Mali: UN Peacekeeping Mission

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Armed Forces (James Heappey)]

West Africa is an important region for the United Kingdom and our allies across Europe, and the UK is strongly committed to supporting the UN to deliver its peacekeeping commitments around the world. That is why, since 2018, we had been supporting the French-led counter-terrorism mission in Mali with CH-47 Chinook helicopters under Operation Barkhane, and more recently, since 2020, through the deployment of a long-range reconnaissance group as part of the UN’s MINUSMA—multidimensional integrated stabilisation mission in Mali—peacekeeping mission.

The House will be aware, however, that in February President Macron announced the drawdown of French troops in Mali, and was joined in that announcement by all other European nations, as well as Canada, that were contributing to the French-led Operations Barkhane and Takuba. In March, Sweden announced that it would be leaving the UN’s MINUSMA mission. Today, I can announce that the UK contingent will also now be leaving the MINUSMA mission earlier than planned.

We should be clear that responsibility for all of this sits in Bamako. Two coups in three years have undermined international efforts to advance peace. On my most recent visit last November, I met the Malian Defence Minister and implored him to see the huge value of the French-led international effort in his country. However, soon afterwards, the Malian Government began working with the Russian mercenary group, Wagner, and actively sought to interfere with the work of both the French-led and UN missions. The Wagner Group is linked to mass human rights abuses. The Malian Government’s partnership with the Wagner Group is counterproductive to lasting stability and security in their region.

This Government cannot deploy our nation’s military to provide security when the host country’s Government are not willing to work with us to deliver lasting stability and security. However, our commitment to west Africa and the important work of the UN is undiminished. We have been working closely with our allies to consider options for rebalancing our deployment alongside France, the EU and other like-minded allies.

On Monday and Tuesday next week, I will join colleagues from across Europe and west Africa in Accra to co-ordinate our renewed response to instability in the Sahel. This will be the first major gathering in support of the Accra initiative, which is a west African-led solution focused initially on preventing further contagion of the insurgency into Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Niger, and tackling the growing levels of violence in Burkina Faso as well as in Mali, making this a very timely conference, indeed.

Of course, it is not just the UK military that will remain committed in west Africa—the UK will continue its commitment to Mali and the Sahel through our humanitarian, stabilisation and development assistance, working in close co-ordination with partners—nor is this a reduction in our commitment to the United Nations. The UK remains an important contributor of troops through Operation Tosca in Cyprus and of staff officers across several missions, and provides training to around 10,000 military, police and civilian peacekeepers from a range of countries annually. We remain the fifth largest financial contributor and will continue to drive reform in New York. Indeed, we are working with New York on developing a pilot, to be delivered through the British peace support team based in Nairobi, to develop the capacity of UN troop contributing nations across Africa. We will, of course, co-ordinate with allies as we draw down from Gao and have been sharing our plans with them over recent months. The Army will be issuing orders imminently to reconfigure the next deployment to draw down our presence.

We are leaving the MINUSMA mission earlier than planned and are, of course, saddened by the way the Government in Bamako have made it so difficult for well-meaning nations to remain there. The work of our troops has been outstanding, and they should be proud of what they have achieved there. But through the Chilcot report and our wider experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, we, like so many allies, are clear that the military instrument should not be deployed on counter-insurgency or countering violent extremism missions unless there is a clear and compelling commitment towards political progress.

We will work quickly with allies in the region and across Europe to support the Accra initiative to deliver security, stability and prosperity in west Africa. Our commitment to the region is undiminished.

[Mr Speaker]

I call shadow Secretary of State John Healey.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the advance copy of his statement—he always treats this House with great courtesy—but I have to say that I was disappointed, Mr Speaker, as you will be, that nearly three hours before I received a copy of the statement I was reading about his decision on The Times online.

MINUSMA is the UN’s deadliest peacekeeping mission, with 281 fatalities to date, so I want to start by paying tribute to all those British troops who have been deployed with the UN in Mali since 2020 and all the RAF air and ground crew who have been deployed in Mali since 2013.

The UN Security Council only renewed the Mali mission’s mandate, which Britain strongly supported, in June. What now for the UN’s MINUSMA force without the UK’s long-range specialised reconnaissance? What now for the UK’s contribution to stabilising the Sahel, which experts say has become the new epicentre of terrorism? What now for the neighbouring states of Mali, which look to the UK for support in the face of increasing activity from Islamic extremist groups? And what now for the west’s capacity to balance the Russian Wagner Group mercenaries in the region?

Will the Chinook deployment continue to support the UN mission? The Times reported that this has already been withdrawn, although the Minister has not mentioned it this afternoon. And when exactly will the current Royal Scots Light Dragoons on the ground in Mali be withdrawn?

This statement is long overdue. France announced the withdrawal of troops from Mali back in February, and when I asked the Defence Secretary about this days later he said the UK was

“now reviewing our next steps.”—[Official Report, 21 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 17.]

I got the same answer when I asked again nearly four months later. Now, fully nine months after France, and eight months after Sweden, why has it has taken Britain so long to make the same decision? We need strategic planning and foresight from Ministers for this region, not a tactical silence while they work out what on earth to do.

President Macron marked the end of the French Operation Barkhane last week by pledging a new strategy within half a year for working with African countries. Is the UK working with France on this new strategy? Will the Government produce a similar UK strategy?

In the Government’s 2020 integrated review there was just one passing reference to the Sahel and two short factual statements about Mali. Will the current IR update make good the Sahel-shaped gap in UK strategic security thinking?

