “Without France, Mali would no longer be a unified state.”

This fundamental truth appears to be re-emerging with brutal force today.

The ground reality, after all, is immune to slogans or political posturing. Once French bases were vacated, a stark security vacuum became undeniable. Groups aligned with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State swiftly moved to exploit these vulnerabilities. Where Operation Barkhane once contained, monitored, struck, and gathered intelligence, Malian authorities now struggle to maintain lasting control over their own territory.

Behind these recent events, there is a memory that demands respect and recognition.

Fifty-eight French soldiers perished in the Sahel.

Fifty-eight individuals fell in a conflict that was neither abstract nor theoretical. They died in Kidal, in the Adrar des Ifoghas, in In Delimane, on roads riddled with improvised explosive devices, during nighttime operations, under scorching temperatures, and against an elusive, mobile enemy.

These soldiers were not occupiers. They were not colonial predators disguised in militant narratives. They were instruments of a military commitment undertaken by the French Republic to prevent the establishment of a terrorist sanctuary at the heart of the Sahel.

They paid the ultimate price.

Their sacrifice demands at least one imperative: that their memory not be dissolved by ideological simplifications.

Indeed, France made errors. But it also bore, almost alone for years, a colossal military effort to preserve an already fragile regional equilibrium.

Mali chose to sever ties with this security architecture in the name of proclaimed independence. It must now bear the consequences of that choice.

Emmanuel Macron, in stating that Bamako had not made “the best decision,” was not expressing post-colonial resentment or sentimental regret. He was simply observing what reality now confirms with relentless cruelty: in certain parts of the world, declared sovereignty alone is insufficient to contain advancing jihadist columns.

For France, the Sahel became a theater of diplomatic attrition.

But for French soldiers, it remains something more profound: a field of honor.

And that honor is not subject to the shifting winds of public opinion.