“Those days are over,” French President Francois Hollande said last
month, when asked if French forces would intervene in the war between
Islamist insurgents who have seized the northern half of Mali and the
government in Bamako.
But the days in question weren’t over for very long.
Last Friday, France sent a squadron
of fighter-bombers to the West African country to stop the Islamist
fighters from taking the capital.
“We are making air raids the whole
time,” French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said. “They are going
on now. They will go on tonight. They will go on tomorrow.”
There are 800 French combat troops on
the ground already, and a spokesperson for the French military
operation in Mali confirmed Tuesday that it is tripling that number to
2,500. Contingents of soldiers from the neighbouring countries of
Nigeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and Togo are scheduled to arrive as
early as next week, and on Tuesday, a Canadian military transport plane
was sent to Mali, by way of France, to provide logistical support to
French troops.
It has turned into a real war.
It has also turned into a Western-run war in a Muslim country, despite the discouraging precedents of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The government of Mali asked for
French help, and on Monday the United Nations Security Council
unanimously supported France’s military intervention. The army of Mali,
such as it is, will theoretically be in charge of the war — but
everybody knows that the Malian army is useless.
In fact, the presence of Mali’s army
at the front is usually counterproductive, as it is brutal, militarily
incompetent, and prone to panic flight. The other African armies are of
variable quality, but it is obviously French troops, and especially
French air power, that will decide the outcome of the war. So has France
bitten off more than it can chew? Is this going to end up like
Afghanistan and Iraq?
The supporters of the war prefer to
compare it with last year’s Western military intervention in Libya,
another French initiative that was decided over one weekend. They like
that analogy better because the Libyan intervention ended tolerably
well, with the overthrow of the dictator, a democratically elected
government, and no Western casualties. But the differences between Libya
and Mali are greater than the similarities.
In Libya the rebels were trying to
rid the country of Moammar Gadhafi, a loony, friendless dictator, and
create a democratic future. The decision to intervene was made in Paris
in only two hectic days, when it appeared that Gadhafi’s mercenary
troops were about to overrun Benghazi and massacre the rebels. NATO
served as the rebel air force, but no Western troops fought on the
ground. And it worked.
With Mali, once again it was decided
in a couple of days, and once again France has taken the lead. Once
again Britain is sending some help as well (transport aircraft, but no
troops or combat aircraft), and the United States is providing discreet
logistical support. (U.S. air force tankers refuelled the French
fighters on their way to Mali.) But that’s where the similarities end.
The West is supporting the
government, not the rebels, in Mali. That government, behind a flimsy
civilian facade, is controlled by the same thugs in uniform whose
military coup last March, just one month before the scheduled democratic
election, created the chaos that let the Islamist rebels conquer the
northern half of the country. The young officers who now run the country
are ignorant and violent, and having them on your side is not an asset.
The Islamist rebels are fanatical,
intolerant, and violent, but they are well armed (a lot of advanced
infantry weapons came on the market when Gadhafi’s regime collapsed) and
they appear to be well trained. They have almost no popular support in
90 per cent Muslim Mali, whose version of Islam is much more moderate,
but they have terrified the population of the north into submission or
flight.
The insurgents are not short of
money, either, as they receive secret subsidies from several Arab
monarchies in the Gulf that have persuaded themselves, strangely, that
subsidizing radical Islamist movements in the far-flung fringes of the
Muslim world is a good way to avoid being overthrown by radical
Islamists at home. They are formidable opponents, and the war to free
northern Mali may be long and hard.
Until recently the rebels seemed to
be confined to Mali’s desert north, but last week they began to advance
into southern Mali, where nine-tenths of the country’s 14 million people
live. The Malian army collapsed, and Western intelligence sources
estimated that the Islamists would capture the capital, Bamako, within
two days. That would effectively give them control of the entire
country.
Mali has long, unguarded borders with
seven other African countries, and it is only 3,000 kilometres from
France. So Hollande ordered immediate military intervention to stop the
Islamist advance, and we’ll all worry about the long-term consequences
later. The next Western war against Islamist extremists has already
started, and the question is whether it will end up like Afghanistan.
therecord.com
![320957_217857775018120_443025986_n[1]](http://www.presssolidarity.net/wp-content/uploads/320957_217857775018120_443025986_n1.jpg)
![imgarticle4683[1]](http://www.presssolidarity.net/wp-content/uploads/imgarticle46831.jpg)
![car-explosion[1]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t0kYv7HpOhdHgCAAkslDbxgYXTNltndLXP_Gl63t_0HJEiVuzgh-nqUHNDhbScg1G4WOavmxijcUghBDFxyKbI9nPjLcMCd8Gz-gWf62AjJBEkIZHYNxU-ZndJ0OxJ2537MCaXXY2y=s0-d)