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The Swedish Armed Forces has begun planning for a possible deployment including helicopters to the new France-led special operations Task Force Takuba in Mali, following a request from the government.
“Exactly what the Swedish contribution will look like is still too early to say, but it will likely include personnel and helicopters from the Special Forces,” the armed forces headquarters said in a Wednesday, February 5 release.
Both government and parliament must approve the plans.
The announcement comes less than three weeks after Sweden’s Minister for Defence Peter Hultqvist accompanied his French counterpart Florence Parly on a visit to Chad and Mali. Hultqvist later told SVT that France had requested a contribution to Takuba but that no government decision had been made. “This is something that we will have to prepare,” he said.
More than 200 Swedish military personnel are already deployed to multinational missions in Mali, in the heart of sub-Saharan Africa’s Sahel region.
Lieutenant General Dennis Gyllensporre serves as Force Commander of MINUSMA, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali. Sweden contributed an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability based at Camp Nobel in Timbuktu until December, and according to U.N. figures, 203 soldiers, 12 staff officers and six police officers were deployed.
The Swedish contingent will move to the large shared camp at Gao, which is also home to the only permanent base in Mali for Operation Barkhane, the France-led counter-terrorism mission that will command Task Force Takuba.
Sweden currently contributes around seven instructors and staff officers to the European Union Training Mission in Mali which has trained more than 14,000 Malian Armed Forces (FAMa) personnel since it was established in February 2013.
https://thedefensepost.com/2020/02/06/sweden-mali-takuba-barkhane-sahel/
