KIDAL, 12 February, 2021 (TON): On Thursday, signatories to the shaky peace deal met in Mali in the northern city of Kidal, a former rebel bastion.  

In 2012, the city fell to Tuareg separatists, who captured much of the north of the Sahel state before the extremist groups commandeered their rebellion.

Thousands killed since the fighters have expanded the conflict into central Mali as well as neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.

In a bid to curb the fighting, Mali in 2015 signed an accord in Algiers with several rebel groups -- a deal viewed as one of the country's few options for escaping the violence.

The agreement, among other things, saw rebel militias start cooperating with the army, and provides for decentralizing governance in the vast nation of 19 million people.

But implementing the deal has been painfully slow, Malian troops only returned to Kidal last year.

On Thursday, Algiers-accord signatories gathered in Kidal, in their first such meeting in the symbolic city, and diplomats from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, and Mali's neighbor Algeria also attended.

It is likely to say that the Kidal conference has been a sign of hope in coping with the violence in the semi-arid region.