Where the Hell is Mali?

[BridgeTroll]

We have already committed transports and tankers... when was the last time we helped out the French with one of their former colonies?

As a general rule, we don't help the French out with their former colonies, unless you count humanitarian aid - although we did provide some military assistance in Syria, apparently.

True... especially after the "help" we provided in French Indochina...

[ben says]

^That wasn't a "former" colony. That was a current colony, at the time. Then they left, and we wanted it to be our colony.

[BridgeTroll]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_ALGERIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-16-15-17-01

Jan 16, 3:17 PM EST


US confirms Americans taken after Algeria attack

By BRADLEY KLAPPER and LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday the U.S. "will take all necessary and proper steps" to deal with an Islamist attack on a natural gas field in southern Algeria that has resulted in Americans and other foreigners taken hostage.

Panetta would not detail what such steps might be, but he condemned the incident as "terrorist attack" and likened it to al-Qaida activities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and in the United States on 9/11.

A militant group that claimed responsibility says it's holding seven Americans, but State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said she wouldn't provide details to protect those who were kidnapped. Panetta said he didn't know the numbers of those kidnapped.

Militants said they attacked and occupied the field partly operated by the energy company BP because of Algeria's support of France's operation against al-Qaida-linked Malian rebels groups to the southeast.

"It is a very serious matter when Americans are taken hostage along with others," Panetta told reporters in Rome, where he spent the day meeting with Italian leaders, in part to discuss the operations in Mali. "I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation."

Panetta told reporters in Italy that he was briefed Wednesday on the Algeria attack and said the U.S. is in consultation with the Algerians to determine what the situation is and what happened.

He said he did not know if the kidnappings were connected at all to the French military assault in Mali.

"I do know that terrorists are terrorists and terrorists take these kinds of actions," he added, "We've witnessed their behavior in a number of occasions where they have total disregard for innocent men and women. This appears to be that kind of situation."

Nuland said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke Wednesday by telephone with Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal.

She also said the U.S. Embassy in Algiers issued an emergency message to American citizens encouraging them to review their personal safety.

"We're obviously taking the appropriate measures at the embassy as well," she told reporters.

U.S. authorities also were in contact with BP.

---

Baldor contributed to this report from Rome.

[BridgeTroll]

^That wasn't a "former" colony. That was a current colony, at the time. Then they left, and we wanted it to be our colony.

Um... Ok...

Geneva Agreements

On 27 April 1954, the Geneva Conference produced the Geneva Agreements; supporting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Indochina, granting it independence from France, declaring the cessation of hostilities and foreign involvement in internal Indochina affairs, delineating northern and southern zones into which opposing troops were to withdraw, they mandated unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in July 1956.[1] It also settled a number of outstanding disputes relating to the Korean War.[citation needed] It was at this conference that France relinquished any claim to territory in the Indochinese peninsula. Neither the U.S. nor South Vietnam signed the Geneva Accords. South Vietnamese leader Diem rejected the idea of nationwide election as proposed in the agreement, saying that a free election was impossible in the communist North and that his government was not bound by the Geneva Accords.

The events of 1954 marked the beginnings of serious United States involvement in Vietnam and the ensuing Vietnam War. Laos and Cambodia also became independent in 1954, but were both drawn into the Vietnam War.

[BridgeTroll]

Good article outlining past history and the current conflict...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/15/al_qaeda_country

Al Qaeda Country

Why Mali matters.

