They're gonna invade Mali...

[Independent]

what many of us are passing by is the FACT that this is an illegitimate government according to UN STANDARDS.

You are missing out the reason for the collapse of the democratic government, which had previously been one of the most successful in Africa for 20 years.

The situation in Mali is a side effect of the fall of Gadaffi. The weaponry and the fighters who are now destroying Mali are partly the remains of Gadaffi’s foreign bodyguard, who fled Libya after his death.

The first stage was a Tuareg revolt. It was this revolt that provoked the military coup, because the army felt the government wasn’t doing enough to help them (Mali is a desperately poor country and the Libyan refugees simply outgunned them).

Now the revolt has been ‘taken over’ by self-proclaimed Islamist fighters and the Tuaregs too have been sidelined. They also seem to have support from rebels driven out of Algeria.

'democratic and multiparty don't seem to appeal to the rats in the pentagon, because they could see the influence of Islam spreading in the region.'

Nonsense – it was the Tuareg revolt that brought down the democratic government, not the west. The Islamists are simply exploiting the chaos and power vacuum.

'it looks to me that they remained "silent" or even complacent during an illegal coup,'

No they did not, which is why the UN opposed the military regime. But they didn’t intervene straight away because for a time it looked as though Mali might be able to look after the situation itself. Also, it was guaranteed that any western assistance would be portrayed as an ‘invasion’ by people such as yourself.

'so again - we see a democratic government overthrown with the help of the u.s and u.n, an illegal military dictatorship installed, and killing of Muslims and islamic leaders before another "election" which will have not moral legitimacy or fair ground.'

Absolute nonsense. Until yesterday this was exclusively a Muslim v Muslim conflict. The weak Malian army is in no position to resist the Libyan refugee fighters so they have called for help. Other African states have promised support, but the situation was so urgent France have acted now.

1.
it wasn't the Islamists who overthrew the government.

It wasn’t the west either - it was a consequence of the Tuareg revolt.

2.
they kept the country in one piece by preventing a splintering off of another section - which the u.s would most likely have taken control of through imf loans (look at previous trends).

A ridiculous statement by any analysis – the country is now split in two by the rebels.

3.
with no organization or legitimacy, the military junta would have lost ground.

Just because one illegal government has seized power (the military) doesn’t make it ok to swap it for another (the Islamists). At least the military are all Malians, which is more than can be said for the Islamists.

4.
Islamists would have had the country in no time if it hadn't been for the selective meddling of the spawn of Satan

The Islamists have seized the less populated desert north. The south would have been harder. Many thousands of victims would have been added to the death toll already recorded.

another thing i noticed is the heavy use of the terms al qaeda "affiliated" and "associated" when nothing else can be found..the only association usually needed are the fact that they are Muslim and ready to fight for their convictions.

Why do you assume this revolt is a good thing just because of the ‘Islamist’ tag? This is not Islam v the West, it’s a moderate Islam v an extreme Islam. The effect on the Mali economy has been catastrophic, never mind the direct loss of life. In addition, the vandalistic destruction of the UNESCO listed tombs in Timbuctoo is a gross cultural crime that deprives Africa of one of its few genuinely iconic historical sights.

How do you make any of this out to be a good thing?

 

[جوري]

it’s a moderate Islam v an extreme Islam

There's NO such thing in Islam!

best,

 

[جوري]

I think the cross he has on his chest tells all there's to tell indeed!
'tis a crusade!

​

http://www.islammemo.cc/akhbar/Somalia/2013/01/14/162584.html

 

[Independent]

I think the cross he has on his chest tells all there's to tell indeed!
'tis a crusade!

You show a picture of a dead man in Somalia published today to prove Western involvement in Mali months ago. What you display is bad taste, not evidence of a crusade.

 

[جوري]

You show a picture of a dead man in Somalia published today to prove Western involvement in Mali months ago. What you display is bad taste, not evidence of a crusade.

