Gray sky, light haze, a light on the horizon that is gradually approaching. Airbus landing approach A400M from Dakar. People in the hangar at Wunstorf Air Base slowly move towards the tarmac. 3:05 p.m. landing. Goose flesh. The soldiers of the Bundeswehr have returned from Mali, thus ending what has recently been the Bundeswehr’s most dangerous mission.
The last 304 soldiers who took part in the UN operation Minusma are back in Germany. This means that Camp Castor, built by the Bundeswehr in Mali, is history. They were received at the air base in Wunstorf by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and their relatives. A total of 27,000 German Bundeswehr soldiers have served as part of the UN Minusma mission over the past ten years. Three soldiers lost their lives.
Defense Minister Pistorius is relieved
The Hanover Army Music Corps plays at the air base. Contingent leader Colonel Heiko Bohnsack is the first to get off the plane, where Pistorius is already waiting for him. The minister briefly becomes brotherly, puts his arm on the contingent leader’s shoulder, before the remaining soldiers leave the two military transporters and march into the hangar one after the other.
“You see a moved, a relieved Defense Minister that everything ended so well,” said Boris Pistorius at the appeal for returnees and praised the efforts of the German blue helmet mission. The situation in Mali has always been dangerous, and this is reflected in the sad figures: “Well over 200 blue helmet soldiers have died in Mali,” says Pistorius. The Bundeswehr has done an excellent job. But in the end, the political conditions in Mali did not provide the conditions for a meaningful deployment. “Your withdrawal was therefore the logical and correct decision,” says the defense minister, who, shortly after taking office, questioned the purpose of the operation given the circumstances in Mali. Although the operation was considered particularly dangerous, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) had long advocated for it to continue. This is necessary to protect the civilian population in northern Mali.
The UN Mission Minusma has been active in Mali since 2013
The UN mission to stabilize the country has been active in Mali since 2013. After the collapse of neighboring Libya and a rebellion by the Tuareg nomads, Islamist terrorists overran the north of the country on the edge of the Sahara in 2012. A military intervention by the former colonial power France only temporarily pushed back the Islamists. In the same year, the Bundestag also decided to participate in Minusma.
Today, ten years later, the situation in Mali is at least as bad as it was before 2013. And what was achieved was lost with the military coup in May 2021 at the latest. This summer, the military junta called for the withdrawal of all approximately 12,000 UN peacekeepers after intensifying its cooperation with Russia and the Wagner Group. The UN Security Council then initiated the end of Minusma. At this point, the federal government had already decided to end German participation.
So now they are back, the soldiers of the Bundeswehr. Around 1,000 container equivalents of material were brought back to Germany by land, air and sea. Not an easy task. After the coup in Mali in 2021, there was also a military coup against the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum in neighboring Niger at the end of July, further bad news for the West. And for the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr. Material was supposed to travel overland from Mali to Niger, with whom relations had been good until then. From the Nigerien airport we should then continue to Germany. In Niger, around 120 soldiers are now waiting for the remaining material to be transported away, says a spokesman for the Bundeswehr’s operational command. He is confident that the transport can be carried out by the end of May 2024.
“They don’t want an Afghanistan NATO, but an anti-Russia NATO”
The arrival in Wunstorf also marks a turning point for the Bundeswehr in terms of operations. “With the withdrawal from Mali and Afghanistan, the era of the Bundeswehr’s major stabilization operations is coming to an end,” says Markus Kaim, an expert on security policy at the Science and Politics Foundation. At least since Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the threat situation has changed and with it the weighting in NATO. Operations like those in Mali, which were intended not only to stabilize a country but also to transform it to some extent, will probably no longer occur in the foreseeable future. NATO is now focusing again on the ability to defend the alliance’s territory; this return began in 2014 with the Russian annexation of Crimea. It has intensified since Russia invaded Ukraine. A paradigm shift that, in Kaim’s opinion, can be illustrated using the example of the new NATO partner Finland or the candidate country Sweden: “They don’t want an Afghanistan NATO, but an anti-Russia NATO.”
So is this the end of international crisis management? “We will not be able to sit back internationally and will have to continue to be available for missions,” says the chairwoman of the Bundestag Defense Committee Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) on the way to Wunstorf. “If terrorism increases in Mali and the Sahel region, it will also pose a danger to us.” Terror could reach Europe. Just as it could trigger massive refugee movements towards Europe. One of the federal government’s goals with Minusma has always been to reduce the reasons for people fleeing to Europe and Germany in the region through better living conditions and less terror.
Even if the military operation in Mali is now over, Germany will not completely withdraw from the region. “The Sahel will remain of central importance in the future,” said Pistorius in Wunstorf. The security situation in the region is of central importance not only for the people there and the stability of the entire continent. “It also has effects that extend to Europe and of course to us in Germany.” The stabilization of Mali and the Sahel is therefore also in German security policy interests.