BY PETER CHILSON |JANUARY 15, 2013

In 1893, in West Africa's upper Niger River basin -- what is now central Mali -- the French army achieved a victory that had eluded it for almost 50 years: the destruction of the jihadist Tukulor Empire, one of the last great challenges to France's rule in the region. The Tukulor Empire's first important conquest had come decades earlier, in the early 1850s, when its fanatical founder, El Hajj Umar Tall, led Koranic students and hardened soldiers to topple the Bambara kingdoms along the banks of the Niger. Umar imposed a strict brand of Islamic law, reportedly enslaving or killing tens of thousands of non-believers over a half century. He is said to have personally smashed to pieces captured idols, and once told a French officer he encountered at a well guarded fort to "Go back to your own country, accursed man." Umar traveled widely, prophesying the end of French rule and preaching about the paradise that awaits those who die by jihad. Killed in the explosion of a gunpowder cache in 1864, it still took almost three decades for the French to wrest control over the middle and upper reaches of the Niger River, including Timbuktu and much of the desert to the north.

Now, the jihadists are back and so are the French -- the two sides slugging it out over the same real estate they fought over 120 years ago. An alliance of jihadist groups, including Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, have retaken Timbuktu and again threaten the area of the upper Niger and Senegal Rivers, where the French once built stone fortresses to fend off Umar's attacks. The forts are still there, long abandoned and crumbling along the riverbanks. Over the past 10 months, jihadist forces have re-established the rule of Islamic law across northern Mali, which encompasses around 200,000 square miles or 60 percent of the country. This is a place where teenage couples risk death by stoning if they hold hands in public.

If Mali feels somewhat far away or less than important, consider this: Northern Mali is currently the largest al Qaeda-controlled space in the world, an area a little larger than France itself. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that Mali could become a "permanent haven for terrorists and organized criminal networks." In December, Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, warned that al Qaeda was using northern Mali as a training center and base for recruiting across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Jihadists operating in northern Mali have been linked to Boko Haram, the violent Islamist group based in northern Nigeria, and to Ansar al-Sharia, a group in Libya which has been linked to the attack on the U.S. consulate at Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Until last week, Mali appeared to be in a state of semi-permanent standoff, split between the jihadists in the north, and what remained of the Malian army and government in the south. But a sudden jihadist advance into the south shattered the fragile equilibrium, drawing France into the fray. On Jan. 10, jihadist rebels overran the strategic central Malian village of Konna, then the northernmost outpost under government control. The rebel forces had been spotted leaving Timbuktu days earlier in a long column of some 100 vehicles and 900 rebel soldiers.

For the French, the fall of Konna proved not only that the Malian army has not recovered from its March defeat by Tuareg rebels and jihadists in the north, but also that it cannot protect the rest of the country. Faced with this reality, the French launched an air campaign to drive the jihadists back, and dispatched ground troops -- soon to number 2,500 -- to secure Mali's capital, Bamako, and to reinforce Malian army positions bordering the north. By Jan. 12, French airstrikes had driven the jihadist rebels out of Konna.

The French government has repeatedly said that the Malian government asked for its help after the fall of Konna. But there is also a less selfless reason for Paris's urgency: fear that a growing al Qaeda presence in West Africa will make France itself more vulnerable to terrorist attack. French President Francois Hollande said as much on Monday, warning that the jihadist groups in Mali pose a threat that "goes well beyond Mali, in Africa and perhaps beyond."

France's decision to lead the intervention in Mali ended months of handwringing over how to implement the Dec. 20 U.N. Security Council Resolution, which established an ill-defined "Mali Support Mission." The resolution approved a force of 3,300 African troops to be raised from Mali's neighbors -- mainly Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as Togo, Benin, and Ivory Coast -- which were expected to take on the rebels toward the end of 2013. But the resolution provided no timetable for an invasion of the north and no way to pay for it or to equip and train the African troops. France and the leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been slowly securing help from Britain, Germany, and the United States for training and logistics help. But the fall of Konna and fresh worries about the vulnerability of the rest of Mali to jihadist takeover forced the hands of both France and ECOWAS.

