Crisis In Mali Know All About It

Table of Contents

Background

In the years following its independence from France in 1960, Mali was viewed as having achieved a good track record in democratic government.
In 1996, a New York Times correspondent on a reporting trip to Mali made note of the pervasive poverty afflicting the citizenry,
But said the West African country nevertheless had become “one of this continent’s most vibrant democracies.”
But Mali, once cited as a democratic role model in the region, has lurched from one crisis to another since the 2012 coup.
The coup overthrew President Amadou Touré a month before elections were to be held.

The factors behind that coup, in part a consequence of the Arab Spring.
After the fall of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 2011, hundreds of heavily armed Malian rebels who had fought for the Libyan leader returned home and attacked northern towns,
Creating the chaos that preceded the military takeover.

In 2012, Ethnic Tuareg separatists in northern Mali declared independence and launched an offensive to take control of territory they claimed as part of their new country.
For a time, they joined forces with hard-core Jihadi groups and succeeded in evicting government forces from large swaths of northern Mali, including the city of Timbuktu.

The Malian government asked for international assistance.
The French military intervened directly on their behalf, beating back the Jihadist insurgency.
Meanwhile, a UN Peacekeeping force, now known as MINUSMA, deployed to stabilize areas that were formerly controlled by insurgents.
In 2015, a peace agreement negotiated between PresidentIbrahim Boubacar Keita and key armed groups affiliated with the Tuareg separatists ushered in a new constitutional order.
Since then, the country has nevertheless been beset by instability.
It is, for example, the deadliest UN peacekeeping mission–by far.

Keïta, the president arrested in Tuesday’s coup, won office in a landslide in 2013.
But whatever hopes Keita raised when he took 78 per cent of the vote, his star, and his genuine popularity, gradually faded.
He vowed “zero tolerance” for corruption, but Malians came to view him with mistrust.
Keita won reelection in 2018, when he ran for a second term, but only after being forced into a runoff.

An opposition coalition known as the June 5 Movement, led by prominent cleric Mahmoud Dicko, is calling for the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita,
In the wake of the country’s April parliamentary elections.
The protests were spurred by a Constitutional Court decision to overturn some of the election results, which the opposition says unfairly helped members of Keita’s party remain in office.
Keita refused to step down, but he had been without a government since April, when his prime minister and the rest of his government resignedamid an intensification of the civil war.
Keita formed a new cabinet in late July in an attempt to get a handle on the crisis.