Opération Extérieures (OPEX) - Opex Serval - Mali - 11 Jan 2013 - Aug 2014
France wants Niger protected from the insurgencies sweeping across the Sahel region, and it is ready to support the MNLA, which in return would prevent the expansion of jihadist groups towards the borders of Niger, the world’s fourth largest producer of uranium. Coincidentally or not, France generates more than 75 percent of its electricity through nuclear plants. Unsurprisingly, Niger is host to France’s biggest economic interest of in the region and therefore its security is a foreign policy priority for the French government. Protecting the eastern borders of Niger was indeed among the major reasons behind French President François Hollande’s decision to get involved in the conflict in Mali.
In 2011, the Arab uprisings erupted, reaching the shores of Tripoli in Libya. It's leader at the time, Col. Muamar Qadaffi didn't have a large military, so he armed and employed mercenaries — many of whom were Touareg — to put down the uprising in his country. That failed, leaving the Touaregs with a big weapons cache — and no one to stop them from using it. The separatist Touareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) soon mounted an insurgency to challenge the Malian government's control of the north.
In 2012, the Malian military seized power in a coup supposed to halt the army's defeat of the independence and jihadist rebels in the North, plunging the country into an ongoing crisis. The mutiny of Malian soldiers in January 2012 were angered by the central government's mishandling of the rebellion. In 2012-2013, the security and defense forces were guilty of "assassinations" targeting "particularly members of the Tuareg and Arab communities," associating them with independence rebels and jihadist groups.
Soon after declaring the new state of Azawad, the MNLA failed to gain international recognition and after running out of money, many of its fighters defected to Al Qaeda linked groups. As a result, they were driven out of many northern cities including Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu by Ansar al Dine and AQIM. Meanwhile, the interim government in Mali requested that France intervene.
France, the colonial power, launched a military operation in 2013 that scattered the jihadists. Named after an African wild-cat, France’s Operation Serval intervention, without prior approval by the UNSC, results in legal scrutiny over whether it has a lawful mandate to be in the country. The UNSC later authorises the French Operation Serval retroactively.
In their January 2014 book, La Gloire des Imposteurs, Malian activist Aminata Dramane Traore and Senegalese novelist Bouvbacar Boris Diop explain the initial enthusiasm for the war with the Malians’ shock and panic in the face of the invaders from the north who were destroying historic monuments, killing and mutilating people.
In early 2013, as the French army and Malian security forces cleared large parts of the country from several terror groups, the Malian army came in and filled the power vacuum. Soon after, cases of enforced disappearances of the minority Arab and Tuareg populations allegedly by the Malian security forces were recorded in Timbuktu. France intervened militarily in Mali as the Malian authorities asked them to do so in 2013. They came in to halt the advance of terrorist groups towards the south of the country, as the northern regions of this West African country had fallen nine months earlier into the hands of the Tuareg fighters, who were supported by terror groups linked to Al Qaeda.
When the Malian security forces first entered Timbuktu in January 2013, they were welcomed by civilians, who celebrated the return of the men in uniform for several weeks. Although many Arabs and Tuaregs had fled the city for fear of reprisals from the army, as many of them were involved in the rebellion in the northern parts of Mali, some had stayed behind, waiting for law and order to be restored.
It was first the 503rd RT in command of emergency pre-routings in the area of regrouping and waiting (ZRA) of Miramas. This was the 519th GTM, true umbilical cord for this operation, which validated the concept of entry first by sea. It was again the 1st RTP fully deployed which masterfully validated in this operation the national concept of air operations. Finally, it was the regiments (121 th and 515 thRT, RSC, GDLN ...) which, under command of 511e RT and always in the emergency, deployed on the theater of-management of the various logistics sub-groupsof the Batlog. All of them contributed to making the formidable "Tour de force" to succeed, first of all in urgently meeting the logistical challenge of "entering first" on the theater, then to supply under conditions of extreme difficulty the 4,000 men of the deployed force.
A specific and demanding theater of engagementIn a landlocked country inside West Africa and almost twice the size of France, the area engagement of the elements of the SERVAL brigade is first of all a desert area where everything is lacking for the force. The climatic conditions are extreme with very low rainfall and very high temperatures. The airport platforms have either limited reception capacities (Bamako) or poor quality on which, moreover, the heat limits the performance and therefore the carrying capacity of aircraft. In the Gulf War, the rise in power was spread over several months and in Afghanistan the maximum conditions did not exceed 120 km. This time it was, via five different entry points into the theater (Dakar, Niamey, Abidjan, Ndjamena and Bamako), to project and support a force of 4,000 men, with elongations of 1,800 km between the latter city and Tessalit in the north of the country.