Now French troops are in Mali and troops from Mali's neighbors began arriving in Bamako this week, though it's still not clear how or when the African troops will go into action. France's ambassador in London, Bernard Emié, told the BBC on Monday that the African troops still require training and equipment. The jihadists, meanwhile, have counterattacked, taking another village in Segou province -- one of the first regions the Tukulor Empire conquered 165 years ago -- and pushing to within 300 miles of the capital. France's military action will test just how strong the jihadists are. According to French and U.S. officials, they are both well-trained and heavily armed, having captured equipment from the Malian army last spring and acquired additional weapons from Libya, itself awash in weapons after the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi. The officials say al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is also well funded, having raised around $100 million from kidnappings in Mali in recent years, including the kidnapping of a Frenchman near Mali's border with Mauritania in November 2012.

Mali today is a country of surprising reversals and disappointments. The splintering of the country began with a Tuareg rebellion in January 2011, the fifth such uprising since 1960. But the Tuaregs' push to establish their own state was derailed last summer by jihadist groups who were better organized and funded -- and the Tuaregs have since offered their support for the Malian government's struggle to drive the jihadists from the north. The uprising also led to the demise of Mali's 20 year-old democracy, when in March junior army officers unhappy with the government's inept handling of the Tuareg situation launched  a coup d'état. The resulting chaos led to the collapse of Mali's army in the north, aided by the defection of entire Malian army units of Tuareg commanders and soldiers. In May, the junta in Bamako barely survived a second coup attempt by a paratrooper regiment loyal to the deposed civilian government. Days later, a mob of boys and young men stormed the presidential palace and beat up the junta's own puppet civilian president. Since then, the Malian junta and its civilian front men have waffled on accepting foreign military aid to oust the jihadists, insisting with wounded pride that the army can do the job itself.

Last May, I visited Col. Didier Dacko, commander of what remained of Mali's army, at the largest Malian army base along the border with the north. I asked him to respond to a quote I'd gotten from a Western diplomat in Bamako, who told me the Malian army has never been strong. "It is an army of farmers," the diplomat had said. Dacko shrugged when I read him the quote and replied, "Malians are not used to instability."

And he's right. Mali has been at peace since 1893 and now the jihadists have returned to stir the national memory. For the moment, Malians in the south seem to welcome the French intervention, though the legacy of colonialism has left many West Africans skeptical of just about anything Paris does. To this day, for example, many in West Africa and in Mali remember El Hajj Umar Tall not as a jihadist, but as an anti colonial crusader. It's hard to imagine French troops would be welcome for very long in Mali or anywhere. And the jihadists want to reinforce that point.

"France has opened the gates of hell," one Islamist leader in Mali, Oumar Ould Hamahar, a member of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, told Europe 1 radio in a phone interview in response to the French bombing campaign. "It has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia."

France has promised to stay in Mali until the country is stable again, but Paris has said that it wants to position African troops to do the heavy work of dislodging the jihadists from the north. Still, France may be unable to avoid a long engagement with its own military forces right out front. A French armored column has already rolled out of Bamako, headed for the north. Even with air strikes -- there have been more than 50 so far -- and French troops on the ground it will still be some time before an African force is ready for a major push. Taking back Mali's northern cities, such as Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal, may be the easiest task. Mali's vast northern desert is a hard place to live, not to mention wage war. For eight months a year, the daytime temperature exceeds 120 degrees Fahrenheit in a vast and unpopulated land that is easy to hide in, especially for the jihadist forces who know the territory well. Any army, no matter how large and well equipped, will have a tough time driving them out.

For now, it appears as if a piece of El Hajj Umar Tall's empire has survived after all.

[Adam W]

We have already committed transports and tankers... when was the last time we helped out the French with one of their former colonies?

As a general rule, we don't help the French out with their former colonies, unless you count humanitarian aid - although we did provide some military assistance in Syria, apparently.

True... especially after the "help" we provided in French Indochina...

Yeah, I figured you were getting at Vietnam. The French tend to take care of themselves - they didn't ask for help in Algeria or Chad, for example.

But in Vietnam, we gave money and arms initially, but didn't bother becoming involved in the war effort (as in boots on the ground) until after the French had left and we certainly weren't doing anything then to help out the French at that point.

