Assimi Goïta

Both men come from the ranks of the gendarmerie and are part of the close-knit circle around the original putschists including junta leader Assimi Goïta (AC Vol 61 No 17 The junta haggles on transition)...

In late 2023 he announced the end to his exile but did not return to Côte d'Ivoire instead travelling to the three junta-run Sahel states and heaped praises on Mali's leader Colonel Assimi Goïta for re-taking the former rebel fief of Kidal (AC Vol 64 No 24 Will Tidjane Thiam's 'grand retour' succeed...

Colonel Assimi Goïta's regime last week furiously declared that Mali is 'not Algeria's back yard' and unilaterally abrogated the 2015 Algiers peace accord with the former Tuareg separatists...

The SahelMali's military junta leader Assimi Goïta postponed the restoration of civilian elections that had been promised for February or March...

Fear of links to Iran and Hizbollah helped turn interim President Colonel Assimi Goïta's regime against its biggest domestic supporter and to imprison its leader and harass other senior members of 'Yerewolo – Debout Sur Les Ramparts' ('standing on the ramparts') according to diplomatic sources...

But Colonel Assimi Goïta's junta celebrated its battle for Kidal by declaring a public holiday and offering cut-price tickets to see Mali's national team play Chad and Central African Republic in World Cup qualifier matches...

Bamako's junta cuts its Russian gold deal A week after Colonel Assimi Goïta's junta proclaimed an historic victory with its Wagner Group allies at Kidal Economy and Finance Minister Alousséni Sanou announced a memorandum of understanding with Russia to build a 200 tonnes a year gold refinery the biggest in West Africa...

This month's signature of a new security pact with the fellow military regimes in Niamey and Ouagadougou has strengthened junta leader Colonel Assimi Goïta's confidence in pursuing this goal...

That festering resentment in Bamako explains why transitional president Assimi Goïta showed little interest in properly implementing the Algiers agreement and has now seized on the departure of the Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation au Mali (Minusma) to reassert government authority across the north by taking over the bases being gradually vacated by UN troops...

CAR's President Faustin-Archange Touadéra and the Malian junta boss Colonel Assimi Goïta were embarrassed when last September Prigozhin acknowledged in a video what they had not yet admitted: that he was leading Wagner and intervening in many African countries...

Colonel Assimi Goïta's junta in Bamako expelled Minusma's spokesman in July 2022 and the head of its human rights division in February...

Copying a tactic used by Mali's transitional leader Assimi Goïta they have announced their own version of an 'inclusive dialogue' to plot the national route forward...