As French forces hit rebels in Mali, Paris wants to avoid Europe's Afghanistan

The poor showing by Mali's Army against Islamist radicals in the key city of Konna this week has France worried enough to send troops.

French forces today landed in Mali to provide support to government forces even as fighting continued around Konna between Islamist rebels linked to Al-Qaeda, and the Malian Army.

The fighting takes place amid concerns that Al Qaeda-linked militants are poised to push south to the strategic, government-controlled cities of Sévaré and Mopti, where many residents have reportedly started to panic.

Analysts say the loss of Sévaré, which hosts a key military base and nearby airport, would make it even more difficult to retake northern Mali – a vast desert expanse where organized criminal networks have linked-up with jihadist groups, netting tens of millions of dollars through kidnapping and control of the lucrative cocaine trade, and often brandishing weapons smuggled from Libya after the fall of Mumar Gaddafi.

For weeks, Paris urged multilateral action through regional African groupings, the government of Algeria, and the UN – hoping to prevent the Sahel region from turning into what some French worry would be an Afghanistan for Europe.

Yet the poor showing by the Army at Konna this week, where Malian troops had been preparing to fight for months, apparently seized French attention, and today French president François Hollande swung into action, launching airstrikes and deploying troops for “as long as necessary” the head of state said, citing UN Security Council resolutions.

"French Army forces supported Malian units this afternoon to fight against terrorist elements," added Mr. Hollande. "We are faced with blatant aggression that is threatening Mali's very existence. France cannot accept this."

Konna is a small town just south of the de facto frontier between the Islamist-occupied north and the government held-south. While it is of minimal
strategic significance, many analysts view its capture as a troubling indicator of the broader ambitions of the Islamist rebels and the state of the Malian
Army.

“If the Islamists take over this region it would be a major, major blow to an already very weakened Mali,”said Rudy Atallah, who has extensive experience in the region and served as Africa Counterterrorism director in the office of the US Secretary of Defense. "Sévaré is home of the 62nd Motorized Regiment of the 6th Military Region. It is also home to Mali's elite fighting force."

Some 6,000 French live in Mali, and seven are now held captive by the rebels.

Warnings have been swirling

Warnings of a rebel attack on central Mali have been swirling for days. But despite local and regional media outlets reporting large convoys of Islamist fighters
heading south, many residents in Sévaré dismissed the reports as rumor.

“We felt safe because we hear these stories a lot but it is always nothing,” said Oumaru Guindo, a resident of Sévaré. “The Army told us they had killed the
terrorists in Konna and liberated Douentza,” he continued, “but when we saw many Malian soldiers returning and heard that many people were wounded, it was
clear what really happened and we knew they [the rebels] had taken Konna.”

What was clear to Mr. Guindo on Thursday afternoon was confirmed by several media outlets hours later, even as the Malian Army insisted that they had repelled the rebel advance.

Guindo has since left Sévaré with his wife and small child, telling the Monitor that “everyone is panicking.”

Few outside of Mali believe that the Malian military is capable of retaking the north on its own, but the army’s most recent performance has raised new
concerns about the ability of Mali’s military to hold on to the areas it does control.

According to Andrew Lebovich, a Senegal-based research who closely monitors events in neighboring Mali, "France is acutely concerned
about the situation in Mali. These new developments are particularly alarming, as they further demonstrate the state of the Malian military and the
deterioration of the security situation even in parts of the country under government control."

How best to tackle the crisis in Mali has been a matter of intense international debate ever since an alliance of separatist rebels and armed Islamist groups drove the Malian military from the country’s north in the wake of a military coup that toppled Mali’s democratically elected government last year.

In light of Thursday’s events, Mali's interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, sent a request for more immediate assistance to Hollande and UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. France also convened an emergency session of the UN Security Council.

The UN has already approved the deployment of an African force to Mali in December, but troops are not expected to arrive until next September, and serious questions remain over who will oversee and pay for the mission.

The fall of Konna, however, has given greater weight to those calling for swift action. The European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, for example, is among the first to have found a renewed sense of urgency, releasing a statement calling for "enhanced and accelerated international engagement" in order to
“support the rapid deployment of the African-led international support mission to Mali."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to As French forces hit rebels in Mali, Paris wants to avoid Europe's Afghanistan
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0111/As-French-forces-hit-rebels-in-Mali-Paris-wants-to-avoid-Europe-s-Afghanistan
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe