While the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, commonly called the “Algiers Agreement”, already seemed to have disintegrated since the resumption in 2023 of hostilities against the central state and the Malian army by independence groups predominantly Tuareg from the north of the country, the ruling junta announced Thursday “its end”, “with immediate effect”.
Published on: 01/25/2024 – 10:16 p.m. Modified on: 01/25/2024 – 10:48 p.m.
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The junta in power in Mali announced, Thursday, January 25, the “end, with immediate effect”, of the important Algiers agreement signed in 2015 with independence groups in the north of the country, long considered essential to stabilize the country .
The junta invoked “the change in posture of certain signatory groups”, but also “the acts of hostility and exploitation of the agreement on the part of the Algerian authorities, of which the country is the leader of the mediation” , indicates a press release read on state television by Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, spokesperson for the government installed by the military.
Read alsoBetween Mali and Algeria, an “unprecedented” dispute on the Tuareg question
The agreement was already considered moribund since the resumption in 2023 of hostilities against the central state and the Malian army by predominantly Tuareg independence groups from the North in the wake of the withdrawal of the United Nations mission (Minusma), pushed towards the exit by the junta after ten years of presence.
The agreement received a very serious blow at the very beginning of the year when the head of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta, announced during his New Year’s greetings the establishment of a “direct inter-Malian dialogue ” to “privilege national ownership of the peace process”.
The government “notes the absolute inapplicability of the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali resulting from the Algiers process, signed in 2015, and, therefore, announces its end, with immediate effect,” said the press release read Thursday evening.
“All negotiation channels are now closed,” Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, spokesperson for the Permanent Strategic Framework, an alliance of armed groups who signed the 2015 agreement before taking up arms again last year, told AFP. . “We have no choice but to fight this war which is imposed on us by this illegitimate junta with whom dialogue is impossible.”
Deterioration of relations with Algeria
The formalization of the end of the Algiers agreement is part of a series of ruptures carried out by the military who took power by force in 2020. They broke the old alliance with France and its European partners to turn towards Russia and made Minusma leave.
Read alsoMali: what you need to know about the definitive withdrawal of Minusma
The end of the agreement also comes in a climate of profound deterioration in relations between Mali and its big neighbor Algeria, with which Mali shares hundreds of kilometers of border.
Colonel Maïga read another vigorous communiqué on Thursday evening, specifically against Algeria. The government “notes with great concern a multiplication of unfriendly acts, cases of hostility and interference in the internal affairs of Mali by the authorities” of Algeria, he said.
He denounces “an erroneous perception of the Algerian authorities who consider Mali as their backyard or a doormat state, against a backdrop of contempt and condescension.”
Among various grievances, the junta accuses Algeria of hosting representative offices of certain groups that signed the 2015 agreement and have become “terrorist actors”.
The Malian regime “demands that the Algerian authorities immediately cease their hostility.”
Mali has been plunged into turmoil since the outbreak of independence and Salafist insurgencies in the North in 2012. The predominantly Tuareg groups then took up arms for independence or autonomy. The insurgency paved the way for armed groups linked to Al-Qaeda to conquer most of the north, triggering a military intervention by France and plunging the Sahel into war.
After a ceasefire in 2014, predominantly Tuareg armed groups signed the so-called “Algiers” peace agreement in 2015 with the government and loyalist groups fighting alongside it, which provided for more autonomy. local and the integration of combatants into a so-called “reconstituted” army, under the authority of the State.
Jihadists, for their part, continue to fight the State under the banner of Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State organization.
The violence which left thousands of combatants and civilians dead as well as millions displaced has spread to central Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, in turn the scenes of military coups in 2022 and 2023.
With AFP
