The German government on Wednesday approved the withdrawal, until May 2024, of members of the country’s armed forces participating in the MINUSMA blue helmet mission in Mali, due to tensions with the military junta.

Following a cabinet meeting under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Germany’s government has confirmed that members of the Bundeswehr, the German federal army, will gradually leave the African country over the next twelve months.

The decision to withdraw German armed forces from Mali was announced by Berlin at the end of 2022.

Berlin considers that the conditions for continued participation in MINUSMA, to which Germany has contributed forces since 2013, are no longer met.

Mali has been wracked by the spread of jihadism and violence since separatist insurgencies broke out in its north in 2012. The colonels who seized power in a coup in 2020 ended a military alliance with France and its partners in 2022 and turned in Russia.

With around 1,000 troops, Germany is now the largest Western country contributing to the extremely difficult UN mission to stabilize Mali.

“Whether we like it or not, what is happening in the Sahel concerns us”, underlined German Foreign Minister Annalena Burbock, according to a statement from her services released on Wednesday.

For this reason, Berlin intends to maintain forces in the Sahel region, redeploying them to Niger, Mauritania and the states of the Gulf of Guinea, he explained.

To keep the pressure on the jihadist organizations in the Sahel region undiminished, Western countries seek to strengthen their cooperation especially with Niger, which they describe as a more reliable partner than Mali.

The German government decided in April to send 60 members of the country’s armed forces there to take part in a new mission led by the European Union.

MINUSMA, with about 12,000 troops deployed in Mali, is the UN peacekeeping mission that has suffered by far the most casualties. Since it was formed in 2013, 185 of its members have been killed in hostile action.