I don't see Mali going that way, but who knows. All this is part of the so-called 'Global War on Terror' anyway. This is what the Republican Party brought to us when they illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

And as I recall, most Americans cheered us on to war in both of those instances - and lest we forget, that includes Iraq, which is now unpopular. But most everyone seemed to think Iraq was a good idea at the time. So when people start to complain about Barack Obama (or our "Dear Leader" as another poster called him), you can look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly how you felt when all that shock and awe nonsense was playing out on television. And if you supported it, then I suggest you tone down the rhetoric a bit.

Not you, BT... but the royal "you." Because those of us who vocally opposed the war in Iraq were branded traitors and insulted and told to leave the country, etc etc etc. And so it's hard to forget that.

[BridgeTroll]

We have already committed transports and tankers... when was the last time we helped out the French with one of their former colonies?

As a general rule, we don't help the French out with their former colonies, unless you count humanitarian aid - although we did provide some military assistance in Syria, apparently.

True... especially after the "help" we provided in French Indochina...

Yeah, I figured you were getting at Vietnam. The French tend to take care of themselves - they didn't ask for help in Algeria or Chad, for example.

But in Vietnam, we gave money and arms initially, but didn't bother becoming involved in the war effort (as in boots on the ground) until after the French had left and we certainly weren't doing anything then to help out the French at that point.

I don't see Mali going that way, but who knows. All this is part of the so-called 'Global War on Terror' anyway. This is what the Republican Party brought to us when they illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

And as I recall, most Americans cheered us on to war in both of those instances - and lest we forget, that includes Iraq, which is now unpopular. But most everyone seemed to think Iraq was a good idea at the time. So when people start to complain about Barack Obama (or our "Dear Leader" as another poster called him), you can look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly how you felt when all that shock and awe nonsense was playing out on television. And if you supported it, then I suggest you tone down the rhetoric a bit.

Not you, BT... but the royal "you." Because those of us who vocally opposed the war in Iraq were branded traitors and insulted and told to leave the country, etc etc etc. And so it's hard to forget that.

What rhetoric are you suggesting I tone down?  I have simply been providing information.  We will soon know more about Mali, ECOWAS, Bamako, Ansar Dine, etc than most of us ever would have previously cared about.  It is quite possible NATO as an organization will become involved here... The taking of American hostages could quickly involve "boots on the ground".

[BridgeTroll]

Looks like they killed the hosatges... 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/201311713160194432.html

Dozens of hostages 'killed' in Algeria

Thirty-four hostages and 15 kidnappers reportedly killed, a day after Western and Algerian gas field workers are seized.
Last Modified: 17 Jan 2013 15:27


Thirty-four hostages and 15 kidnappers have been killed in southern Algeria, according to the group holding the hostages.

Thursday's reported deaths came a day after dozens of foreigners and Algerians were taken hostage by heavily armed fighters near the In Amenas gas field.

The fighters said they seized the hostages in retaliation for Algeria letting France use its airspace to launch operations against rebels in northern Mali.

The spokesman for the Masked Brigade, which had claimed responsibility for the abductions on Wednesday, told Mauritanian ANI news agency that the deaths were a result of an Algerian government helicopter attack on a convoy transporting hostages and kidnappers.

A local source confirmed to Reuters news agency that six foreign hostages and eight fighters were killed. The source said some hostages were still being held, and 180 Algerian citizens had escaped.

The official Algerian APS news agency later said the army had freed four foreign hostages: two Britons, a Frenchman and a Kenyan.

The Irish foreign ministry said an Irish man had also been freed.

Refusal to negotiate

Algerian media, citing officials, reported that 15 foreigners and 30 Algerians had managed to escape.

The Masked Brigade spokesman said Abou el-Baraa, the leader of the kidnappers, was among those killed in the helicopter attack. He said the fighters would kill the rest of their captives if the army approached.

Algeria has refused to negotiate with what it says is a band of about 20 fighters.

