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Mali: Macron stands up to the “temptation of radical Islamism

Emmanuel Macron said that France would withdraw its troops if Mali went “in the direction” of radical Islamism, in an interview with the JDD broadcast on Sunday, after a second coup in nine months. France, with around 5,100 men in Barkhane, supports Mali, which has been facing a jihadist push from the North since 2012, having plunged the country into a security crisis before spreading to the center of the country. But Paris, like the EU, denounced Tuesday an “unacceptable coup” after the arrest of President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane decided by the country’s strongman Colonel Assimi Goïta.

“To Malian President Bah N’Daw, who was very rigorous about the seal between power and jihadists, I said:” Radical Islamism in Mali with our soldiers there? Never in life! ” Today there is this temptation in Mali. But if it goes in this direction, I would withdraw, “warned the French president, in an interview with the JDD during a trip to Rwanda and South Africa.

The French head of state also claims to have “sent the message” to the leaders of West Africa that he “would not remain at the side of a country where there is no longer democratic legitimacy or transition” . He recalls having said for three years, “within several Defense Councils that we had to think of the exit”. West African leaders meet on Sunday to decide the thorny question of their response to the double coup by the Malian military in nine months. At the G5 Sahel summit in Pau in January 2020, “I prepared a way out. I stayed at the request of the States, because I thought the exit was a point of destabilization. But the question arises, and it is not our vocation to stay there forever, ”he repeated.

A long exchange with Mahamat Déby

Regarding Chad, where a Transitional Military Council (CMT) chaired by one of Idriss Déby’s sons, Mahamat, after his brutal death in April, Emmanuel Macron believes that “things are clear”. “We come to the aid and support of a sovereign state so that it is not destabilized or invaded by rebel and armed groups. But we are asking for transition and political inclusiveness, ”he assures us. He explains that when he went to Idriss Déby’s funeral, he had “a long exchange” with Mahamat Déby on the eve of the G5 Sahel. “The next morning, with the other heads of state, we went to see him to ask him for this political opening with the support of the African Union”.

Emmanuel Macron also warns against a failure of a development policy in Africa. “I say it with lucidity, if we are complicit in the failure of Africa, we will be accountable but we will also pay dearly, especially in terms of migration,” he believes. He reaffirms that we must therefore “invest massively” at the end of the Covid-19 pandemic “with the equivalent of a Marshall Plan” and that the international community must have “the generosity to say that we are erasing part of debt to help Africans build their future ”.


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