| schema:articleBody
| - The Malian army on Thursday returned to Kidal, a former rebel-held town that had become a symbol of the country's strife-torn north, commanders there said. The arrival of Malian troops in Kidal is considered a step towards the government reasserting control over its vast and often lawless territory as it battles a jihadist insurgency. A detachment "has returned to the base in Kidal... Everything has really gone well," one told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. The commander said "around 300" Malian troops had entered the town, with an escort of UN peacekeepers. His account was confirmed by a commander there with MINUSMA, the UN operation in Mali. Separatist Tuareg rebels captured much of northern Mali, including Kidal, in 2012. But the war was then commandeered by jihadists, who have extended their insurgency to the centre of the country, and also across Mali's borders to Burkina Faso and Niger. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died in the conflict, which Mali has struggled to contain even with the help of thousands of foreign troops. Large swathes of the country lie outside of state control. In 2015, the rebels signed a peace agreement with the government, although the accord was fragile and the issue of Kidal was especially delicate. Deployment of the troops ends a years-long absence, boosting the government at a time when it has opened the door to talks with jihadists. MINUSMA said in a statement on Thursday that the return of soldiers to the former rebel town was a "major achievement". The deployment had been announced on Monday by President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. In an interview with French media, he said the army was en route towards the town and was expected to reach it on Friday. Malian soldiers had not set foot in Kida since 2014 and they had suffered a bitter defeat at the hands of rebels. The city has since been under the control of the Coordination of Movements of Azawad (CMA), a mostly Tuareg alliance of armed rebel groups. The CMA and several other rebel groups signed a peace accord with the government in Bamako in 2015. Among other things, the pact provided for former rebels to join the army, which would eventually return north. Working out the specifics of returning to Kidal has taken years, however. The various groups involved reached an agreement on how it would work several weeks ago. Of the 428 troops meant to return to the town under that deal, a third were to be Malian regular soldiers, a third CMA fighters, and another third former rebels from other groups. Yvan Guichaoua, a researcher at the University of Kent, said pulling off the return was a significant step forward. "Many symbolic obstacles need to be removed to create the minimum cohesion required to form a viable anti-terrorist front," he said. "The return of forces to Kidal provided for in the peace agreement was one of those obstacles." The peace deal has caused tension in some quarters. Mali's neighbouring governments are often wary of former rebel groups, for example, suspecting them of cooperating with jihadists. They view Kidal as a rear base for Islamist militants. Malian army units returning to the city are so-called "reconstituted" ones, comprised of regulars and former rebels who joined the military after the 2015 peace accord. Other such units are expected to deploy in northern Malian cities such as Menaka, Gao and Timbuktu. sd-lal/siu/eml/pma
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)