ANI, which has been in constant contact with the al-Qaeda-affiliated kidnappers, said seven hostages were still being held: two Americans, three Belgians, one Japanese and one British citizen.

Norwegians, French and Irish citizens were also among those taken hostage.

A Briton was among two people killed on Wednesday, after fighters launched an ambush of a bus carrying employees from the gas plant to the nearby airport.

The In Amenas gas field is jointly operated by British oil giant BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's Sonatrach.

BP said in a statement on Thursday that "sadly, there have been some reports of casualties but we are still lacking any confirmed or reliable information. There are also reports of hostages being released or escaping."

France launched a major offensive against the rebel group Ansar al-Dine in Mali on January 11 to prevent them from advancing on the capital, Bamako.

Algeria had long warned against military intervention against the rebels, fearing the violence could spill over the border.

Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, following the hostage situation from London, said Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has allied himself with the West in the fight against al-Qaeda.

"As recently as last year it seemed that he was turning the last stronghold of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the mountains up in the north where the Berber people are natives, against those Arabs that have been coming in from outside," he said. "The Algerian authorities have been enjoying significant successes in targeting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leaders."

This is a sad 10,000th post...

[Adam W]

Stephen -

Regarding this: "But I think it would be incorrect to claim that American involvement in Viet Nam came as a result of our hopes to be imperial masters of Indochina."

I never made that claim. I don't think the  motivation for US involvement in Vietnam was as simple as that.

[Ocklawaha]

Pretty spot on Stephen, the one thing even fairly well versed armchair historians miss is the French Indochina was under Vichy French rule at the outset of WWII.  When the Japanese army needed a springboard for their colony quest in the deep South Pacific, the Vichy's gladly surrendered their administration to Japan.  Other French possessions among the South Pacific islands were under General Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle was m/l in exile in England, running what was left of the French Army after Hitler was through with it. This really set up a bad situation.

[Adam W]

We have already committed transports and tankers... when was the last time we helped out the French with one of their former colonies?

As a general rule, we don't help the French out with their former colonies, unless you count humanitarian aid - although we did provide some military assistance in Syria, apparently.

True... especially after the "help" we provided in French Indochina...

Yeah, I figured you were getting at Vietnam. The French tend to take care of themselves - they didn't ask for help in Algeria or Chad, for example.

But in Vietnam, we gave money and arms initially, but didn't bother becoming involved in the war effort (as in boots on the ground) until after the French had left and we certainly weren't doing anything then to help out the French at that point.

I don't see Mali going that way, but who knows. All this is part of the so-called 'Global War on Terror' anyway. This is what the Republican Party brought to us when they illegally invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

And as I recall, most Americans cheered us on to war in both of those instances - and lest we forget, that includes Iraq, which is now unpopular. But most everyone seemed to think Iraq was a good idea at the time. So when people start to complain about Barack Obama (or our "Dear Leader" as another poster called him), you can look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly how you felt when all that shock and awe nonsense was playing out on television. And if you supported it, then I suggest you tone down the rhetoric a bit.

Not you, BT... but the royal "you." Because those of us who vocally opposed the war in Iraq were branded traitors and insulted and told to leave the country, etc etc etc. And so it's hard to forget that.

What rhetoric are you suggesting I tone down?

^^^I meant to address that when I posted "Not you, BT... but the royal "you." Sorry for any confusion.

[Adam W]

Pretty spot on Stephen, the one thing even fairly well versed armchair historians miss is the French Indochina was under Vichy French rule at the outset of WWII. 

Sez the armchair historian   

[Ocklawaha]

Pretty spot on Stephen, the one thing even fairly well versed armchair historians miss is the French Indochina was under Vichy French rule at the outset of WWII. 

Sez the armchair historian   

You corrections would be most welcome.

[Tacachale]

Good article outlining past history and the current conflict...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/15/al_qaeda_country

Al Qaeda Country

Why Mali matters.

