Colonialism Reparation calls on France to carry out the immediate withdrawal of its troops and asks that the armed forces of Mali be backed only by the UN mission of support under African command. On January 11 2013 the French President François Hollande announced a military intervention in Mali in response to a request for help from the Malian President Dioncounda Traoré. The deployment of the operation has resulted in little more than a month in the presence on the Malian ground of about 4,000 French soldiers (currently in West Africa there are 950 French soldiers in Chad with the operation Epervier, 450 French soldiers in Ivory Coast with the operation Licorne, 200 French soldiers in the Central African Republic with the operation Boali in addition to the permanent presence of about 400 French soldiers in Senegal). The military intervention in Mali was first carried out by France outside of any UN mandate or military cooperation agreement, only relying on Article 51 of the UNO Charter. It was prepared in the previous months and activated under French pressure; moreover it was originated from the French choice to attack Libya and to support the claims of independence of Azawad. Obviously, the origin of this complicated situation dates back to the scramble for Africa which characterized the imperialist stage of colonialism between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The colonial powers, from the Berlin Conference onward, have integrated within any future African nation some ethnic groups fighting each other, so as to make the best use of divide and conquer. The real aim of the French military intervention is clear, namely the control over natural resources (gold, uranium, oil, etc.) of which Mali is rich and that have only minimally been exploited so far. It is equally clear that all of this does not appear in public speeches, in which the French president go as far as to say that "today we are repaying our debt to you." Colonialism Reparation thus calls on France to carry out the immediate withdrawal of its troops and asks that the armed forces of Mali be backed only by the UN Mission of Support under African command (AFISMA, to whose command the Chadian contingent be subordinated). For further information, inquiries and interviews, please contact: Colonialism Reparation http://www.colonialismreparation.org Press Office: media@colonialismreparation.org