UNITED Nations experts have accused senior army and intelligence officials in Mali of deliberately obstructing a shaky 2015 peace accord, originally designed to reduce violence in the war-torn West African country.
The revelations appear in an expert report delivered to the UN Security Council on August 7, which AFP has obtained, and which come during a festering political crisis in the Sahel state.
Mali is currently in the grip of a deep political impasse between President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and a strident opposition movement insisting on his resignation.
But much of the popular anger in the impoverished country can be attributed to its brutal eight-year conflict, which first broke out in its restive north.
Ethnic Tuareg rebels captured much of the region in 2012, triggering a war that has since been taken over by jihadists and spread to central Mali, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers along the way.
But according to the UN report, top security officials in the country have “threatened and delayed” a key peace deal which many view as one of the few escape routes from Mali’s cycle of violence.
Brokered in Algiers in 2015 between several armed groups and Mali’s government, the deal provided for rebels joining the national army again, among other measures.
Its implementation has dragged on for years, however, despite international pressure for it to be fully applied.
The report pointed to “mistrust, burden and confusion” caused by the discrepancy between the government’s statements and actions.
– Delaying tactics –
UN experts named former army chief of staff, Keba Sangare, as one of the men responsible for frustrating the deal, notably for “questionable decision-making” during a long-planned troop redeployment.
The Algiers accord provided for Malian troops reoccupying northern cities to be formed into mixed battalions of army regulars, former rebels, and pro-government militiamen.
But in the buildup to the process last year, some former rebels were not assigned units, and others were mistakenly assigned units in the south, causing months-long delays.
– AFP
