Mali orders French army programming off private TV channels

Mali’s army-dominated government has ordered private television channels to stop airing content promoting the French military in the Sahel state, calling such ads “particularly inappropriate”.

The government said that France’s Barkhane military operation had been running an advertising campaign for several weeks in Mali in order to “promote its activity”.

“This initiative is particularly inappropriate when national opinion is critical of the results of the French intervention,” the government added in a letter to private TV channels.

Videos commissioned by the French military show French soldiers donating food to Malians, for instance, or fighting alongside Malian soldiers.

The letter, dated March 30, asked the Malian association of private television channels to demand that its members stop broadcasting the spots.

France first intervened in Mali in 2013 and currently has thousands of troops stationed in its former colonial possession to fight a jihadist insurgency.

But relations between Mali and France deteriorated sharply after Malian army officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita deposed elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020.

The army then deposed the civilian leaders of a transitional government last year, in a second coup.

In February, Paris decided to withdraw its forces from Mali. Allied European nations that also contributed troops to the fight against jihadists in Mali have also announced that they will pull out.

A French military official told AFP that the promotional TV spots were designed to defend Operation Barkhane’s record.