United Nations experts have accused the senior army and intelligence officials in Mali of deliberately obstructing a shaky 2015 peace accord, originally designed to reduce violence in the war-torn West African country.
The revelations appear in an expert report delivered to the UN Security Council on August 7, which AFP has obtained, and which come during a festering political crisis in the Sahel state.
Mali is currently in the grip of a deep political impasse between President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and a strident opposition movement insisting on his resignation.
According to the UN report, top security officials in the country have “threatened and delayed” a key peace deal which many views as one of the few escape routes from Mali’s cycle of violence.
Brokered in Algiers in 2015 between several armed groups and Mali’s government, the deal provided for rebels joining the national army again, among other measures.
Its implementation has dragged on for years, however, despite international pressure for it to be fully applied.