BY PETER CHILSON |JANUARY 15, 2013

In 1893, in West Africa's upper Niger River basin -- what is now central Mali -- the French army achieved a victory that had eluded it for almost 50 years: the destruction of the jihadist Tukulor Empire, one of the last great challenges to France's rule in the region. The Tukulor Empire's first important conquest had come decades earlier, in the early 1850s, when its fanatical founder, El Hajj Umar Tall, led Koranic students and hardened soldiers to topple the Bambara kingdoms along the banks of the Niger. Umar imposed a strict brand of Islamic law, reportedly enslaving or killing tens of thousands of non-believers over a half century. He is said to have personally smashed to pieces captured idols, and once told a French officer he encountered at a well guarded fort to "Go back to your own country, accursed man." Umar traveled widely, prophesying the end of French rule and preaching about the paradise that awaits those who die by jihad. Killed in the explosion of a gunpowder cache in 1864, it still took almost three decades for the French to wrest control over the middle and upper reaches of the Niger River, including Timbuktu and much of the desert to the north.

Now, the jihadists are back and so are the French -- the two sides slugging it out over the same real estate they fought over 120 years ago. An alliance of jihadist groups, including Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, have retaken Timbuktu and again threaten the area of the upper Niger and Senegal Rivers, where the French once built stone fortresses to fend off Umar's attacks. The forts are still there, long abandoned and crumbling along the riverbanks. Over the past 10 months, jihadist forces have re-established the rule of Islamic law across northern Mali, which encompasses around 200,000 square miles or 60 percent of the country. This is a place where teenage couples risk death by stoning if they hold hands in public.

If Mali feels somewhat far away or less than important, consider this: Northern Mali is currently the largest al Qaeda-controlled space in the world, an area a little larger than France itself. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that Mali could become a "permanent haven for terrorists and organized criminal networks." In December, Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, warned that al Qaeda was using northern Mali as a training center and base for recruiting across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Jihadists operating in northern Mali have been linked to Boko Haram, the violent Islamist group based in northern Nigeria, and to Ansar al-Sharia, a group in Libya which has been linked to the attack on the U.S. consulate at Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Until last week, Mali appeared to be in a state of semi-permanent standoff, split between the jihadists in the north, and what remained of the Malian army and government in the south. But a sudden jihadist advance into the south shattered the fragile equilibrium, drawing France into the fray. On Jan. 10, jihadist rebels overran the strategic central Malian village of Konna, then the northernmost outpost under government control. The rebel forces had been spotted leaving Timbuktu days earlier in a long column of some 100 vehicles and 900 rebel soldiers.

For the French, the fall of Konna proved not only that the Malian army has not recovered from its March defeat by Tuareg rebels and jihadists in the north, but also that it cannot protect the rest of the country. Faced with this reality, the French launched an air campaign to drive the jihadists back, and dispatched ground troops -- soon to number 2,500 -- to secure Mali's capital, Bamako, and to reinforce Malian army positions bordering the north. By Jan. 12, French airstrikes had driven the jihadist rebels out of Konna.

The French government has repeatedly said that the Malian government asked for its help after the fall of Konna. But there is also a less selfless reason for Paris's urgency: fear that a growing al Qaeda presence in West Africa will make France itself more vulnerable to terrorist attack. French President Francois Hollande said as much on Monday, warning that the jihadist groups in Mali pose a threat that "goes well beyond Mali, in Africa and perhaps beyond."

France's decision to lead the intervention in Mali ended months of handwringing over how to implement the Dec. 20 U.N. Security Council Resolution, which established an ill-defined "Mali Support Mission." The resolution approved a force of 3,300 African troops to be raised from Mali's neighbors -- mainly Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as Togo, Benin, and Ivory Coast -- which were expected to take on the rebels toward the end of 2013. But the resolution provided no timetable for an invasion of the north and no way to pay for it or to equip and train the African troops. France and the leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been slowly securing help from Britain, Germany, and the United States for training and logistics help. But the fall of Konna and fresh worries about the vulnerability of the rest of Mali to jihadist takeover forced the hands of both France and ECOWAS.

