France facing great threat in Mali

After sending troops into action in Mali, France stepped up security within its borders.

The French army assumed a herculean task when Paris decided to take on deeply rooted jihadis in northern Mali, a vast desert land where they have the advantage of familiarity with the landscape and longstanding ties to Tuareg separatists.

The tribal Tuareg, Berber or “Blue people,” their faces dyed blue by the veils they wear, who inhabit the Saharan regions of Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso have been marginalised and ignored by African governments ever since independence.

Consequently, the Tuareg have repeatedly mounted independence campaigns with the aim of establishing their own desert state.  The latest struggle began when Tuareg fighters who had served with the forces of Libya's ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi returned home bearing arms and the dream of Azawad, a Tuareg state in northern Mali comprising 60 per cent of the territory of Mali, including the historic city of Timbuktu. The Tuareg formed the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), took territory, and proclaimed their state in April 2012.  It was an entity recognised by no foreign government and contested by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) which dubbed the unilateral declaration of independence “null and void” and vowed to send troops to help the Malian government based in Bamako in the south restore its rule in the north.

Islamic state

But Ecowas troops did not arrive and at the end of May, the MNLA and its jihadi ally Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) proclaimed an “Islamic state.” However, the MNLA and Ansar Dine had competing agendas and the MNLA was defeated in the “Battle of Gao” by Ansar Dine and Tawhid wal Jihad (the Movement for Oneness and Holy War), an affiliate of al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb.  Once the fundamentalists had seized control of northern Mali, they imposed a harsh version of Muslim canon law, Sharia, and destroyed Timbuktu's 13th century Muslim libraries, tombs, and Sufi (mystic) shrines, Unesco world heritage sites. 

The former colonial power in Mali, France said it has intervened to prevent the capture of Bamako, the collapse of the Malian government, and the “establishment of a terrorist state within range of Europe and of France.”  France also seeks to protect 12,000 foreigners residing in Mali and, naturally, its interests in the gold mines of Mali, the third largest gold exporter in Africa, and regional uranium deposits. The US and Britain have offered France logistical and intelligence support and, ex post facto, the UN Security Council authorised the French intervention which began with air strikes and developed into ground assaults on jihadi strongholds.

Ironically, US special forces trained Tuareg officers who have defected to the rebels and, since there is common membership in the MNLA and Ansar Dine, the latter could have the expertise of these officers. Paris initially estimated that jihadis in Mali could be eliminated within a couple of weeks but as the French troops have swelled from 550 to 800 and are expected to reach 2,500, officials are predicting an indefinite deployment. Nigerian troops were the first to arrive from Africa. After sending both war planes and troops into action in Mali, France stepped up security within its borders, fearing attacks by jihadis who may be among the millions of North and Sub-Saharan Africans living in the country.

However, the initial jihadi retaliation was against Algeria which has given French war planes the right to fly across its territory.  The target was a gas facility operated by British Petroleum, the Norwegian firm Statoil and and the Algerian national firm Sonatrach. Two people were killed and up to 41 foreigners - Britons, Japanese, Norwegians, US citizens  and an Irishman - and an unknown number of Algerians have been taken hostage by the faction headed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian veteran of the Western-sponsored campaign to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan and of the ten year jihadi uprising in Algeria.     
 
During the 1990s, Algeria fought a decade-long war with the armed Islamic group which was suppressed but not eliminated. Survivors formed al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb which has connections to al-Qa'ida in Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria and has spawned numerous off-shoots. These groups - which recruit from far and wide - have been involved in drug running, smuggling and kidnapping for ransom.

France and its western and African allies are facing a force far greater than the Tuaregs and al-Qa'ida in Mali. The enemy, including Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria and al-Shabab in Somalia, is the “Jihadi International,” the Muslim fundamentalist equivalent of the Communist International that promoted world revolution following the seizure of power in Russia by the Communist Party which created the Soviet Union and founded dozens of Communist parties around the world.

The aim of the “Jihadi International,” is to purge Muslim countries of Western influence and establish a 21st century caliphate to rule the global Muslim community, the Umma.