France will be uncompromising in its fight against militant Islamists in Mali and the Sahel region, President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday during his first visit outside Europe’s borders.
Speaking alongside Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita at the Gao military base in the north of the country where some 1,600 troops are based, Macron also said France was determined to act for continued security in the region, and would seek to strengthen cooperation with France’s EU partner Germany to that end.
“Germany is very present in back-up operations,” he said.
“I want to strengthen that partnership and make sure that this German commitment, which is already present, can be intensified.”
“Germany knows what is at stake here (and) is also part of Europe’s security and our future. Neither France nor Germany are isolated islands.”
NAN reports that Macron’s trip to Mali is the first trip as commander-in-chief.
He is meeting troops fighting Islamist militants in Mali where the security situation has worsened despite French intervention more than four years ago.
The Sahel, a politically fragile area whose remote desert spaces spanning from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east host a medley of jihadist groups, is seen as vulnerable after a series of attacks in recent months.
That has been brought further to light after a spike in violence across Mali, where the former colonial power intervened more than four years ago to drive out al Qaeda-linked militants who hijacked a rebellion in 2012 by ethnic Tuaregs and attempted to take control of the central government in Bamako.
Macron, a newcomer to international diplomacy, put counter-terrorism at the top of his security priorities during the election campaign, vowing to strengthen support for West African allies.
The trip to Gao, where some 1,600 troops are based and where he will also hold talks with Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, will reaffirm Paris’ engagement, in stark contrast to his predecessor Francois Hollande, who began his term pulling troops out of Afghanistan.
After sending troops to Mali, France has since spread some 4,000 soldiers across the region to hunt down Islamists, while UN’ peacekeepers have been deployed to ensure Mali’s stability.
However, the UN’s forces have lacked equipment and resources, making a political settlement between Tuaregs and the government in Mali increasingly fragile and paving the way for Islamists and traffickers to exploit a void in the north of the country.
(The Nation )
