Since the end of last December, almost all of the northern Malian armed groups that signed the Algiers peace agreement in 2015 with the Malian government have suspended their participation in this agreement. They point ” the persistent lack of political will from the Malian authorities.
With our regional correspondent, Serge Daniel
This weekend, international mediation, made up in particular of Algeria and representatives of the five member countries of the UN Security Council, took an initiative to relaunch the peace process.
In a press release, she claims to have presented to the Malian government and to the ex-rebels ” concrete proposals to revive the peace agreement “. No more official details, but based on our information gathered from both parties, the document includes ” priority actions to be carried out for the process to restart. For example, there is the operationalization of the ad hoc committee on the chain of command of the reconstituted armed forces. This is one of the sensitive points.
In the future reconstituted regular army, ex-rebels generally want to wear the stripes they currently have. International mediation also offers the two parties a start of the DDR, “disarmament, demobilization, reintegration” operation, on a first batch of 13,000 ex-combatants out of the 26,000 agreed, to agree on the “ launch of development fund projects “, or the update of the security arrangements on the ceasefire. This last point is important. Very recently, a Malian army plane flew over the city of Kidal, in the northeast, controlled by the ex-rebels. The latter immediately denounced a violation of the ceasefire », and for its part the UN mission in Mali expressed concern about this renewed tension on the ground.
We do not yet know officially the reaction of the two parties to this initiative.