WASHINGTON ? France announced Friday that its forces were fighting alongside African allies in the first Western intervention to help the beleaguered government of Mali wrest control of the north section of its country from Islamist militants who captured it last spring.
In a speech, French President Francois Hollande confirmed that his forces were in Mali and pledged that they would stay ?as long as necessary? to prevent the desert nation from becoming a new haven for al Qaida-linked extremists.
?Mali is facing an assault by terrorist elements coming from the north whose brutality and fanaticism is known across the world,? Hollande said, according to the Agence France Presse news service.
Britain announced support for the campaign. In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news conference Friday that the United States remains deeply concerned by the events in Mali and is consulting "very closely" with France. She said the U.S. government had not been asked by either Mali or France for direct U.S. military support.
"Obviously, the Malian government's need is urgent right now, which is why France is responding," Nuland said.
The escalation came as a surprise because analysts had expected it to take months before officials figured out how a proposed Western-backed, 3,000-person force made up of troops from West African nations would be financed, led, trained and equipped.
Nuland said the future of the previously planned multinational force was uncertain, with no clarity yet on training, the funding mechanism or rules of engagement. She said the U.S. would still work with the Economic Community of West African States to prepare the force for deployment but that it wasn't yet battle ready.
France?s decision to deploy appears to have been prompted by attempts from the al Qaida-linked militants in the north to expand their reach. Insurgents this week seized control of Konna, a strategically located central town, and appeared poised to move on the country?s capital, Bamako. That led a concerned U.N. Security Council to ask member states to help Mali ?reduce the threat posed by terrorist organizations and associated groups.?
The Malian government, which also said that Senegalese and Nigerian forces were taking part in the campaign, declared a nationwide state of emergency in its announcement of ?an offensive against armed Islamist groups.?
?We?re very happy with France?s decision,? said Ibrahim Garango, part of a pro-government militia positioned just south of Konna, the contested town. Garango, who was reached by phone, said he hasn?t seen any French forces yet and doesn?t know the size of their contingent, but he stressed that any assistance was welcomed.
?These are terrorists and it would?ve been very, very difficult to win against them without help from France,? he said.
The seizure by militants of northern Mali was an unintended consequence of the U.S.-backed NATO campaign to overthrow the government of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Thousands of desert tribesmen known as Tuaregs, who?d been incorporated into Gadhafi?s army, fled Libya in the weeks after his fall, carrying their weapons with them. The Tuaregs resumed a military campaign to establish a Tuareg-ruled state in the Sahara Desert and quickly seized areas of northern Mali. Al Qaida-linked militants then displaced the Tuaregs.
The militants, many of whom were members of al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, imposed a rigid interpretation of Islamic law that allowed for amputations and stonings for some perceived crimes. They also destroyed historically significant shrines in the city of Timbuktu that they considered idolatrous.
While U.S. officials remain uncertain how serious a threat the al Qaida group is to American interests, the deaths in September of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans deepened concerns. The Libyan government claimed that Mali-based extremists had participated in the attacks on U.S. posts in Benghazi, and U.S. officials said that some of the alleged attackers phoned fellow extremists in Mali to boast.
In a report released in November, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon warned that northern Mali was ?at risk of becoming a permanent haven for terrorists and organized criminal networks where people are subjected to a very strict interpretation of Shariah law and human rights are abused on a systematic basis.?
Source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/01/11/2432023/france-opens-new-front-in-terror.html?storylink=rss
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