Mali, a strategic country

People in Bamako, Mali, celebrate the arrival of the forces backing the coup.

There is no good military coup. Not even, as is the case in the Republic of Mali, when it comes to overthrowing a corrupt and incompetent government, emerging from elections held in the midst of a war against jihadism and in pandemic conditions. Nor does it matter that the population demands it, following the fashion of civic-military coups in which popular demonstrations find the decisive support of the armed cars. The deposed president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was elected in 2018 in the second round of the elections in front of an eternal candidate, Soumaila Cissé, then kidnapped during the 2020 general election campaign by one of the jihadist groups that proliferate in the region .

This has been the first military coup in the midst of the health crisis in a continent and a country too accustomed to military coups. The general elections that strengthened the president were also strange elections, held with very low turnout, under pandemic conditions and, what is worse and even more endemic, under a terrorist threat that affected the candidates. It is urgent that the military that have now taken power leave the call for the next general elections in the hands of civilians. The military are no more trustworthy than civilians, no longer in matters of corruption, but above all in matters of individual rights and freedoms. The political vacuum that the country is experiencing, especially the northern regions dominated by Islamist guerrillas allied to the Tuareg nationalists, does not represent the most favorable situation so that the reestablishment of democracy is not limited to the often rigged formalism of filling ballot boxes with ballots. .

In the case of Mali, the terrorist ferment, linked to the presence of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in this region of Africa, has a special significance and is what has motivated the presence of the military mission of the European Union, in the 220 Spanish soldiers participate. This Sahelian country occupies a transcendental position in the movements not only of terrorist groups, but also of immigrant trafficking mafias throughout the African continent and especially in connection with the Mediterranean countries.

The preparation and training of an army such as that of Mali, which has just carried out a coup action, can hardly be assimilated normally by the international officials in charge. Hence the demand for an immediate return to constitutional legality and a return to civil power, indispensable conditions for a stability in the region that can never be guaranteed solely by the efforts of an international United Nations force.