Germany and Mali agreed Thursday to pursue a “smooth withdrawal” of German troops from the troubled African nation after the UN decided to end its decade-old peacekeeping mission there, Berlin said. Mali’s defence minister Sadio Camara assured his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in a telephone call of Bamako’s “support with the relocation of the troops”, the German defence ministry said. “It was a productive call at the right time,” the ministry quoted Pistorius as saying. But the ministry said Thursday the German army would now halt the mission by the end of the year, when the UN withdrawal is set to be completed. The junta instead has rallied behind Moscow and brought in the Wagner Group, the ruthless mercenaries involved in a short-lived mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

Source: The North Africa Journal July 20, 2023 22:08 UTC