Moreover, while the war in Afghanistan was that of zone control, Operation SERVAL saw the return of mobility. The French forces were very mobile and capable of fighting day and night imposed on the enemy a rhythm that the latter could not follow, but to which French logistics obviously adapted. Advantage: reductionthe danger of improvised explosive devices for French convoys which, on the other hand, had to circulate on a limited road network whose main axes were not paved, with bridges of limited tonnage.
The personnel of the 1 st RTP and 519 th GTM first participated in the transit of the units from the various points of disembarkation by air and sea. The 1 st RTP also provided emergency supplies to the force by air and even dropped, always in an emergency, heavy equipment for organizing the terrain. On this same terrain, elongations as well as the decentralized nature of the maneuver required the creation of 3 sub-groups logistical elements (SGL), responsible for supporting the GTIAs as closely as possible.
The only formation fully digitized from its engagement, the 511 e RT quickly deployed in the wake ofFrench forces over a distance of nearly 2,000 km between the capital Bamako and Tessalit in northern Mali. The ba-taillon successfully carried out nearly 250 missions including 140 convoy operations and logistics raids (some withnearly 70 vehicles), at a particularly high operational rate and in direct support of the tac-combined arms ticks (GTIA) of the SERVAL brigade. It traveled more than 2 million kilometers in desert areawithout major technical incident, transported 14,000 tonnes of freight, 3 million liters of fuel and repaired nearlyof 400 vehicles and machines of all types.
The French army brought back an army that it could not control. This made the situation deteriorate. If there are recurrent rebellions and terrorism, the army finds itself in uncomfortable situations and often because of the frequent ambush attacks, some soldiers get fed up. Some soldiers who believe that the Malian justice system does not sanction or condemn the presumed terrorists tend to take justice into their own hands.
In June 2013 Mali's interim government and the Tuareg rebels sign a cease-fire agreement paving the way for presidential and parliamentary elections. In August 2013, gaining a majority of the vote in a run-off election, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is elected president. Keita’s party also wins parliamentary elections later that year in December. In May 2014, renewed clashes between the MNLA and the Malian government occur, with Tuareg rebels again taking over territory. Shortly thereafter, a new ceasefire was signed.
France launched its military intervention in Mali in January 2013 with the mandate to stop an uprising of various militant groups in the north, threatening the stability and sovereignty of the country. The goal was then to free the northern part of the country from jihadist occupation, bring back peace, and restore Malian sovereignty on the whole territory. Although France’s defence minister announced that the so-called “Operation Serval” had “fulfilled its mission”, Mali was hardly a peaceful place.
After having defeated the invaders, and chasing them out of Timbuktu and other northern cities, and disarming factions of the rebellions, the French military surprisingly (or not) banned the Malian army from Kidal, the central city of the northern Azawad region. The territory is claimed by different rebel groups, but it is under the de facto control of the MNLA (National Movement for Liberation of the Azawad).
France allowed the rebels to occupy the area, reorganise and later gain a place at the post-war negotiations table. The first round of peace talks supervised by France took place in mid-July in Algiers between Malian authorities and various rebel groups. The Malian government had always rejected negotiating with rebels who call for cessation, yet this time it had to accept the talks. As is well known, France has openly supported the MNLA for a long time and the MNLA is profusely covered by French media, which presents a sympathetic romanticised image of the rebels. The leaders of the MNLA are frequent visitors to the French capital and quite welcome on French TV, which likes to show people in MNLA-controlled territories amicably accepting French troops.
In July, France signed a new defence agreement with Mali, which would allow it to maintain a considerable military presence in the country. The agreement’s eleven pages of mostly general statements say that French military troops and civil servants will be allowed to stay in Mali, build military bases, operate, if needed, with Malian troops, etc., for the next five years. The five years term, as written in the document, is renewable.
With this agreement Mali started to reverse the decolonialisation project of its first president Modibo Keïta, who made sure the last French soldier departed his country in 1961. Keita was a firm nationalist and while almost all the newly independent West African countries at that time signed defence pacts with their former “master”, he only consented to an agreement on economic and cultural cooperation with France. Keita didn’t allow French military bases or troops on Malian soil.
In August 2014, the French replaced Operation Serval with Operation Barkhane which was aimed at countering terrorist forces across the Sahel through its bases in Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad. In 2015, a peace deal was signed in Algeria between the Malian government and the Touareg armed groups and pro-government militias in what was set to be the official end of the crisis.
Serval provided a showcase for the French weapons industry. One little-known aspect of the offensive is that it made heavy use of Harfang drones. Developed by the Franco-German arms manufacturer EADS and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the Harfang is modelled on IAI’s Heron.
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