It's not a question of if but how: France's president is hosting African and European allies before the announcement of a withdrawal from Mali. Relations have seriously soured with the junta in Bamako ever since a second coup in as many years and the cozying up of the military to Russia and the mercenaries of the Wagner Group.
Nine years have passed since then-president François Hollande swooped in to stop the southward advance of a jihadist insurgency and free the far north. But military victory was never going magically fix the politics of one of the poorest countries of the world.
