The French military intervention in January and February this year ended the occupation of northern Mali by rebel movements and jihadists. When I was in Bamako at the end of February, organisations across the political spectrum applauded France as Mali’s saviour and liberator. There had been a grave danger that the jihadists would seize Bamako, thereby seize the state, and turn the country into a fundamentalist political entity. A Muslim leader said to us: ‘France saved Mali, saved our way of life, saved Islam itself’.

The people we met conveyed a deep sense of existential trauma: not only had the territorial integrity and the independence of their country been severely compromised, but the Malian security forces and other state authorities had proved incapable of even retarding, let along preventing or stopping, the onslaught and its inexorable progress towards the capital city.

Notwithstanding the French victory, however, the security situation in the North remains precarious. Even with the regaining of full territorial integrity, there are many daunting threats: weapons proliferation; the danger of reprisals against those who joined the rebellion; the withdrawal of terrorists from towns into desert areas; and the enormous problem of drug smuggling, which contributed to the rebellion and has sorely undermined governance and development.

In short, there remains an urgent need to ensure the long-term stability of the North, safeguard the physical security of communities there and, in particular, prevent terrorist attacks. But this security imperative should not detract from the primacy of politics in Mali (as in all countries) in both the short-term and the long-term. There is an on-going debate within the UN on the main thrust of the organisation’s role in Mali. The French position emphasises boots on the ground in a major, long-term stabilisation deployment. This position looks set to prevail over those who want less emphasis on the military and more emphasis on the political. The consequent risk is that the political challenges of Mali will be subordinate to the military deployment and will be neglected by the UN.

The ‘primacy of politics’ in Mali relates to three major challenges in particular: reconciliation and national dialogue; strengthening the capacity of state institutions; and building the legitimacy of these institutions and the political system.

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Written by Laurie Nathan, South African Foreign Policy Initiative