President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita announced his resignation on state television late Tuesday, hours after he and Prime Minister Boubou Cisse were arrested by mutual soldiers.
The coup – the latest uprising in a decade-long cycle of unrest – follows months of massive anti-government protests and an escalating uprising of Islamist militants north of the capital, Bamako.
Mali shares borders with Burkina Faso and Niger, and all three countries have struggled with the growing presence of Islamist groups.
Given the instability in the Sahel region, observers fear that if Mali continues to fall into chaos, the dominoes will fall sharply and rapidly, potentially causing unrest as far as coastal West Africa – where the United States is economically and strategically have interests – and beyond.
What led to the coup?
Public discontent began to grow in May after the country’s top constitutional court overturned the results of a contested election, building the way for Keita’s party to occupy a majority of the vacant seats in parliament.
Unhappiness, especially among young people, is driven by poverty, lack of employment and frustration over corruption.
Mali has a young population – about half of the country’s 19 million people are under the age of 18, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). And 42.7% of Malians live in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank.
The government has also faced criticism over its inability to quell the continuing unrest by violent extremists in the north of the country and more remote areas, far from Bamako, despite continued efforts against insurgency by Western and regional powers. .
Mali previously faced a major uprising in 2012 after a coup staged by medium-sized army officers left the door open for jihadist groups and rebels from the marginalized Tuareg ethnic minority to seize a major part of the country.
Keita, who was elected in 2013 with a mandate to pursue peace, is seen as tarnishing the goodwill he initially enjoyed. The peace treaty he helped make did not give all sides a seat at the table, and his government was clad in allegations of corruption.
Videos circulating online show Malians supporting soldiers as they walked through the city, said Nadia Adam, a researcher at the Institute of Security Studies based in Bamako. “Most Malians think this is a good thing. This is something they have been asking for for a very long time, a few weeks, a few months themselves, as shown in the protests in July when they demanded the dismissal of President Keita. , “she said. “And that’s what they got yesterday.”
Who else is involved in Mali?
France – the former colonial power in Mali – and the United States will both carefully review the latest developments.
France has been militarily involved in the country since the coup in 2012. Efforts went well at first, but what is known as Operation Barkhane is increasingly seen as a long-running supply of resources with no clear end in sight. For eight years, France spends close to $ 1 billion a year on the operation, but has failed the lawlessness in Mali’s border regions.
Meanwhile, US interest in Mali is dominated by a desire for stability in what is seen as a nexus for Islamist insurgent groups in the Sahel region.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to close the $ 110 million air base and withdraw US support for France’s operation. Paris is lobbying hard to maintain this support, as it is strengthening its own troop numbers to combat an increase in insurgent activity in the region.
The US has only a limited number of personnel in Mali, who carry out primarily counter-terrorism activities with local and international partners.
A UN mission, known as MINUSMA, has also been in Mali since April 2013. As of March 2020, more than 13,500 uniformed personnel in Mali were deployed under its banner. The mission is one of the deadliest surveillance by the UN, with so far more than 200 dead.
The G5 Sahel, a regional cooperation agreement created in 2014, has also been involved in combating security threats in Mali and the wider Sahel region with a force of about 5,000 troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
And the Economic Community of West African States, the regional bloc known as ECOWAS, has also sent political mediators to Mali in recent months.
What’s next for Mali?
Mali’s military leaders have said they want to see “credible regional elections” within a “reasonable time frame.”
According to analyst Adam, the leaders said they needed to intervene to “ensure that the Malians received the treatment they deserve.”
The coups have not yet nominated the person who will be in charge during the transition period, Adam said. “Once we have the roadmap on what they really want to do, we will have a clearer understanding of what will happen in the next few months,” she added.
Influential cleric Mahmoud Dicko, who has been an important voice for the opposition movement, has said he is not interested in a political role.
Colonel Major Ismaël Wagué, a spokeswoman for the military leaders, mentioned several grievances with Keita’s leadership, including accusations of corruption, patronage and failure to deal with Mali in the long term.
The geographical and cultural differences between Bamako and the north of the country have always weighed heavily, and helped shed light on the 2012 upheaval that overturned former President Amadou Toure.
Armed groups in the north have for years taken advantage of the remoteness of the territory and the lack of one truly central government outside Bamako. Those groups rely on trafficking, drug dealing and other criminal activities for funds.
Operations by French and UN troops have helped prevent them from controlling large tracts of land, but observers fear that a power vacuum in Mali could be further fueled by the coup and a lack of good governance could help them gain land.
Will outside forces take action?
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss the situation, two UN diplomatic sources told CNN.
The UN talks were requested by France and Niger, according to diplomatic sources. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the subject.
The Moussa Faki Mahamat of the African Union Commission on Tuesday called in the statement “the mutiners to stop all use of force”. He called on the international community to oppose any use of force.
Europe will push for a “democratic and constitutional process” in Mali, European Interior Commissioner Thierry Breton, a French national, said on Wednesday.
“This is extremely important. There is a constitution, it must be respected,” Breton told French radio station Europa 1. “Mali is an element of stability or destabilization in this complex Sahel region where France is very involved.”
Observers agree that the key switch is good governance, which will not solve any amount of investment in security.
CNN’s Martin Goillandeau and Richard Roth contributed to this report.
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