Back to reality on the ground. The Tuaregs and all the armed groups in the area have been avoiding confrontation with the Malian army and Wagner for several reasons.
The Malian army and Wagner are not in a war where they are imposing themselves by force of arms, they are taking up positions where there are no confrontations. The abuses we sometimes hear about will then be carried out on civilians. Bamako sees this as a conquest, as a victory, and considers that if the enemy flees, it means they have been routed.
But that's ignoring local tactics. If there are 10 Tuaregs in one place and there are 100 guys coming in the opposite direction, well, they're not going to fight them, they're going to flee. Fighting isn't automatic, they try to organise themselves to take advantage, choosing when and where to attack.
As we can see from this attack, the Malian army and Wagner were surprised by an ambush in the face of an enemy they continued to ignore, sinking into depths where they couldn't bring in reinforcements quickly, where the rare aircraft available were stretched to the limit, and where logistics didn't keep up.
The mentality in Bamako is still the idea that all you have to do is put your bags in one place to control that place, but the reality in northern Mali (or even in the region) is that you have to be able to hold these places, i.e. to be able to reinforce the points at any time, to be able to supply them without your convoys being easy targets (ambushes, mines, etc.), and to have your aircraft on standby to intervene quickly and not the next day. So the fragmentation of forces in this region can lead to a kind of trap, with the Tuaregs able to organise themselves to cut off "roads" or storm small detachments.
Today we have a return to this reality, this complexity in the face of Tuaregs who are far from weak. The Malian army still has potential, and Wagner is not just a few dozen dead more or less. On paper that's true, but the most damaging thing is the invisible part. The invisible is morale, confidence, enthusiasm, ideology. For some time now, Bamako's propaganda has been based on the idea that the Malian army is becoming more powerful, that it is winning all its battles, that its new armoured vehicles and new aircraft give it the means to victory, that its Russian allies are much more effective, that the risks with them are minimised.
Once again, it is not for nothing that the propaganda will seek to bury this defeat, like so many others, by passing it off as a victory in which the Malian army inflicted terrible losses on those on the other side, fighting heroically but having to withdraw for lack of fuel to continue moving towards victory. We've been hearing this kind of talk for a while now, and it continues to lull us into the illusion that everything is going well, that the Malian army has suddenly become super-powerful and efficient.
It's a bit the same with our neighbours in Niger and Burkina Faso, I repeat, you mustn't interpret these speeches as news, they may have 3 dead in an ambush that they'll publicly acknowledge but they'll add that they killed 50 guys on the other side so that it'll go down better and we'll turn a defeat into a victory.
The problem here is that the propaganda won't be able to hide the images and those on the other side who are staging their victory (collecting the corpses) know very well the impact it can have. They know that they are creating doubt in the Malian population and at the same time exposing the propaganda machine for its lies. They're going to deal a blow to the morale of the Malian army, which is telling itself that, in fact, having the Russians on its side isn't protection or life insurance.
It's a disillusionment with the Russian 'protector' who must have unconsciously reassured a good number of Malian soldiers when they were there, but now they're likely to reflect and understand that being accompanied by the Russians is not the same as being accompanied by the French before, when the worst that could happen was to run over a mine.
It's the same as with MINUSMA, which could be criticised for not tracking down terrorists, but the Malian army has very often taken advantage of its logistics and its armed convoys, taken advantage of its facilities, taken advantage of its helicopters to intervene following an ambush, to evacuate its wounded.
Where were the Malian aircraft today? Oh yes, they took out a helicopter that crashed. Yes, we can remind you that having aircraft on paper is one thing, that maintenance and upkeep are not just for show, that having aircraft on 'alert' 24/7 is essential if you want to deal with unforeseen events. Malian aircraft don't have to fly very long, and their maintenance is very sloppy in a very hard environment. We also remember the crash of the Il-76 aircraft in Gao a few months ago.
The consequences of this attack are likely to push Bamako and Wagner to seek revenge, which could lead to other disappointments. For while on the one hand the attack was a slap in the face, on the other, among the Tuaregs, it is more a dose of confidence that will tell all the groups that there is no need to fear this enemy, that he can be defeated.
We have already seen in the past that in this country, a few military defeats can create a snowball effect and an opposition from the military to advance, to hold their positions, not to say to fight. So let's not assume that if 50 people are killed tomorrow, others will replace them and carry on as if all this had never happened.
Morale is low in this army, and the propaganda about Wagner's mercenaries and the new weapons has no doubt boosted confidence, but to see today that these Russian mercenaries are not really providing any protection, to see these Chinese armoured vehicles that we used to praise on TV being destroyed, to see that the air power has been conspicuous by its absence and mediocrity (crash), well for some it's a psychological cold shower that the propaganda will have a hard time making up for.