Mali's Decision to Kick Out UN Peacekeepers is Small Victory for Russia and a Big Disaster for Most Everyone Else

Exit Blue Helmets, Enter Wagner

MINUSMA/Harandane Dicko

UN Peacekeepers don’t invade countries. Rather, they are invited to a country by the government on whose territory peacekeepers deploy. For both legal and pragmatic reasons, the consent of the host country is the sine qua non of UN Peacekeeping.

Last Friday, the government of Mali formally withdrew that consent and ordered the 13,000 strong UN peacekeeping mission to leave the country “without delay.”

This kind of thing does happen, but it is exceedingly rare. In my 18 years of covering the United Nations, I can think of only one other instance (Eritrea, 2005) in which a government kicked out an entire peacekeeping force. It is rare by design: peacekeeping missions only deploy with the approval of the Security Council, so when a government evicts a peacekeeping mission it is effectively contravening the resolve of the all the world’s major powers. There is typically a diplomatic cost to going against the collective will of the Security Council that can range from reproach to sanctions.

But this is a cost that the military junta in Mali is seemingly willing to bear.

Why? Because, Russia.

Since a 2021 military coup, the Malian junta has increasingly cast its lot with Moscow. This includes deepening ties with the Wagner Group. Russian mercenaries began arriving in January 2022 ostensibly to help train Malian armed forces, but in reality the mercenaries provide regime security and protect the Junta from domestic opponents. Internationally, Mali has embraced Moscow. It was one of just six countries (including Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua and Russia) that voted against a February 2023 UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By kicking out the UN Peacekeeping Mission, the Junta is betting that Russia will protect it from any meaningful sanction at the Security Council. All the while, Russian mercenaries replace Blue Helmets as the dominant security guarantor in the Central Sahel.

This is a small victory for Russia. But it portends major problems for the people of Mali, including the potential resumption of a major civil war in Mali that the UN peacekeeping mission had been fitfully keeping at bay.