The Dilemmas of international intervention in Mali

In the past few years many conflicts have intensified in Africa, one of which have caused a new peacekeeping mission to be deployed to Mali, and already existing operations to be strengthened. Mali was the first victim of the chaos caused by the Arab Spring and the international intervention in Libya. The heavily armed Tuareg returned to Mali after the Libyan intervention, and their separatist aspirations caused an interior conflict that escalated when terrorist groups got involved. A democratically functioning country collapsed from one day to another. The crisis in Mali is a difficult challenge for the international community because it has to organize a multidimensional peacekeeping mission, while having to fight against terrorism. Moreover, the global economic crisis forced these nations to reduce their military spending without compromising effectiveness. The present paper deals with the complexity of the conflict in Mali and examines whether MINUSMA, the peacekeeping mission in Mali, is able to comply with the expected requirements.

This study seeks to assess the impact of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and identify challenges facing the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). The descriptive research design was adopted for this study and the data collected for this study collected from secondary sources such as textbooks, journals and other internet source while content analysis was used to analyse the data collected. This study is anchored on the institutional theory. This study revealed that the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has made significant impact in the area of peace building for instance large numbers of displaced people were able to return home, the stability in northern Mali was improved, and the number of civilians killed in the fighting was reduced. Moreover, MINUSMA helped with the peace process that led to the 2015 Accord for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, and aided the organising of the 2013 and 2016. However, MINUSMA is one of the costliest peacekeeping missions in Africa, with a budget of roughly $600 million and one of the deadliest peacekeeping support operations in the world in recent years considering the numbers of casualties recorded. Others include conflict over authority and labour allocation. In adequate personal and logistics issues are

Article 16.e of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2100 of 2013 mandates the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) to contribute to the creation of a secure environment for the safe, civilian-led delivery of humanitarian assistance, in accordance with humanitarian principles. With the use of a qualitative methodology and a constructivist theoretical lens, this dissertation analyses the challenges faced by MINUSMA in fulfilling such a mandate. The research concludes that stabilization and integrated peacekeeping missions such as MINUSMA that are designed to be non-neutral and active stakeholders in support of national armies through the use of force framed by Chapter VII of the UN charter are bound to contradict humanitarian ethos and unlikely to provide sustainable humanitarian security. In the case of MINUSMA, the mission is perceived by some key humanitarian stakeholders as an actor with whom to avoid association and collaboration, as there is the risk of being perceived by armed operating groups as part of the enemy to fight against.

This article examines the effects of UN peacekeeping and international counterterrorism operations upon the possibilities of peace in Mali. Following the January 2013 French operation Serval, the international intervention was divided between two military missions: UN peacekeeping in Mali and French-led counterterrorism. The article explores what it means to distinguish between peacekeeping and counterterrorism for international conflict management and Malian conflict resolution dynamics. It is argued that the binaries of war and peace, and of intervention and sovereignty, are no longer opposites, but blurred into an emerging ‘new normal’ of permanent military intervention. The construction of a regional counterterrorism governance or militarisation is shown to circumvent the fundamental questions about Malian peace, state sovereignty, and nationhood. The article points to how the international ‘division of labour’ between peacekeeping and counterterrorism defines the possibilities of peace in Mali in relation to the perceived necessities ofthe ‘global war onterror’.

Stability: International Journal of Security & Development, 2015

2013

2019

In the North, fighting between the signatories of the Algiers Agreement-the government, its allies in the Plateform, and the Coordination of Azawad Movements-has been absent, and reportedly these parties cooperated during the 2018 elections. This indicates that it is to a large extent an elite conflict that can be resolved. Moreover, in recent months, the signatory parties have been making some progress in the implementation of the Algiers Agreement and the 2018 Pact for Peace, in part due to pressure from the Security Council. Reconciliation processes are tenuous as trust among the parties is not easily built. Progress in the Malian peace process is thus slow. However, violence has increased as jihadist groups have been attacking MINUSMA, the Forces Armées Maliennes (FAMA), and the Algiers Agreement signatories. As a consequence, MINUSMA has sustained an extraordinary number of fatalities compared to other recent UN peace operations. On 20 January 2019, in Aguelhok, it lost ten personnel members in one attack alone.

The role of regional and sub-regional organizations cannot be overstated in conflict resolution, especially in their sphere of influence. The African Union and The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have played prominent roles in places like Burundi, Darfur, Chad, Somalia, and Liberia. The success achieved in these interventions would not likely have been forthcoming if the US, European Union and its member nations, along with the United Nations had not given their support to these regional and sub-regional organizations. In other words, the cooperative, collaborative, and supportive understanding between these extra-African bodies and the regional and sub-regional organizations has recorded more success than a unilateral intervention. To elaborate, the support given to ECOWAS in Liberia led to a successful resolution of that country’s war, and the AU-UN hybrid operations in Darfur is yielding some kind of modest success. Analysts have posited that at present, in the resolution of protracted conflict, there is no substitute for coherent, coordinated intervention by global power and regional and sub-regional organizations. In contrast, unilateral intervention, which, in addition to being wasteful and expensive, can be internationally controversial on the grounds of both legality and legitimacy, especially where the UN has not given its nod. This article submits that cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional African organizations should have been applied to the resolution of Mali’s conflict. Even though African regional institutions lack the required expertise, logistics, diplomatic, and financial muscle to singularly mount a successful intervention without support from extra-Africa, a swift response from and the immediate engagement of the Western world in the form of willing partnership with regional African organizations would dramatically improve the outcome of peacekeeping operations in Africa. It is the contention of this paper that France’s late intervention (after the troops of African led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) were overrun) significantly weakened a proactive response to the conflict. The same resources used by France could have been more effectively and efficiently utilized if made available to the African Union. - Considering the fact that the African Union lacked the resources to effectively intervene in Mali, making such resources available to the Union would have bolstered its capacity to intervene in Mali. In this case, cooperation not for that mission alone but future missions could have been achieved.