I am not trying to prove what you allege, only what's patently obvious to the naked eye and if this crusader had been in Afghanistan, Egypt, Palestine, Somalia, Mali etc. it wouldn't change the principal an iota. It is indeed what it is and Muslims should wake up to see it for what it is. Nothing at all to do with a war against 'extremist Muslims' as I have stated in the post prior to my last. There's no such thing. That's a western agenda not to rile up angry sentiments in the entire Muslim world. One is either a Muslim or they're not.. we're not graded. And this is indeed a crusade against Islam.

Whether or not you find it in bad taste, is utterly irrelevant and inconsequential. :ia: that shall be the fate of all crusaders so they'd better think twice before entering into Muslim territory!


best,

 

[Independent]

One is either a Muslim or they're not

As a non Muslim, if someone chooses to describe themselves as Muslim I'm obliged to accept their point of view, not yours. Even if you don't agree with them.

 

[جوري]

anyone can say anything about themselves- what flawed reasoning and what a sad state of being you must find yourself in!

best,

 

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Comment piece

The bombing of Mali highlights all the lessons of western intervention

From Afghanistan to Yemen, the rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly hollow with each new expansion of this militarism.


As French war planes bomb Mali, there is one simple statistic that provides the key context: this west African nation of 15 million people is the eighth country in which western powers - over the last four years alone - have bombed and killed Muslims - after Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and the Phillipines (that does not count the numerous lethal tyrannies propped up by the west in that region).

For obvious reasons, the rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly hollow with each new expansion of this militarism. But within this new massive bombing campaign, one finds most of the vital lessons about western intervention that, typically, are steadfastly ignored.

First, as the New York Times' background account from this morning makes clear, much of the instability in Mali is the direct result of Nato's intervention in Libya. Specifically, "heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya" and "the big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back" played the precipitating role in the collapse of the US-supported central government. As Owen Jones wrote in an excellent column this morning in the Independent:

"This intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs – who traditionally hailed from northern Mali – made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media. . . . [T]he Libyan war was seen as a success . . . and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback."

Over and over, western intervention ends up - whether by ineptitude or design - sowing the seeds of further intervention. Given the massive instability still plaguing Libya as well as enduring anger over the Benghazi attack, how long will it be before we hear that bombing and invasions in that country are - once again - necessary to combat the empowered "Islamist" forces there: forces empowered as a result of the Nato overthrow of that country's government?

Second, the overthrow of the Malian government was enabled by US-trained-and-armed soldiers who defected. From the NYT: "commanders of this nation's elite army units, the fruit of years of careful American training, defected when they were needed most — taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy in the heat of battle, according to senior Malian military officials." And then: "an American-trained officer overthrew Mali's elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists."

In other words, the west is once again at war with the very forces that it trained, funded and armed. Nobody is better at creating its own enemies, and thus ensuring a posture of endless war, than the US and its allies. Where the US cannot find enemies to fight against it, it simply empowers them.

Third, western bombing of Muslims in yet another country will obviously provoke even more anti-western sentiment, the fuel of terrorism. Already, as the Guardian reports, French fighter jets in Mali have killed "at least 11 civilians including three children". France's long history of colonialization in Mali only exacerbates the inevitable anger. Back in December, after the UN Security Council authorized the intervention in Mali, Amnesty International's researcher on West Africa, Salvatore Saguès, warned: "An international armed intervention is likely to increase the scale of human rights violations we are already seeing in this conflict."

As always, western governments are well aware of this consequence and yet proceed anyway. The NYT notes that the French bombing campaign was launched "in the face of longstanding American warnings that a Western assault on the Islamist stronghold could rally jihadists around the world and prompt terrorist attacks as far away as Europe." Indeed, at the same time that the French are now killing civilians in Mali, a joint French-US raid in Somalia caused the deaths of "at least eight civilians, including two women and two children".

To believe that the US and its allies can just continue to go around the world, in country after country, and bomb and kill innocent people - Muslims - and not be targeted with "terrorist" attacks is, for obvious reasons, lunacy. As Bradford University professor Paul Rogers told Jones, the bombing of Mali "will be portrayed as 'one more example of an assault on Islam'". Whatever hopes that may exist for an end to the "war on terror" are systematically destroyed by ongoing aggression.

