French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Bamako, Mali next Monday in order to meet with Mali’s interim president, Colonel Assimi Goïta, the Elysee said on Wednesday.
This visit will take place before celebrating Christmas with French soldiers stationed in Gao, Mali, according to the same source.
Since the start of Macron’s five-year term, he celebrated Christmas with troops based in Niger, Chad, and Ivory Coast.
This visit comes as relations between Paris and Bamako strained in recent months, with France warning that the deployment of Russian mercenaries in the Sahel would be “unacceptable” after the redeployment of the Barkhane force, which left Timbuktu after nearly nine years of presence in northern Mali.
After Kidal and Tessalit, the Barkhane force is therefore completing its disengagement from part of northern Mali, in accordance with the reorganization of the device announced by Paris last June, which goes hand in hand with a gradual reduction in France’s workforce in the Sahel.
French troops in the Sahel will thus drop “from around 5,000 soldiers in the summer of 2021” to “around 3,000 in the summer of 2022”, according to General Laurent Michon, commander of Barkhane, in addition to other reductions by 2023.
France’s disengagement is part of a strategy that attempts to reinvent its commitment in the region, emphasizing the internationalization of the military effort by further involving its European allies.
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