News / Military

UK media exaggerates British Army’s latest operation in Mali

Saturday, 15 May 2021 4:34 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 15 May 2021 4:41 PM ]

The 300 British troops stationed in Mali are mostly from the Light Dragoons and the Royal Anglian Regiment in addition to a small SAS detachment

The British media has been at pains to overplay the reported success of British troops in Mali against supposed terrorist elements.

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The state broadcaster, BBC, quoted the Ministry of Defense (MoD) in claiming that 100 British soldiers had taken part in an operation against suspected Daesh elements close to Mali’s border with Niger.

For its part, the MoD tweeted that British forces had dealt a blow to Daesh in the “middle of a sandstorm”.

Troops from @LDLightCav and @RAnglians, peacekeeping for @UN_MINUSMA conducted a search in the middle of a sandstorm in Mali, seizing AK47s, bullets, radios and fuel stashed by ISIS militants who were intimidating civilians. Read more here 👇https://t.co/0E6G7c1kbG pic.twitter.com/8E7PkEVIZd
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) May 15, 2021

But all the British forces have to show for the success in this search operation is mostly some AK47 rifles and “hundreds of rounds of ammunition”.

Nor is it clear which local or transnational group the British forces were targeting. The MoD claims it is Daesh but there is no independent verification of that.

A more embellished and dramatic version of the story has been run by Sky News, whose defense and security journalists are known to be close to British military and intelligence circles.

The latest operation – and the obvious attempt to embellish it by the MoD and allied media – is bound to raise more questions about the true role of British forces in Mali.

Three hundred UK troops were deployed to Mali in December 2020, ostensibly to assist 16,000 “peacekeepers” from 56 nations operating under the umbrella of a loosely defined United Nations mission.

But as the latest operation demonstrates UK forces are conducting operations against little-known local groups – which are conveniently labeled as “Daesh” – with minimal accountability and transparency.

This raises troubling questions about the UK’s long-term objectives in Mali and neighboring countries such as Niger.

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