Fourth, for all the self-flattering rhetoric that western democracies love to apply to themselves, it is extraordinary how these wars are waged without any pretense of democratic process. Writing about the participation of the British government in the military assault on Mali, Jones notes that "it is disturbing – to say the least – how Cameron has led Britain into Mali's conflict without even a pretence at consultation." Identically, the Washington Post this morning reports that President Obama has acknowledged after the fact that US fighter jets entered Somali air space as part of the French operation there; the Post called that "a rare public acknowledgment of American combat operations in the Horn of Africa" and described the anti-democratic secrecy that typically surrounds US war actions in the region:

"The US military has based a growing number of armed Predator drones as well as F-15 fighter jets at Camp Lemonnier, which has grown into a key installation for secret counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen. The defense official declined to identify the aircraft used in the rescue attempt but said they were fighter jets, not drones. . . . .

"It was unclear, however, why Obama felt compelled to reveal this particular operation when he has remained silent about other specific US combat missions in Somalia. Spokesmen from the White House and the Pentagon declined to elaborate or answer questions Sunday night."

The Obama administration has, of course, draped its entire drone and global assassination campaign in an impenetrable cloth of secrecy, ensuring it remains beyond the scrutinizing reach of media outlets, courts, and its own citizens. The US and its western allies do not merely wage endless war aimed invariably at Muslims. They do so in virtually complete secrecy, without any transparency or accountability. Meet the western "democracies".

Finally, the propaganda used to justify all of this is depressingly common yet wildly effective. Any western government that wants to bomb Muslims simply slaps the label of "terrorists" on them, and any real debate or critical assessment instantly ends before it can even begin. "The president is totally determined that we must eradicate these terrorists who threaten the security of Mali, our own country and Europe," proclaimed French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

As usual, this simplistic cartoon script distorts reality more than it describes it. There is no doubt that the Malian rebels have engaged in all sorts of heinous atrocities ("amputations, flogging, and stoning to death for those who oppose their interpretation of Islam"), but so, too, have Malian government forces - including, as Amnesty chronicled, "arresting, torturing and killing Tuareg people apparently only on ethnic ground." As Jones aptly warns: "don't fall for a narrative so often pushed by the Western media: a perverse oversimplification of good fighting evil, just as we have seen imposed on Syria's brutal civil war."

The French bombing of Mali, perhaps to include some form of US participation, illustrates every lesson of western intervention. The "war on terror" is a self-perpetuating war precisely because it endlessly engenders its own enemies and provides the fuel to ensure that the fire rages without end. But the sloganeering propaganda used to justify this is so cheap and easy - we must kill the Terrorists! - that it's hard to see what will finally cause this to end.

The blinding fear - not just of violence, but of Otherness - that has been successfully implanted in the minds of many western citizens is such that this single, empty word (Terrorists), standing alone, is sufficient to generate unquestioning support for whatever their governments do in its name, no matter how secret or unaccompanied by evidence it may be.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/middle-east-and-north-africa/2177-the-bombing-of-mali-highlights-all-the-lessons-of-western-intervention

 

[Abz2000]

This is not Islam v the West, it’s a moderate Islam v an extreme Islam.

I'm not even going to bother responding to your amusing statements from the top, it's the kind of stuff that would wash only with the overweight type who come home from the pub drunk and sit in front of the tv from which they get all their information about whats happening around the world.

Anyone who would bother to research by themselves would realize that this is an attack on Islam, and that they fear the idea of Muslims coming together, you keep making this differentiation between "libyan Muslims" and "malians", (as if to imply there are no Muslims in Mali and that this is just an invasion by Libyan "terrorists")when to us, they're all Muslims, Muslims ready to fight for their what they believe in and not bow to western colonisation of their lands whether directly or through proxy sellout governments. I don't call them "terrorists" i call them heroes,
It seems you don't understand the meaning of the term "terrorist" itself or you would have realised that America, israel, uk, France and their proxy Arab and other governments - ALL come under the category of terrorist.

