The affair torments the pilots of Air France. On Thursday March 16, the French airline's main pilots' union, which rotates daily between Paris and the Malian capital, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that it had called on its members to "exercise their right to withdrawal" to no longer fly to Bamako. The concern about the impact that the existence of a new Russian surface-to-air missile system could have in Mali, expressed by the American civil aviation agency (FAA) on its website at the end of February, seems to have motivated this unprecedented trade union appeal.
In these two press releases issued on February 23, the government agency responsible for regulating American civil aviation had indeed warned airlines registered in the United States against the "potential risk" that Malian airspace now represented, due in particular to the "introduction of an advanced air defense system" in Mali by the mercenaries of Wagner, a Russian private security group which began to deploy in the country at the end of December 2021.
In the process, the two notes were commented on social networks by accounts of Internet users accustomed to singing the praises of the junta and the Russo-Malian military cooperation, in full expansion since the installation in power of the colonels following two coups in August 2020 and May 2021.
A "radar-guided surface-to-air missile system"
"The United States confirms the over-armament of Mali", believed one of them on TikTok on March 6, while another scrolled on the Chinese video application of photos of missiles accompanied by subtitles. titles presenting Mali as a country "now unassailable by surprise or incursion", thanks to this "anti-missile battery remotely controlled by radar guidance capable of intercepting planes that will cross Malian airspace".
Far from these rantings, the FAA specified in its press releases that Wagner had deployed to Mali, in the spring of 2022, "more than 1,000 private military personnel as well as various armament capabilities, such as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) [acronym used to refer to drones] and more sophisticated air defense systems.”
The American regulatory body notably mentioned the presence in Bamako of a "radar-guided surface-to-air missile system, capable of attacking targets up to 15,000 meters with a range of 36 kilometers" and thus invited the companies Americans to "exercise caution" "at all altitudes including when flying over airspace, during landing and take-off phases and at the airport, on the ground".
Because Wagner, recalls the regulatory body, "has a questionable history in terms of air defense fire", particularly in Libya, where this anti-aircraft device named Pantsir would have led Russian mercenaries to "fratricidal incidents" during misdirected fire.
"To show the muscles"
The Air France company, joined by AFP, does not seem to be overly worried since "at this stage, the service to Bamako is unchanged". In the Malian capital, the European diplomats contacted by Le Monde are also cautious. According to one of them, this new air defense equipment was acquired by the Malian junta from its new Russian allies "a few months ago" and has not been used since. "The colonels mostly deployed it to flex their muscles and symbolize their supposed newfound military power, not to smack civilian planes, that would be suicide." They know it would expose them to retaliation,” he slips.
Washington, for its part, believes that Pantsir was "probably" deployed in Mali to "counter the possible use of UAS [drones] by extremists". The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS, affiliated with the Islamic State organization), one of the two jihadist groups which, together with Al-Qaeda, has continued to extend its hold in the country since the start of the war in 2012, according to the FAA, "claimed responsibility for shooting down a Wagner UAS with an unknown anti-aircraft weapon on July 16, 2022."
In Mali, several diplomatic and security sources questioned the real motives that prompted the United States to communicate on these Wagner missile systems in Mali. “If they were really worried about their American companies, they would have directly banned them from Malian airspace,” remarks the security officer of a Western NGO. Like others, the latter sees it more as a way for Washington to "give Wagner an extra blow", while in recent weeks the American administration has gone on the offensive in Africa by deploying a strategy of struggle to counter the harmful influence of Russian mercenaries on the continent.