Now French troops are in Mali and troops from Mali's neighbors began arriving in Bamako this week, though it's still not clear how or when the African troops will go into action. France's ambassador in London, Bernard Emié, told the BBC on Monday that the African troops still require training and equipment. The jihadists, meanwhile, have counterattacked, taking another village in Segou province -- one of the first regions the Tukulor Empire conquered 165 years ago -- and pushing to within 300 miles of the capital. France's military action will test just how strong the jihadists are. According to French and U.S. officials, they are both well-trained and heavily armed, having captured equipment from the Malian army last spring and acquired additional weapons from Libya, itself awash in weapons after the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi. The officials say al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is also well funded, having raised around $100 million from kidnappings in Mali in recent years, including the kidnapping of a Frenchman near Mali's border with Mauritania in November 2012.

Mali today is a country of surprising reversals and disappointments. The splintering of the country began with a Tuareg rebellion in January 2011, the fifth such uprising since 1960. But the Tuaregs' push to establish their own state was derailed last summer by jihadist groups who were better organized and funded -- and the Tuaregs have since offered their support for the Malian government's struggle to drive the jihadists from the north. The uprising also led to the demise of Mali's 20 year-old democracy, when in March junior army officers unhappy with the government's inept handling of the Tuareg situation launched  a coup d'état. The resulting chaos led to the collapse of Mali's army in the north, aided by the defection of entire Malian army units of Tuareg commanders and soldiers. In May, the junta in Bamako barely survived a second coup attempt by a paratrooper regiment loyal to the deposed civilian government. Days later, a mob of boys and young men stormed the presidential palace and beat up the junta's own puppet civilian president. Since then, the Malian junta and its civilian front men have waffled on accepting foreign military aid to oust the jihadists, insisting with wounded pride that the army can do the job itself.

Last May, I visited Col. Didier Dacko, commander of what remained of Mali's army, at the largest Malian army base along the border with the north. I asked him to respond to a quote I'd gotten from a Western diplomat in Bamako, who told me the Malian army has never been strong. "It is an army of farmers," the diplomat had said. Dacko shrugged when I read him the quote and replied, "Malians are not used to instability."

And he's right. Mali has been at peace since 1893 and now the jihadists have returned to stir the national memory. For the moment, Malians in the south seem to welcome the French intervention, though the legacy of colonialism has left many West Africans skeptical of just about anything Paris does. To this day, for example, many in West Africa and in Mali remember El Hajj Umar Tall not as a jihadist, but as an anti colonial crusader. It's hard to imagine French troops would be welcome for very long in Mali or anywhere. And the jihadists want to reinforce that point.

"France has opened the gates of hell," one Islamist leader in Mali, Oumar Ould Hamahar, a member of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, told Europe 1 radio in a phone interview in response to the French bombing campaign. "It has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia."

France has promised to stay in Mali until the country is stable again, but Paris has said that it wants to position African troops to do the heavy work of dislodging the jihadists from the north. Still, France may be unable to avoid a long engagement with its own military forces right out front. A French armored column has already rolled out of Bamako, headed for the north. Even with air strikes -- there have been more than 50 so far -- and French troops on the ground it will still be some time before an African force is ready for a major push. Taking back Mali's northern cities, such as Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal, may be the easiest task. Mali's vast northern desert is a hard place to live, not to mention wage war. For eight months a year, the daytime temperature exceeds 120 degrees Fahrenheit in a vast and unpopulated land that is easy to hide in, especially for the jihadist forces who know the territory well. Any army, no matter how large and well equipped, will have a tough time driving them out.

For now, it appears as if a piece of El Hajj Umar Tall's empire has survived after all.

Very nice overview. Thanks, BT.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.youtube.com/v/W7VBGFnq9ME