Years of Multi-Actor Intervention in Mali with too Little to Show

The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has as part of its mandate protection of civilians. But it is interesting that MINUSMA seems to have more of documents to show the attacks in the villages than they do actually intervene and protect. There is not much that MINUSMA has done since 2013 to disrupt and reduce the impacts of the conflict on civilians. Simply, it has largely failed at least in as far as protection of civilians is concerned. The challenges related to coordination and control, competing and clashing interests between and among multiple actors particularly the so called G5 Sahel (G5S) made of troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger and then the ongoing parallel "war" by French forces makes Mali a complex and difficult situation. This once again brings to the fore the fact that multiplicity of actors (interveners) in conflict situations is in and by itself a major problem and at times a contributor to conflict escalation than it is a de-escalation. But little attention seems to be paid to this factor even as policy makers, particularly through the UN and its hybrid peacekeeping missions and peace support operations, seem to trumpet the significance of many actors into a truism. I think we have a bigger, unnecessary and confusing presence of external actors in Mali. A factor that has basically complicated the conflict then helping it. As we speak, nobody seems to even know what needs and/or should be done to address the situation in Mali any more even as France keeps on recolonizing (that is if they finished colonizing) Mali. We no longer even can locate the actual conflict causing factors in Mali especially as more actors join in; new formations and alliances are formed, new issues emerge and old ones evolve, geographical localization and conflict epicenters shift and spillovers occur. How, for instance, did the conflict epicenter spread from the Tuareg regions of the North in 2012 to current armed violence in central Mali and even further down to the South?