Finally, ahead of the autumn statement, today’s decision on reducing our commitment to UK United Nations peacekeeping is a reminder of the importance of clarity over UK defence spending. The Defence Secretary agreed the current spending settlement, giving the Ministry of Defence back in 2020 a £1.4 billion real cut in day-to-day spending. He now says, as he told the Select Committee on Defence, that

“the inflationary pressure on my budget for the next two years is about £8 billion”.

How much does Defence actually need from the Chancellor on Thursday to plug the Defence Secretary’s budget black hole?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the Minister comes in, I have seen what has been given to The Times, and I am disappointed. I have the greatest respect for the Minister, but it is pretty appalling that somebody decided to hand to The Times, for it to put online, exactly what he has just given to the House. I hope that he will look into that and that whoever in the Department passed it to The Times will be reprimanded and reminded that Members of this House come first, not the media.

[James Heappey]

Mr Speaker, I could not agree more. You know that the Secretary of State and I are not the sort of Ministers who play these games. There was no deliberate briefing, and we are angry that the discourtesy of someone within our organisation means that you have read about this in The Times rather than heard it from the Dispatch Box. That was not the plan.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) had a long list of questions, which I will do my best to rattle through. I think that I covered some of them in the statement. On what is next for the UN force, the UN was already in a process of reconfiguration, given the changes in troop-contributing countries that it was facing and the reality of the situation on the ground. The insurgency has moved from the tri-border area of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to further south in Burkina. The challenge in the north of the country is no longer the insurgency against the al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM or Islamic State Greater Sahel, but the same competing tribes as five or six years ago. In the south of the country, the Malians are mostly focused on the survival of the junta that came to pass. There is an incoherent set of security challenges that the UN is trying to navigate, and I think it would be the first to admit that MINUSMA as a mission is struggling as a consequence of those three different challenges within the country.

That leads to the right hon. Gentleman’s absolutely correct question about stabilising the wider Sahel. It would be erroneous to think that MINUSMA, which was a UN mission struggling to match the excellent military endeavour of troop-contributing countries with any meaningful political progress, was really doing anything to stabilise the Sahel. The centre of mass of the insurgency has moved south into Burkina, where the competition is acute. Prigozhin has recently been in Ouagadougou offering Wagner’s services. I think that everybody is concerned that this is now about avoiding contagion from Burkina and ensuring that we work with the Burkinabé armed forces to get after the insurgency where it now is, because that is at the heart of the challenge in the Sahel. That is what the Accra initiative—a west-African designed solution to a problem in west Africa—is aiming to get after, and the UK, France, the EU and others are seeking to get behind it, because we think that is the most credible option for restoring stability in the Sahel.

The right hon. Gentleman asked, “Why now? Why wasn’t there a rush to make a decision back in February when the French left?” He knows that other countries from Europe have continued, and we have been in discussion with them about what we should do and what looks like the most sensible route forward. To have rushed to a decision back then, before we were sure what the right solution was in west Africa, would have been knee-jerk. The right thing to do, as I have been doing, is to travel around the region. I have been in Mali, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo, and my counterparts from France have been visiting Niger, Benin and other countries extensively, and between us we have been able to map out what we think the best solution is.

The CH-47 commitment to Barkhane was already drawn down, and I believe that that was the subject of a written ministerial statement when the decision was made. Although the Chinooks were left to help the French move out of Mali, they have not been actively participating since Barkhane ended. The casualty evacuation capability for MINUSMA remains for as long as MINUSMA is patrolling.

The IR’s relevance is borne out by the conclusion that we have come to, because its decision was around capacity building upstream and recognising that, often, our presence can be the catalyst to insurgency. That is very much what the western African nations feel: they do not want us on their borders physically fighting the insurgency as they think that accelerates things. They want us to be working with them to support them in generating capability. Finally, on defence spending, we all wait for Thursday.

[James Heappey]

I very much enjoyed working with my hon. Friend when he was the Minister for Africa. It is a shame, however, that his collection of African ties has been put out to retirement—they were quite something.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The role that the Wagner Group is playing in Africa is very different from the one it is playing in Ukraine. In Ukraine, it is effectively generating a force, apparently conscripted from Russian prisons, to augment the Russian frontline as a manoeuvre element. In Africa, the role is somewhat different. In Mali, it is there principally at the invitation of the coup leadership to ensure the survival of the coup. In the Central African Republic, it has been doing something broadly similar, but has in the process been engaged more widely in the security in that country. Nobody should pretend that the Wagner Group is up to any good—it is universally up to mischief—but across Africa it is doing different things depending on what the Governments who have brought them in have asked them to do. But it remains a bunch of murderous human rights-abusing thugs and there is not a country on the planet that is any better for its presence.

[Mr Speaker]

We come to SNP spokesperson, Chris Stephens.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for your comments on the leak to The Times online.

We commend the bravery and dedication of the UK armed forces personnel serving with the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali. Picking up on the theme of the Wagner Group, will the Minister detail fully what diplomatic steps have been taken to address the presence of Wagner Group combatants in Mali and elsewhere in the world? Is he considering individually sanctioning Wagner Group fighters present in Mali? Will he present to the House the work that the recently announced office for conflict, stabilisation and mediation, and the conflict and atrocity prevention hub, will undertake, and the exact funding and staffing levels? Given that he says his commitment to the Sahel region is undiminished, are the Government considering reversing the cuts to aid in the Sahel region, including cuts to the conflict, stability and security fund?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It may help if I inform the House that hon. Members will have the opportunity to consider a response to His Majesty’s gracious message ahead of the Opposition day debate tomorrow. It may also help if I inform the House that there will be legislation relating to the message for the House to consider in due course. Should the House agree to the Humble Address as the first business tomorrow, that legislation will provide a proper opportunity to debate the matter that has been raised.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the Leader of the House for that point of order.