- Vigil category device · not official insignia
Identity provenance
Vigil category device — drawn from this record’s own domain, echelon and role. Not an official insignia.
In brief
A navigation grouping, not a command: the French, UN, European and regional forces of the intervention era, 2013–2024 — Serval and Barkhane, MINUSMA, Takuba, EUTM Mali and the G5 Sahel joint force. Each ran under its own mandate and institution, and each has ended or withdrawn from Mali; the grouping exists so the sequence of departures can be read as one story.
- Scope
- Structure, role, lineage and links. 6 subordinate records published.
- Subordination
- Subordination confirmed
- Sources
- 4 on the record
- Record state
- Partial
- Broad area of activity
- Mali, with the G5 Sahel force and Barkhane reaching across the five Sahel states; every mission here has ended or left Mali.
- Notable history
- Six missions under four institutions overlapped in Mali for a decade. France's Serval broke the jihadist occupation of the north in early 2013 and folded into the Sahel-wide Barkhane in August 2014; the UN's MINUSMA deployed from April 2013 and became the organisation's deadliest mission of its era; the EU's EUTM Mali trained the army from February 2013; the G5 Sahel joint force was created in 2017 and Task Force Takuba in 2020 to put regional and European forces beside the French. The departures came in the reverse order and in under two years: Mali left the G5 in May 2022, Takuba and Barkhane withdrew that summer, MINUSMA was expelled at Bamako's demand and closed on 31 December 2023, the G5 dissolved that same month, and EUTM Mali's mandate lapsed on 18 May 2024. What replaced them is recorded elsewhere in this atlas — the Russian presence and the AES unified force.
- Strengths
- As a grouping, its value is the sequence: it shows that the withdrawals were one political process, driven by the 2020–2021 coups and the transition's choice of partners, rather than six unrelated decisions. The member records carry the mandates, dates and end states as their own institutions published them.
- Limitations
- A navigation umbrella with no shared command, staff or mandate: the missions answered to Paris, New York, Brussels and Nouakchott and coordinated rather than integrated. It says nothing about the present — the records below are historical and the grouping is marked so — and it does not extend to the missions' afterlives in Niger or Chad.
Subordinate formations
Rows are layout only — position and order carry no hierarchy, importance, sequence or strength. Every record shown is an immediate subordinate of the selected organisation.
Assessed as of — 2024-05 Last reviewed — 2026-09-28
See this force in the structure Interactive: select this record and follow what connects to it.