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The military junta is in power Mali announced this Thursday, January 25, the “end with immediate effect” of the Algiers Agreement, signed in 2015 with separatist groups in the north of the country and considered essential for the stabilization of the country.
The panel referred to “the change of position of certain groups of signatories” as well as “hostile actions and instrumentalization of the agreement by the Algerian authorities, a country that was the main broker” of the agreement, it said in a statement that can be read on state television. by Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga, military-appointed government spokesman.
The agreement had already been considered dead since hostilities against the central state and the Malian army resumed in 2023 by separatist groups, especially the northern Tuareg, after the withdrawal of the UN mission (Minusma), sponsored by the military junta after ten years of presence.
This pact received a serious blow earlier this year when the head of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta, announced during his New Year's greetings the establishment of a “direct intra-Malian dialogue” to “privilege national peacemaking.” .” .
The government “confirms the absolute inapplicability of the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation in Mali signed in 2015, arising from the Algiers Process, and therefore announces its termination with immediate effect,” it said in a statement read out on Thursday.
“All negotiating channels are closed,” Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane, spokesman for the Permanent Strategic Framework, an alliance of armed groups that signed the 2015 deal before taking up arms again last year, told AFP. “We have no choice but to fight this war forced upon us by this illegitimate junta with which dialogue is impossible.”
Deterioration of relations with Algeria
The formalization of the end of the Algiers agreement is part of a series of breaches by the military, which has seized power by force. They broke the old alliance with France and its European partners and turned to Russia and they did the Minusma March.
The end of the agreement also comes in a climate of profound deterioration in relations with its large neighbor Algeria, with which Mali shares hundreds of kilometers of border.
Colonel Maïga read out another strong statement on Thursday, particularly against Algeria. The government “observes with great concern an increase in hostile acts, Cases of hostility and interference in Mali's internal affairs by the Algerian authoritieshe claimed.
He denounces “a false perception of the Algerian authorities, who see Mali as their backyard or a doormat state, in a context of contempt and condescension.”
Among other things, the junta accuses Algeria of hosting representative offices of certain groups that signed the 2015 agreement and have become “terrorist actors.”
Mali has been in turmoil since the outbreak of independence and Salafist uprisings in the north in 2012..
Predominantly Tuareg groups took up arms in search of independence or autonomy. The uprising paved the way for al-Qaeda-linked armed groups to conquer most of the north, leading to military intervention by France and plunging the Sahel into war.
After a ceasefire in 2014, predominantly armed Tuareg groups signed the so-called peace agreement in 2015 with the government and loyalist movements fighting alongside it, which provided for greater local autonomy and the integration of combatants into a so-called “reconstituted army”. under the authority of the state.
For their part, the jihadists continue to fight against the state under the banner of Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State organization.
The violence, which has left thousands of combatants and civilians dead and millions displaced, has spread to central Mali and neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger, which themselves were the site of military coups in 2022 and 2023.
With AFP and Portal
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