sahel regions

Mali's military government has ordered the French broadcasters RFI and France 24 to broadcast, and complains that they have wrongly accused the army of abusing it, it said in a statement on Thursday. The Bamako government "categorically rejects these false accusations against the brave FAMA (Malian Armed Forces)," said spokesman Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga. The military "is initiating proceedings ... to suspend broadcasts from RFI and France 24 ... until further notice," he said in a statement dated…

France and its allies in a European force announced on Thursday that they would begin withdrawing troops from Mali after nearly 10 years of fighting an extremist uprising. A statement signed by France and its African and European allies said that "several obstacles" from the ruling junta meant that the conditions were no longer in place to operate in Mali. The decision concerns both France's Barkhane force in the Sahel and the European force Takuba, which Paris had tried to create together with its…