Mali's Prime Minister accuses France of seeking to partition the country

Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga has accused France of working to partition his country through French military involvement in the Sahel, in a hostile new challenge to European diplomats in Bamako.

A supporter holds a flag of France, with the drawing of a skull on it, as he participates in a demonstration called by Mali's transitional government after ECOWAS imposed sanctions in Bamako, Mali, January 14, 2022. The flag reads "Death to France and allies" REUTERS - PAUL LORGERIE

Maïga, who heads the government installed by Mali's military junta in June 2021, attacked France for more than 45 minutes in front of a gathering of diplomats summoned to the Prime Minister's Office on Monday.

Although he stopped short of explicitly demanding the withdrawal of the French-led anti-jihadist Operation Barkhane.

Speaking to the congregation of envoys, Maïga said that after a time of "elation" when French soldiers liberated northern Mali from jihadists in 2013, "the intervention turned into an operation of de facto partition of Mali which [consisted in giving up] part of our territory where the terrorists had time to take refuge and reorganise themselves to come back in force from 2014."

🇲🇱 #Mali : devant les diplomates en poste à #Bamako, le premier ministre, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, a accusé lundi la #France d'avoir oeuvré à la "partition" de son pays à travers son engagement militaire. https://t.co/OWw1lvCfeT

— TV5MONDE Info (@TV5MONDEINFO) February 8, 2022

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Amid frayed relations between Paris and Bamako, Maïga drew comparisions with the liberation of France at the end of the Second World War: "Didn't the Americans liberate France?

"When the French judged that [the American presence in France] was no longer necessary, they told the Americans to leave, did the Americans then start insulting the French?" he continued.

Since the Economic Community of West African States imposed French-backed sanctions against Mali in January, the military junta has been claiming Mali's sovereignty has been compromised.

French presence 'destabilising'

The Malian authorities accuse former colonial power France of having used Ecowas as a tool "to present us as a pariah, with the unavowed and unmentionable short-term objective of suffocating the economy in order to achieve ... the destabilisation and overthrow of the transitional institutions", Maïga added.

"We can't be subjugated, we can't turn the country into a slave; that's over," he continued, referring to colonisation.

Maïga also attacked the European Takuba task force, established by France to accompany Malian soldiers into combat against jihadists.

In addition to the junta's delay in returning the country to civilian rule, France and its European and American allies accuse the military leaders of welcoming the Russian mercenary group Wagner onto Malian soil. 

In response, Maïga likened the French Foreign Legion to mercenary soldiers of fortune.