Across the vast, red-dusted expanses of the Sahel, far from European scrutiny, Mali is confronting a harsh reality: the decision to dismiss crucial partners who once held the line against escalating chaos now yields severe consequences. The recent surge in attacks devastating the nation is neither accidental nor predestined. Instead, it represents the foreseeable fallout of a pronounced political rupture, framed as an assertion of national sovereignty. This sovereignty, however, has been largely amplified by an anti-French rhetoric, serving as a tool for internal legitimization.
Bamako sought the french departure, and it was granted.
The final French convoys departed from Gao, Tessalit, and Ménaka amidst public jeers, fueled by years of accusatory discourse. At that time, operational realities seemed secondary. Little consideration was given to the fact that in 2013, when jihadist columns threatened to engulf the south, it was French forces that decisively halted the imminent collapse of the Malian state.
President Emmanuel Macron’s candid remark, « Le Mali n’a pas pris la meilleure décision en chassant l’armée française », delivered with almost clinical detachment, now resonates as a stark strategic truth. While acknowledging past French missteps, such as potentially overestimating military solutions without driving essential local political reforms, the President consistently maintained that without French intervention, Mali faced a perilous future. He had previously asserted, without ambiguity, « Sans la France, le Mali ne serait plus un État uni ».
This undeniable truth appears to be resurfacing with brutal clarity.
The ground itself remains impervious to slogans or political posturing. With French bases evacuated, a palpable security vacuum emerged. Groups affiliated with Al-Qaida and the Islamic State swiftly moved to exploit these vulnerabilities. Where Operation Barkhane once provided containment, surveillance, intelligence, and decisive strikes, Malian authorities now struggle to maintain lasting control over their territory.
Behind these developments lies a memory that demands respectful acknowledgment.
Fifty-eight french soldiers perished in the Sahel.
Fifty-eight lives lost in a conflict that was neither abstract nor theoretical. They fell in Kidal, within the Adrar des Ifoghas, in In Delimane, on roads riddled with mines, during nocturnal operations, under scorching temperatures, confronting a diffuse, mobile, and elusive enemy.
These soldiers were not occupiers. They were not colonial predators disguised by militant fiction. They represented the instruments of a military commitment undertaken by France to prevent the establishment of a terrorist sanctuary at the heart of the Sahel.
They paid the ultimate price.
Their sacrifice necessitates at least one imperative: that their memory not be dissolved by ideological simplifications.
Indeed, France made errors. Yet, it also bore, almost single-handedly for years, a colossal military burden to safeguard an already precarious regional balance.
Mali chose to detach itself from this security framework in the name of proclaimed independence. It now faces the full weight of these consequences.
Emmanuel Macron, in stating that Bamako had not made « la meilleure décision », was not expressing post-colonial resentment or sentimental regret. He was merely observing what reality now confirms with relentless cruelty: in certain parts of the world, declared sovereignty alone is insufficient to contain advancing jihadist columns.
For France, the Sahel became a theater of diplomatic attrition.
But for its soldiers, it remains something more profound: a field of honor.
And that honor is not subject to the whims of public opinion.