What do you think an extremist Muslim is? One who believes that Islamic rule is the best solution to our problems?
And that there should be an Islamic government with an Islamic army that can fight to defend Muslims, and doesn't care what the west calls it.

Your favoured "moderate" who believes that obama's or some other criminal's rules are more important than God's and that infidel pig eating sons of monkeys and apes (not my theory) have the right to step in Muslim lands with their impure feet and kill Muslims - falls under the category of Munafiq, (those who hate what God has revealed, enemies of God and His Messenger in the guise of believers).

They even confuse you with terms like extremist, givng you a negative perception of it and makIng you parrot it.
When someone does something good extremely well it's a good thing to me, may Allah make us able to practise Islam extremely well.

 

[Independent]

you keep making this differentiation between "libyan Muslims" and "malians", (as if to imply there are no Muslims in Mali and that this is just an invasion by Libyan "terrorists"

As you seem to have missed it the first time I will repeat myself: ‘Until yesterday this was exclusively a Muslim v Muslim conflict.’ Yes, Mali is a 90% Muslim majority country and both sides are (mostly) Muslim. But it’s not going to help anyone understand what's going on if we refer to both sides by the same term.

terms like extremist,

The word ‘extremist’ has perjorative overtones but at least you understand who I'm talking about and I don’t know what else to use here. Another term that gets used is ‘fundamentalist’, but that gets objections too. Or (in the case of Mali) I have seen them described as ‘Salafist influenced’. What other term is there available that can distinguish between the warring parties, that has clarity, that doesn’t take sides, and isn’t perjorative?

This intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine.

Yes, the fallout from the Libyan war is the new factor which has destabilized Mali. But journalists have the luxury of criticising the specific action which is in fact taken. They never have to defend what might-have-been.

Who’s to say what violence and disaster might have spilled out of Libya anyway, if the rebels had not received western assistance in toppling Gadaffi? However Gadaffi fell, those Tuaregs and other foreign fighters were always going to flee the country. So what do we do – leave the dictators in power?

The west was initially criticized for not helping the rebels in Libya. Now the reverse is true. In Syria, the west is being simultaneously criticized for both helping and not helping. Absolutely any action the west takes, intervention or non-intervention, will be criticized and given as proof of anti-islamic attitudes. In fact, ironically, it’s only when the west actually chooses one particular direction, that everyone finally agrees that this is the one thing they were always afraid of.

Even if you happen to like the invaders’ particular brand of Islam, that doesn’t mean this attack is a good thing for Mali. This is the last thing Mali needs.

 

[جوري]

As you seem to have missed it the first time I will repeat myself: ‘Until yesterday this was exclusively a Muslim v Muslim conflict.’ Yes, Mali is a 90% Muslim majority country and both sides are (mostly) Muslim. But it’s not going to help anyone understand what's going on if we refer to both sides by the same term.

People who ally themselves with kaffirs against Muslims aren't Muslim. They fall outside the folds of Islam. It is one of the ten major acts that put one outside the folds and beneath those ten are 44 others.

this one from the video lecture above:

<<<<
So it is a biggie. You wanna insist on calling them 'Muslims' be our guest, don't act so annoyed however when corrected!


best,

 

[Independent]

People who ally themselves with kaffirs against Muslims aren't Muslim.

Then there aren't many Muslims left in the world. Even many Muslim leaders of the past were allied to Christian or other states at different times. Who's left?

 

[جوري]

Then there aren't many Muslims left in the world. Even many Muslim leaders of the past were allied to Christian or other states at different times. Who's left?

