Mali’s military government on Sunday said that it would quit a West African security force after it was blocked from assuming the presidency of the regional group.
The country’s departure from the G5 Sahel security force deepens its isolation after its neighbors hit it with sanctions in January over perceived foot-dragging in restoring civilian rule.
Mali’s diplomatic relations with Western allies, including former colonial power France, have also deteriorated, especially over its rapprochement with Russia.
Photo: AFP
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier this month said that political instability and human rights violations in Mali and Burkina Faso were undermining operations against militants in the Sahel region, and called for returning power to civilians as soon as possible.
However, Mali’s junta said that it has been a victim of politicking.
“The government of Mali is deciding to withdraw from all the organs and bodies of the G5 Sahel, including the joint force” fighting the extremists, Bamako announced in a statement.
“The opposition of some G5 Sahel member states to Mali’s presidency is linked to maneuvers by a state outside the region aiming desperately to isolate Mali,” it added, without naming the country.
The G5 Sahel, which also includes Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger, launched in 2014, with a security force against extremists added in 2017.
The heads of states in the group were supposed to assemble in Bamako in February to see Mali assume the G5 presidency, but nearly four months later, the meeting “has still not taken place,” the junta said.
Mali is struggling under sanctions imposed by other West African countries over the military’s decision to retain power following multiple coups.
The junta has opted for a two-year transition, while the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is pushing for a maximum of 16 months.
The military initially seized control in August 2020 as the country’s decade-long insurgency inflicted a spiraling death toll and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
A second de facto coup occurred in May last year, when Colonel Assimi Goita pushed out an interim civilian government and took over the presidency.
The violence gripping Mali since 2012 has involved attacks by extremists linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, but also an assortment of self-declared militias and bandits.
In a report to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Guterres said that Mali’s vague transition timeline was hampering the G5 force’s ability to function.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened