Credit: auswaertiges-amt.de/en /  Foreign Minister Heiko Maas meets German soldiers in Mali Feb. 28, 2019/© Xander Heinl/photothek.net

By  Gary Raynaldo   DIPLOMATIC TIMES

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas arrived in west Africa nation Mali just days after three UN peacekeepers from Guinea  were killed Friday near capital city Bamako. It was the second deadly attack on UN peacekeepers in Mali in the past 5 weeks. On Jan. 20, 2019, ten peacekeepers from Chad were killed in a suspected Islamist attack in northern Mali.  Mass is on the last leg of his three-west African nation tour, having stopped off in Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso earlier in the week. The ongoing terrorist attacks and ethnic tensions is of great concern to the German foreign minister. Germany is playing an active role on the ground with its participation in the UN Mission MINUSMA, the EU’s EUCAP Sahel Mali civilian mission and the EU’s training and advisory mission EUTM Mali.

MINUSMA is the deadliest mission to serve in as a UN ‘blue helmet’ with more than 180 paying the ultimate sacrifice, since it was established in 2013. In 2019 alone, the number of fatalities stands at 15, according to the  UN. 

German foreign minister Maas visited the Castor field camp in the vicinity of the city of Gao in northern Mali. In Bamako, he spoke with UN Special Representative for Mali and Head of MINUSMA Mahamat Saleh Annadif about the future direction and tasks of the mission.

Credit: / Credit: auswaertiges-amt.de/en /   Foreign Minister Heiko Maas meets his Malian counterpart Foreign Minister Kamissa Camara  in Bamako Feb. 28, 2019. / © Xander Heinl/photothek.net

The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) was established by Security Council resolution 2100 of 25 April 2013 to support political processes in that country and carry out a number of security-related tasks. In 2012, Islamist radicals linked to al-Qaeda hijacked an uprising by ethnic Tuareg people and went on to seize cities across northern Mali, holding on for nearly a year until they were forced out by a French military intervention, according to the Washington Post. When the 11,000 U.N. troops arrived in 2013, they were meant to protect a fledgling peace deal and train the Malian army.

Credit: Source: European Parliamentary Research Service Blog. The brown strip is the region known as the Sahel, which runs east and west through large parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan,and into the Horn of Africa. The Sahel is the heart of France’s military counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane, which France claims is aimed at tackling the jihadist threat in that region.

The current UN MINUSMA mandate is set to run until the end of June 2019.  It will be a time for reflection, as to what the mission has actually accomplished given the ongoing terror attacks, and instability across the west African borders.