There are many indications that the Bundeswehr will have to get out of Mali faster than planned. You pack up on site. But imponderables remain – such as sandstorms or the Wagner mercenaries.
Petrol station for auction, sea containers and off-road vehicles. Not only the objects are unusual, especially the auctioneer: the Bundeswehr. In her Camp Castor near the town of Gao in West African Mali, she sells things that she will soon no longer need and that are not worth bringing back to Germany.
Bids, bids, and bids aren’t the force’s usual vocabulary, but it’s not a usual time on one of their most dangerous overseas operations, either.
UN Security Council advises
The mandate for the UN blue helmet mission expires today, today the Security Council in New York will clarify how to proceed. If the Malian military government has its way, then the UN troops, and with them the Germans, should leave the country as quickly as possible. France has proposed extending the mission until the end of the year for the last time – this is to enable an “orderly withdrawal”.
Both – an end to the UN mandate or an extension until the end of the year – mean a mammoth logistical task for the Bundeswehr called redeployment. Only a month ago, the Bundestag extended the Mali mission for the last time, until the end of May next year at the latest. The date was deliberately chosen so that there would be no deadline pressure when it was withdrawn. But now it will have to go much faster.
The faster, the more expensive
However, such a chaotic and hasty withdrawal as from Afghanistan should not happen again. You’ve learned the lesson. “Lessons learned from Afghanistan,” says spokesman Arne Collatz from the Defense Ministry.
In the worst case, you can withdraw within days, says Collatz. But that would then “cause very high costs”. It refers to material equivalent to 1500 standard containers (container equivalents). That’s not much for a container ship, but it’s a lot if most of it is to be flown out of the desert state with Bundeswehr A400M transport aircraft. Traveling by road to distant ports is considered much more unsafe.
In the meantime, the withdrawal activities of the Bundeswehr in the blue helmet camp in Gao are literally “extensive”. They serve as so-called material locks. Here the condition of the device – from the radio to the helicopter – is assessed, pre-sorted and finally packed when it is supposed to go home.
“We have a list that says: This material absolutely has to go back; should go back; can go back; doesn’t need to go back; let’s leave it here.” He works with these five categories, explained the head of the material lock at the beginning of June in an interview with the ARD Capital Studio. “Weapons and protected material absolutely have to be returned,” added the lieutenant colonel and logistics expert. For everything else, you then see if you can manage to return the material. If necessary, it must be destroyed on site.
Orderly deduction lasts one year
Until recently, it looked as if the Germans would have enough time to withdraw from Mali in peace – without giving the impression of fleeing. Because for a really orderly deduction, one calculates a year for the troops.
But faster is also possible, explained the lieutenant colonel. If it is possible to get more planes, “a deduction is theoretically possible until the end of December”. From a logistics point of view, the plane and the airport form the “bottleneck” on whose narrowness everything depends.
Sandstorm and Wagner Mercenaries
And here the troops have to deal with a number of imponderables: How bad will the upcoming sandstorm and rainy season be? Will the Russian Wagner mercenaries camped in the immediate vicinity of Gao Airport still pose a problem with the withdrawal? How many flights with which machines does the Malian military regime allow?
“The Malian government has pledged to ensure an orderly withdrawal even if the mandate ends – that’s what will ultimately matter,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said recently in the direction of Bamako. He had received this assurance during his visit to Mali in April – whether it will hold up remains to be seen. In any case, Pistorius is now talking about a faster, but definitely more ordered deduction.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius speaks to Bundeswehr soldiers in Mali.
Up to 1400 Bundeswehr soldiers
Up to 1,400 soldiers from Germany took part in one of the largest UN missions with a total of more than 13,000 personnel. The Bundeswehr and the United Nations never had an order to fight the spreading terrorists. But very much the protection of the civilian population and the clarification of the situation.
Both were made increasingly difficult by the fact that the military government in Bamako relied on cooperation with Russian Wagner mercenaries and has banned drone flights from the Germans since Christmas.
Criticism of the opposition on the mission
From the point of view of the German opposition, the whole thing was an “insane mission that failed across the board.” That’s how Ali Al-Dailami of the left described it in the recent Bundestag debate. “All in vain,” agrees Rüdiger Lucassen from the AfD. Soldiers’ lives were risked and money wasted for ten years.
The German MINUSMA participation was already decided under the Merkel government. So the Union criticizes less the mission as such. But: The situation in Mali has changed dramatically, so that the mission is now “largely ineffective,” says CDU foreign policy expert Jürgen Hardt. The discussion about what could be achieved in Mali has already begun before the mission is over.
Filling station, shipping containers and off-road vehicles: Incidentally, all of this has already been sold. The Bundeswehr does not comment on the proceeds. But a nice side effect for them in view of the logistical challenge of the Mali withdrawal: “You have to do the dismantling and transport yourself.” This also applies to the gas station. And according to the Bundeswehr, it has already been picked up.