The Sandbag Times Issue No:58

NEWS
AUGUST EDITION
British Troops to Join Force
Countering Mali Militants
Story: The Guardian - Jason Burke Africa correspondent
Image: Benoit Tessier/Reuters
British troops will be deployed in
Mali next year to join in the world’s
deadliest peacekeeping operation,
the Ministry of Defence has announced.
The 250-strong force will provide a longrange
reconnaissance capability for the
United Nations deployment in the troubled
African country which has struggled
to decisively counter Islamic militants,
armed separatists and traffickers.
The deployment is likely to place British
troops in combat situations, facing risks of
ambushes and roadside bombs in remote
and hostile environments.
The UN is operating alongside a Frenchled
force that has been fighting Islamic
militants in Mali for six years. The mission
is known as one of the most dangerous undertaken
by the organisation anywhere in
the world. More than 170 people deployed
by the UN have been killed there between
2013 and February.
Penny Mordaunt, the defence minister,
said it was right that “in one of the world’s
poorest and most fragile regions we
support some of world’s most vulnerable
people … UK service personnel will work
with our partners in the region to help
promote peace by combating the threat of
violent extremism and protecting human
rights in Mali”.
Mali, which occupies a key location in the
centre of the restive Sahel, was plunged
into chaos in 2012 when Tuareg separatists
and Islamic extremists joined forces
to take control of much of the north of
the country. French forces intervened the
following year to halt their advance and
4,000 French troops remain there.
The UN security council later deployed
peacekeepers, which have been targets of
a fierce insurgent campaign. A 2015 peace
deal signed by Mali’s government and
separatist groups failed to end the violence
and instability has since spread across the
region.
More than 200,000 people have been
displaced in Mali since the start of 2019
and about 600 killed in a series of militia
attacks. Islamic extremists have staged assaults
on high-profile targets in the capital,
Bamako, and in neighbouring Burkina
Faso and Ivory Coast. There is also violence
in neighbouring Niger, where four
US servicemen were killed in an ambush
by Islamic militants in 2017.
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