Mali’s military government on Wednesday reiterated its demand that Denmark’s Special Forces immediately withdraw from the Sahel state, reported Thomson Reuters Foundation News.
The military junta, which came to power in a coup in August 2020, had first asked Denmark to withdraw its troops on Monday, following a deployment it said had been undertaken without consent.
Around 90 Danish soldiers arrived in Mali earlier this month to join the European Special Force, Takuba, which works to tackle militants linked to the Islamic State and al Qaeda who have occupied swathes of territory in the area where their borders meet.
The Takuba Task Force is a 900-troop French-led unit that was launched in March 2020. Other contributors to the force are the Netherlands, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Italy, and Hungary. The force is currently stationed in Menaka in eastern Mali. Its mandate was due to run until early 2023.
In response, Denmark said its troops deployed to Mali as part of a French-led counter-terrorism task force were there on the basis of a “clear invitation”.
On Wednesday, France and 14 other countries urged Mali’s military junta to allow Danish special forces to remain in the African country.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, the 15 countries said they were disappointed by Mali’s transitional government’s allegations that the Danish contingent in the Takuba Task Force was made without a proper legal basis.
The statement said that the Danish contingent acts in full accordance with international and national laws in their support to the Malian armed forces and in their long-standing fight against armed terrorist groups.
“We call on the Malian government to respect the solid grounds on which our diplomatic and operational cooperation are based and to quickly remedy this situation at a critical time for Mali when solidarity is required more than ever,” the 15 countries’ group noted in the statement.
