By John Ikani
Mali military Government has suspended all rotations of the military and police contingents of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).
The rotations, scheduled or announced, are also affected by the suspension pending the holding of “a coordination meeting between the Malian structures concerned and MINUSMA,” according to a statement from the Malian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
It cited “reasons linked to the national security context” for the suspension and said Mali would work diligently to create conditions for lifting the suspension.
This measure comes four days after the arrest of 49 Ivorian soldiers, “mercenaries” according to Bamako, which accuses them of having the “evil purpose” of “breaking the dynamics of rebuilding” the Malian state.
According to Abidjan, they were deployed in Mali as National Support Elements (NSE), a UN procedure allowing peacekeeping contingents to call on external contractors for logistical support.
The UN mission in Mali has almost 12,000 troops and 1,700 police officers. It is a visible presence in many of Mali’s northern cities, which were taken over by Islamist militants in 2012 and have seen increasing insecurity in recent months following the French army’s withdrawal from the country.
The mandate for the mission in Mali was renewed during a Security Council meeting on June 29. During renewal talks, Mali’s U.N. representative said the government would not allow the U.N. to carry out investigations of alleged human rights abuses as part of its mandate.
Since April, the UN has been seeking access to the town of Moura, where locals told human rights investigators and journalists that the army and Russian mercenaries carried out a massacre over five days.
