Intervention in Mali: building peace between peacekeeping and counterterrorism

ABSTRACT

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 of the ‘global war on terror’.

KEYWORDS:

• Mali
• France
• peacekeeping
• terrorism
• insurgency
• intervention

Acknowledgements

I want to first thank my friends and colleagues, Professor Jonathan Sears and Dr Adam Sandor, for reading and sharing their thoughts on this manuscript on multiple occasions. Thank you also to Professor Tony Chafer for his proof-reading help and most importantly for his support and friendship over the years. For their comments and encouragements, I also want to thank Florian Kühn, Geneviève Parent, and Cédric Jourde.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Bruno Charbonneau is Professor of Political Science at Laurentian University and Director of the Centre FrancoPaix. He specialises in the international politics of West African conflicts, international intervention, and France-Africa security and political relations. He is the author of France and the New Imperialism (Ashgate/Routledge), and coeditor of Peace Operations in the Francophone World (Routledge), Peacebuilding, Memory and Reconciliation (Routledge), and Locating Global Order (UBC Press).

Notes

1. A glimpse of national media coverage shows Malians’ persistent preoccupation with the ‘refoundation’ of the Malian state (see Hasseye 2016).

2. I want to thank Jonathan Sears for this formulation.

3. I draw on diverse theoretical engagements with the violent production of space, territory, borders, and maps to highlight how geography is inextricably linked to the ‘architecture of enmity’ (Shapiro), to how security analysts conceive and construct global problematics, and thus to how violence can be legitimated. See for instance, Agnew (1994), Branch (2014), Neocleous (2003) and Shapiro (1997).

4. In informal discussions, two UN officials told me that the Malian government has finally understood the ‘limited role’ of MINUSMA and that it will not fight ‘terrorists’. Informal discussions, in person and by phone, UN officials, February and March 2017.

5. The HCUA was created in May 2013 out of the Mouvement islamique de l’Azawad (MIA); the latter having split from Ansar Eddine in January 2013.

6. The Groupe autodéfense touareg Imghad et alliés (GATIA) is a loyalist yet separate branch of the MAA and is opposed to the independence or autonomy of northern Mali.

7. All data come from either the UN website (for fatalities; see http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/fatalities.shtml) or from MINUSMA headquarters in Bamako and in my possession.

8. To know the exact number and identity of these groups, and thus their absolute or relative strength, is an impossible task. The signatory armed groups minimise their numbers during the Mécanisme opérationnel de coordination (MOC) and exaggerate their numbers when it comes to the DDR process. Also, the identity of combatants involved in criminal, trafficking or terrorist activities, blurs the line between the groups (Interview, MINUSMA, Bamako, 2 February 2017).

9. While she does not describe each quite in the same way, I take inspiration from Scheele's argument about the representations of the Sahara as ‘two incompatibles halves’ (Scheele 2012).

10. Several interviews, Paris, 2016. For an overview of Barkhane, see Ministère de la Défense (2015).

11. ‘Tondre la pelouse’, meaning that terrorism cannot be totally eradicated, but kept to a proper ‘height,’ like grass, or proper ‘strength’ through the regular use of violence. This analogy is widespread within the military. See the interview with General Bernard Barrera who was in command of Serval (Freland 2016).

12. It remains to be seen how, or if, the election of Emmanuel Macron will impact the peace process, but during his visit to Gao in May 2017 he was direct and critical of both Bamako's and Algiers's management of it (Guibert 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 430-2015-00675].