Tuesday 25 August 2020

Is Europe's freedom to be defended in the Sahel?

 

"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/

[6] Oumarou Namata (2020), „A Long-Term Struggle”, adf-magazine, 23rd June.

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