France Accuses Mali of ‘Wiping Your Feet on the Blood of French Soldiers’

French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly expressed her government’s growing frustration with the Mali junta on Tuesday, railing that the junta’s reluctance to permit elections on schedule was jeopardizing counterterrorism efforts in the volatile region and disrespecting the sacrifices made by French soldiers.

Parly doubted the junta would “keep the commitments made vis-a-vis the international community” to hold elections in February 2022.

“I have the impression that the date doesn’t suit them perfectly, and that they want to prolong things. But from wanting that to wiping your feet on the blood of French soldiers, it’s unacceptable,” she said.

France has suffered 52 casualties since it began fighting Islamist militants in Mali in 2013. The most recent was a commando named Master Corporal Maxime Blasco, who was killed last Friday while his unit was hunting militants in a forest near the Burkina Faso border. Blasco was shot in the head by a sniper when the militants attacked his team.

Mali’s civilian government was overthrown by a military coup in August 2020. The commitment Parly referred to was made about a month later, when the junta announced an 18-month transition plan to civilian rule.

The military appointed an interim or transitional civilian government, but in May it was dismissed by junta leader Col. Assimi Goita, who went on to appoint himself president. Skeptical observers described Goita’s actions as a coup-within-a-coup and doubted his commitment to restoring civilian government. 

On Sunday, Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga told the AFP news service that elections might have to be postponed by “two weeks, two months, a few months” in order to ensure the results “will not be contested.”

“It is better to organize peaceful elections, recognized by all, rather than to organize elections that will be disputed,” Maiga said.

France began “re-organizing” its forces in the Sahel region in June, pulling troops out of three bases in northern Mali and making plans to reduce its total deployment from 5,000 to as little as 2,500 by 2023. 

Maiga claimed France was “abandoning” his country, a charge Parly and other French officials heatedly denied. Mali further infuriated France by reportedly working out a deal with Russia’s infamous Wagner Group security company to hire a thousand mercenaries to replace departing French soldiers.

Although Malian officials have denied the Wagner Group story, Kremlin spokesman Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday it was true, repeating Maiga’s complaint about French abandonment.

“They are combating terrorism, incidentally, and they have turned to a private military company from Russia in connection with the fact that, as I understand, France wants to significantly draw down its military component which was present there,” Lavrov said during a press conference at the United Nations in New York.

France said the presence of Russian mercenaries in Mali would be “incompatible” with its own troop deployments, while the European Union warned both Russia and Mali that deploying the Wagner Group would cross a “red line” and would “have immediate consequences on our cooperation.”

“Interventions in other countries by mercenaries from the private military company Wagner have resulted in serious human rights violations, exploitation of natural resources and people and a deterioration in the security situation, notably in central Africa,” French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said on Monday.