A small glimmer of hope for task force Takuba whose future in Mali is in jeopardy. The French general staff announced on Tuesday that the European special forces of the Takuba grouping and the Malian armed forces
had killed regarding thirty jihadists at the beginning of February in the Malian Liptako during a joint military operation. “This is the first time that a Malian unit committed to Takuba has obtained such an operational record,” the general staff argues.
This operation conducted from 1 to 6 February in the so-called “three borders” area on the borders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, also made it possible to seize “many equipment and components for the manufacture of improvised explosive devices”. It testifies “to the effectiveness of the combat partnership between the Malian armed forces (FAMa) and the TF Takuba “, argued the general staff.
Takuba on the hot seat
This announcement comes at a time when the future of the task force Takuba, born in 2020 at the initiative of Paris and in which a dozen European countries participate, is threatened. In the face of a hostile junta that has just expelled its ambassador and demanded the departure of a Danish contingent freshly deployed to Mali, Paris
has given itself until mid-February to decide with its European partners on the future of their military presence in this country, where France has been fighting since 2013 at the cost of 53 soldiers killed.
This reflection may well lead to the departure from Mali of French troops and special forces from Takuba, which were the target of fierce criticism on Tuesday from Malian Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga, who accused this grouping of “dividing Mali”. Takuba, “it’s ‘the sword’, in (language) songhai and in tamasheq, it’s not a name that was taken by chance,” he said.
