One week before Yevgeny Prigozhin’s foiled rebellion against Vladimir Putin, the military Junta that leads Mali made a fateful decision to kick out UN Peacekeepers and rely more heavily on the Wagner Mercenary Group to provide regime security.

It was a bad decision at the time — and now in retrospect looks even worse.

On June 16th, the government of Mali formally ordered the 13,000 strong UN peacekeeping mission to leave the country “without delay.” In my 18 years of covering the United Nations, I can think of only one other instance (Eritrea, 2005) in which a government kicked out an entire peacekeeping force. It is rare by design: peacekeeping missions only deploy with the approval of the Security Council, so when a government evicts a peacekeeping mission it is effectively contravening the resolve of the all the world’s major powers. There is typically a diplomatic cost to going against the collective will of the Security Council that can range from reproach to sanctions.

But this was a cost that the military junta in Mali was seemingly willing to bear.

Why? Because, Russia.

Since a 2021 military coup, the Malian junta has increasingly cast its lot with Moscow. This includes deepening ties with the Wagner Group. Russian mercenaries began arriving in January 2022 ostensibly to help train Malian armed forces, but in reality the mercenaries provide regime security and protect the Junta from domestic opponents. Internationally, Mali has embraced Moscow. It was one of just six countries (including Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua and Russia) that voted against a February 2023 UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By kicking out the UN Peacekeeping Mission, the Junta is betting that Russia will protect it from any meaningful sanction at the Security Council. All the while, Russian mercenaries would replace Blue Helmets as the dominant security guarantor in the Central Sahel.

At the time, this looked like a small victory for Russia. The Wagner Group was widely considered to be an expeditionary arm of Russian foreign and security policy — particularly in Africa. But with the split between Prigozhin and Putin it is unclear the extent to which Wagner actually supports the Kremlin’s interests — or if Wagner will even survive as an entity.

Mali’s military leaders sold out the long term interests of the people of Mali when they decided to kick out the United Nations Peacekeeping Force. They did so for their own short term gain: without the UN’s prying eyes, the regime could deploy Wagner with impunity to crush domestic political rivals and other perceived threats to their regime. But with the fate of Wagner now uncertain, the Junta looks as weak as ever.

This all portends major problems for the people of Mali, including the potential resumption of a major civil war in Mali that the UN peacekeeping mission had been fitfully keeping at bay.

Source: EMM/ UN Dispatch