On a mission to rebuild Mali’s army

Will the EU training programme be able to bring the country’s military from scratch?

European troops training members of the Malian military. Eight Irish Defence Forces personnel are participating in the EU mission to train Mali’s army to fight militants in the country’s north. Photograph: Mary Fitzgerald

Col Mamadou Mangara has one of the toughest jobs in Mali – and one of the most dangerous. As regional governor of Timbuktu, not only does he have to pick up the pieces of a society left fractured after 10 months of jihadist rule here last year, he also has to oversee an area of some 500,000sq km into which the militants vanished following a French-led intervention in January.

Now, however, the jihadists are coming back, mounting attacks, including suicide bombings, in Timbuktu and other northern towns. In early April the hotel Mangara used as a base was targeted during hours of fighting in Timbuktu. “The enemy we face is a very difficult one,” he told me just days after the attack. “These people are ready to do anything, even blow themselves up, to destroy all the symbols of the Malian state and create chaos.”

Outside, a few dozen Malian soldiers, their AK47s close to hand, sit in the shade next to pick-up trucks mounted with heavy weaponry. During the last attack, they took on the jihadists before calling for support from French forces stationed at the nearby airport.

But what happens when Paris withdraws most of its 4,000 soldiers from Mali’s northern belt, as has started in recent weeks? French president François Hollande has said that the number of French troops on the ground, currently backed by soldiers from other African countries including Chad, will be down to 2,000 by July, and reduced to 1,000 by the end of the year.

Those who remain will most likely form part of the mooted UN mission France has been clamouring for.

Military coup
Where does that leave the Malian army, a force that was so disorganised and demoralised after Tuareg separatists allied with well-armed jihadists drove it from the country’s northern flank last spring that it prompted a military coup in the capital Bamako?

This is what worries many in Timbuktu, where the euphoria that followed the militants’ routing in January has evaporated, replaced by fears of a long, drawn-out insurgency. “I feel safer, but not safe,” as one local woman puts it. “It will take years to return to life as we once knew it.”

Few here have much confidence in the Malian soldiers, many of them poorly equipped, who they see patrolling the streets. “They are not even fit to fight a normal war let alone face jihadists who fear nothing, even death,” says a Timbuktu business owner.

There are stories of the army harassing and intimidating those suspected – often on the flimsiest of grounds – of sympathising with the jihadists. One aid worker says he had to leave Timbuktu this month following death threats related to his research on military abuses, including alleged summary executions. Human rights groups have highlighted similar cases across northern Mali.

This is the dense knot of challenges a recently launched EU mission, aimed at improving Mali’s ragtag forces, seeks to address. The mission, known at EUTM, will train some 3,000 soldiers – about half of what is estimated to remain of the Malian army – over a 15-month period. The 500-strong EU team includes eight members of the Irish Defence Forces.

Army failings
“The Malian authorities are well aware of the need to reconstruct the army, very aware that Mali almost disappeared due to the failings of the institution,” French general François Lecointre, who is leading the mission, said last month. “Objectively, it must be entirely rebuilt.”

Missing from Mali’s military is a clear hierarchy or chain of command and any esprit de corps, according to Lecointre. What little equipment it boasts has been cobbled together from materiel donated by other countries. “Mali accepted equipment from any country offering but it doesn’t function as a whole and often can be either obsolete or over-sophisticated,” said Lecointre.