The last 300 soldiers are back in Germany. Defense Minister Pistorius praised the operation as an “excellent achievement.” But the question of meaning hovers over everything.
For Sergeant Franz, arriving in the cold of Lower Saxony shortly before Christmas is something “big”. For the last seven months he has had to keep the IT running at the German Camp Castor in Gao, Mali, in temperatures of up to 55 degrees. It was one of the most dangerous UN missions in the world. In the end, even in the immediate vicinity of the German camp it was no longer safe.
Frigate captain Sonja also says that it was a relocation from a “completely different world”. A lack of fuel, flight cancellations and the tense security situation were “quite an ordeal”. They were “on duty 24/7”.
Pistorius speaks of a special achievement
Given such conditions, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is happy that the last 300 German soldiers are back safely. He speaks of an “excellent performance” and that the soldiers fulfilled their mission under “the most adverse conditions”. This means that it is not the Bundeswehr’s fault that the Sahel remains a powder keg. The defense minister is open: the operation did not bring the political success that had been hoped for.
Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius awards a soldier with the Bundeswehr’s bronze medal.
More than 200 peacekeepers died during the international UN mission MINUSMA. The Bundeswehr has been in Mali with over 20,000 soldiers for almost ten years. She also suffered three deaths in a helicopter crash and twelve wounded in a suicide attack. German soldiers have risked their lives in what has been the most dangerous UN mission for many years, without the situation improving for the local people.
The question of meaning
Despite all the relief about returning home, about an almost silent final phase of the Mali mission compared to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, one question still looms over everything: “What did we achieve?” A question that the soldiers repeatedly asked themselves during the last weeks of the mission. A question that is appropriate in view of the fierce fighting that has already flared up again in northern Mali parallel to the withdrawal.
Even in the final phase of the operation, the Germans were warmly greeted by laughing children and grateful adults in the villages and towns around the city of Gao. Completely different than in Afghanistan. But scenes like these turn out to be deceptive in retrospect: Al Qaeda or terrorist groups affiliated with IS had been able to spread unmolested around these islands in the desert over the years – despite up to 14,000 UN peacekeepers at times. Despite the Bundeswehr, whose mission was never to fight against the terrorists.
Passed out at Camp Castor
There is a scene that symbolically illustrates how helpless the Bundeswehr was at times in the face of what was happening around them: At the beginning of September, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle packed with explosives into a Malian army base that was within sight of the German camp. The soldiers had no choice but to watch the ensuing firefight from their lookout and beware of ricochet. There could hardly have been a clearer harbinger of what the people of Mali will face after the withdrawal.
“Ultimately, the people here just want to live in peace. That’s what we wish for them. But at the moment the situation says something different.” This is how Feldjäger Sven, who was part of the last German contingent in Mali, put it at the end of September.
Even as the Bundeswehr and the other UN peacekeepers began their journey home, Mali began a journey into its own – dark – past: the latest escalation of violence is reminiscent of the time before the 2012/2013 intervention. And no one seriously believes that the Malian army – which is helped by Russian Wagner mercenaries – can pacify the north. The question: “What have we achieved?” will continue to hover over the mission that has now ended.