"Germany's freedom is being defended
in the Hindu Kush." Former German Defence Minister Peter Struck said so in
2014. Then, Struck had in mind the prevention of the Taliban regime and the
civil war in Afghanistan. Where totalitarian Islamic fundamentalists take
control of an entire country, people try to flee from oppression and
manslaughter. As grotesque as Struck's dictum may have sounded at the time, it
still finds defenders today with reference to the migration crisis at Europe´s external
borders.
However, the NATO mission in Afghanistan is
now widely considered a "fiasco", even if no counterfactual
comparison can be made[1].
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was a NATO-led military
mission in Afghanistan, established by the United Nations Security Council in
December 2001. After almost 20 years of war, NATO had to accept that it was not
possible to implement a Western political system there militarily. ISAF ceased
combat operations and was disbanded in December 2014. After the US-Taliban deal
of February 2020, United States and its Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all
troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal[2].
The war in Afghanistan also highlights the
fact that no longer interstate wars prevail but armed conflicts with and among
non-state actors. These are no longer manageable with military armament. A
similar insight increasingly applies to Iraq. Contrary to the hopes of
Bellicists and Neocons (Bannon, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz), Western democracy cannot
be enforced by military means.
Organisational beginnings of the so-called
Islamic State go back to the Iraqi resistance shortly after the invasion by the
Coalition of the Willing. In 2004 the group was known as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI)
and from 2011 to June 2014 as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS, later
IS), or under the transcribed Arabic acronym Daesh[3].
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, although a close ally of George W.
Bush, sees the US-led invasion of Iraq as partly responsible for the creation
of the terrorist militia Islamic State. He now admits "elements of truth"
in the assertion that the Iraq war caused the rise of the IS.
After the destruction of the Caliphate and
the occupation of the remaining territories of the IS in Syria in 2017, the
Islamic state also shifted to the Sahel, partly in the form of the terrorist
organisation of Nigerian origin Boko Haram, but similar in methods: assault,
murder, robbery, enslavement and rape.
So the wildfire of terrorism has long since
reached the Sahel. Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria,
is also active in the neighbouring countries of Chad, Niger and Cameroon.
Recently, it was the deadly attack on a convoy of French aid workers in Niger
and the coup in Mali that put the Sahel back on the front pages. As was
previously the case for the 'Hindu Kush', appropriate stabilisation strategies
for the Sahel are now again being discussed, as was the case last week at the
meeting between the German chancellor and the French president in his summer
residence.
The Sahel renews the question of what use
of military means is appropriate. Bamako, the capital of Mali, is the base for
two multinational military missions, MINUSMA and EUTM. MINUSMA (Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée
des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Mali), the United Nations
peacekeeping mission, was established by UN resolution in April 2013. This UN
mission, the deadliest to date, originally comprised 11,000 (currently more
than 13,000) soldiers and police officers. Since 2013, the European Union
Training Mission in Mali (EUTM) has been tasked with "restoring lasting
peace and stability in Mali", which is "essential for long-term
stability in the Sahel and wider Africa and Europe"[4].
The EU mission oversees the training of 14,000 Malian soldiers.
The 'Opération Barkhane' is a French-led
military operation to eliminate Islamist terrorism that has been taking place
in the African Sahel since August 2014[5].
It currently comprises 4,500 soldiers (as of 2020). The area of operations
covers the former French colonies of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and
Niger. These countries form the G5 Sahel, which was created in 2014 and
provides a rapid reaction force (G5 Sahel Joint Force) of 5000 soldiers and police
officers (since 2019 led by Nigerian Brigadier General Oumarou Namata, on photo above)[6].
An interesting (French) map by Sara Bosmann
(Twitter: @mindthemap) was recently published by NeoGeoPo, a French
geopolitical newsletter. The map illustrates the locations of military
operations and the geostrategic mix (raw material fields, trade routes, escape
routes) in which they operate.
Figure
1: The geostrategic situation in the Sahel
Source: Sara Bosmanns, via NeoGeoPol
At the end of May, the German Bundestag
extended the mandates for the participation of the Bundeswehr in European Union
(EUTM Mali) and United Nations (MINUSMA) military missions in Mali. This means
that a total of up to 1,550 German soldiers can be deployed in Mali and the
Sahel, more than in Afghanistan at present. In a clever essay[7],
Denis Tull (SWP Berlin and Institut de Recherche Stratégique de l'École
Militaire, Paris) asks the crucial question, but unfortunately it cannot be
answered clearly: What lessons can be learned from the engagement in Afghanistan
to operate more successfully in the Sahel?
Security, political and social trends in
the Sahel are mostly negative. This would suggest that the military approach is
not working, as it already didn´t in the Middle East. The massive use of
military means in the Sahel region may be counterproductive. A shift in
emphasis towards a stronger focus on civil security forces, justice and law
enforcement agencies, possibly against French security interests, is
conceivable. However, the call for more autonomy combined with empty governance
formulas ignores conflicting interests and conflicts between local actors, and
Europe's fear of migration and terrorism weakens the instrument of
conditionality.
Mali's institutional instability raises
questions about the future of French and multinational military operations. It
is always delicate to engage militarily in a country whose sovereignty is
undefined. It is even more delicate for French troops in a former colony,
especially after years of counter-couping. Although France rules out direct
military intervention, fearing to be accused of colonial invasion with
reference to its former role, it is still afraid of being accused of
colonialism. (This will of course not prevent such accusations from being made
anyway). But if the power vacuum in Mali deepens, French and other expats are
directly threatened, a division of the country cannot be ruled out and
totalitarian Islamic fundamentalists could take control of Mali.
Will we want to defend Europe's freedom in
Mali?
[1] Michael von der Schulenburg (2020), “Ende mit Schrecken“, ipg-journal, 25/3/2020.
[2] Wikipedia, Withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, retrieved 25/8/2020.
[3] Wikipedia, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, retrieved 25/8/2020.
[4] EUTM, Mission Background, https://eutmmali.eu/factsheet-eutm-mali/
[5] Michael Goya (2020), “Coup
d’État militaire au Mali: «Barkhane se retrouve visible au cœur du désordre»,
Le Figaro, 21st August.
[6] Oumarou Namata (2020), „A Long-Term
Struggle”, adf-magazine, 23rd June.
[7] Denis M. Tull (2020), “German
and International Crisis Management in the Sahel: Why Discussions about Sahel
Policy Are Going around in Circles”, SWP Comment 2020/C 27, June 2020.
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