THE United Nations is undertaking an “unprecedented” six-month exit from Mali on orders of the west African nation’s military rulers.

The UN special envoy for Mali, El-Ghassim Wane, laid out the scale of the operation to the UN security council on Monday.

He told the council that all 12,947 UN peacekeepers and police must be sent home, their 12 camps and one temporary base handed over to the government, and 1,786 civilian staff terminated by the December 31 deadline.

Mali’s UN ambassador Issa Konfourou said the government is co-operating with the UN peacekeeping mission, known as Minusma, but it will not extend the deadline.

The UN also needs to move out approximately 5,500 sea containers of equipment and 4,000 vehicles that belong to the world body and the countries that contributed personnel to Minusma, the fourth-largest of the UN’s dozen peacekeeping operations, Mr Wane said.

In August 2020, Mali’s president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was overthrown in a coup that included an army colonel who carried out a second coup and was sworn in as president in June 2021. 

The UN deployed peacekeepers in 2013 after an earlier coup in 2012. Since then Minusma has become the most dangerous UN mission in the world, with more than 300 personnel killed.