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For the second time in less than a year, the Mali army is back in command.
Nine months after President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita came to power as a result of mass protests against the government, the army arrested President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane on Monday, shortly after announcing a new cabinet dismissing two key military leaders.
Colonel Assimi Goita, who led the August 2020 coup and was tasked with directing the country to full civilian authority in late September, was a deputy from Ndaw, who said he had not been consulted on the renovation work amid announced social tensions. including a general strike called by the main unions in Mali.
Taken to a military base, Ndaw, a retired military man, and Ouane left office on Wednesday. Later that day, the UN Security Council condemned the “unacceptability” of “forcibly changing the transitional leadership, even through forced resignations.”
By Friday, however, there was Goita he was appointed interim president Constitutional Courts of Mali.
The West African Economic Community (ECOWAS) has invited military leaders to talks with the current president of the regional bloc, Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, according to Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. The talks are scheduled for Sunday.
France, which has thousands of soldiers in Mali to fight armed groups, said the army’s ownership was “unacceptable” and warned of “specific sanctions” against what President Emmanuel Macron described as “a coup within a coup”.
Following last year’s coup, ECOWAS suspended Mali from its institutions and announced several sanctions, including closing borders and disrupting financial flows.
Some analysts have doubts about the effectiveness of these measures and whether they are the best way to return to civilian government.
“The sanctions regime was not very successful,” Emmanuel Kwesi, director of research at the International Peace Training Center, Anning Kofi Annan, told Al Jazeera.
“People were able to trade; the boundaries are porous. But ECOWAS’s desire to impose sanctions regardless of the political, economic and social reality of Mali made the penal regime itself anathema and allowed people to be very critical of ECOWAS, ”he said.
“Right now, any narrative or decision to re-impose these punishments will be rejected. We need a much more nuanced dialogue about what the people of Mali are really looking for,” Anning added.
On Wednesday, Washington said it was “suspending security assistance” to Mali’s security and defense forces, which are fighting to have armed groups in the north and center of the country.
“The United States will also look into specific measures against political and military leaders that hinder the transition to democratic leadership in Mali,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
He has been in Mali since a 2012 uprising prompted insurgent soldiers to oust the president.
Pure power helped ethnic Tuareg separatists, allied with fighters in an al-Qaeda fight, to launch a revolt that took control of northern Mali. Fighters from the armed group quickly pushed over the Tuareg rebels and took over the main cities in the north in early 2013 until they were overthrown by a French-led counterattack.
Fighters remain active and groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL have moved to more populous central Mali from the arid north since 2015, attacking targets and encouraging hostility and violence among the region’s ethnic groups.
There is concern that recent developments in Bamako could make the fragile security situation even more precarious.
“It [the coup] in addition to reviving violence and creating more armed groups in Mali, it is a symbol of the military’s ability to return and seize power, ”Anning said.
Prior to the latest coup, Mali was scheduled to hold presidential and legislative elections in February next year. On Friday, Goita promised that the polls would go ahead as planned.
He also said that he will elect a prime minister in a few days, a figure that will come from the June 5 opposition Rally of Abertzale Forces Movement (M5-RFP) – a strong group of street demonstrations against Keita last year.
The M5-RFP movement was sidelined by last year’s coup d’état when they created transitional organizations.
Jean-Herve Jezequel of the Crisis Group said a publication the coming days this week will be “decisive,” with the political blockade also likely.
“But whatever the outcome, the new crisis highlights the lack of a strong coalition that supports transitional actions, especially the ambitious call for reform of Mali’s political system,” he added. “Perhaps that aspect is the most worrying: after all these crises, Malik still doesn’t know the political forces that are capable of bringing about the change the country needs.”
Moussa Kondo, a civil society activist and director of Mali’s Accountability Lab, said the election is “what will get Mali out of this cycle”.
“We Malians have experienced a challenged situation between the president and the military junta,” he told Al Jazeera. “We must seek a peaceful and transparent solution that is acceptable to all Malians.”
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