Many are the Muslims but few who have accepted Islam. To be allied with kaffirs against a common enemy has happened and shall happen once again. To be allied with kaffirs against Muslims puts one outside the folds of Islam except that which Allah :swt: knows in his knowledge and of the condition of those individuals themselves. But here is a clear situation of kaffir desptic govt. consorting with their western masters to kill Muslims. Most if not all current so called Muslim majority regions are Daar Al Harb!

best,

 

[Muslim Woman]

No reply? This is just another muslim country going to suffer under western occupation....

may Allah help our oppressed sisters and brothers . O Allah , give us victory over the disbelievers , Ameen.

 

[سيف الله]

Salaam


Mali: the fastest blowback yet in this disastrous war on terror

French intervention in Mali will fuel terrorism, but the west's buildup in Africa is also driven by the struggle for resources


by Seumas Milne

To listen to David Cameron's rhetoric this week, it could be 2001 all over again. Eleven years into the war on terror, it might have been Tony Blair speaking after 9/11. As the bloody siege of the part BP-operated In Amenas gas plant in Algeria came to an end, the British prime minister claimed, like George Bush and Blair before him, that the country faced an "existential" and "global threat" to "our interests and way of life".

While British RAF aircraft backed French military intervention against Islamist rebels in Mali, and troops were reported to be on alert for deployment to the west African state, Cameron promised that a "generational struggle" would be pursued with "iron resolve". The fight over the new front in the terror war in North Africa and the Sahel region, he warned, could go on for decades.

So in austerity-blighted Britain, just as thousands of soldiers are being made redundant, while Barack Obama has declared that "a decade of war is now ending", armed intervention is being ratcheted up in yet another part of the Muslim world. Of course, it's French troops in action this time. But even in Britain the talk is of escalating drone attacks and special forces, and Cameron has refused to rule out troops on the ground.

You'd think the war on terror had been a huge success, the way the western powers keep at it, Groundhog Day-style. In reality, it has been a disastrous failure, even in its own terms – which is why the Obama administration felt it had to change its name to "overseas contingency operations", until US defence secretary Leon Panetta revived the old title this week.

Instead of fighting terror, it has fuelled it everywhere it's been unleashed: from Afghanistan to Pakistan, from Iraq to Yemen, spreading it from Osama bin Laden's Afghan lairs eastwards to central Asia and westwards to North Africa – as US, British and other western forces have invaded, bombed, tortured and kidnapped their way across the Arab and Muslim world for over a decade.

So a violent jihadist movement that grew out of western intervention, occupation and support for dictatorship was countered with more of the same. And the law of unintended consequences has meanwhile been played out in spectacular fashion: from the original incubation of al-Qaida in the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, to the spread of terror from western-occupied Afghanistan to Pakistan, to the strategic boost to Iran delivered by the US-British invasion of Iraq.

When it came to Libya, the blowback was much faster – and Mali took the impact. Nato's intervention in Libya's civil war nearly two years ago escalated the killing and ethnic cleansing, and played the decisive role in the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. In the ensuing maelstrom, Tuareg people who had fought for Gaddafi went home to Mali and weapons caches flooded over the border.

Within a couple of months this had tipped longstanding demands for self-determination into armed rebellion – and then the takeover of northern Mali by Islamist fighters, some linked to al-Qaida. Foreign secretary William Hague acknowledged this week that Nato's Libyan intervention had "contributed" to Mali's war, but claimed the problem would have been worse without it.

In fact, the spillover might have been contained if the western powers had supported a negotiated settlement in Libya, just as all-out war in Mali might have been avoided if the Malian government's French and US sponsors had backed a political instead of a military solution to the country's divisions.

French intervention in Mali has now produced the fastest blowback yet in the war on terror. The groups that seized the In Imenas gas plant last week – reportedly with weapons supplied to Libya by France and Britain – insisted their action was taken in response to France's operation, Algeria's decision to open its airspace to the French and western looting of the country's natural resources.

It may well be that the attack had in fact been planned for months. And the Algerian government has its own history of bloody conflict with Islamist movements. But it clearly can't be separated from the growing western involvement across the region.

France is in any case the last country to sort out Mali's problems, having created quite a few of them in the first place as the former colonial power, including the legacy of ethnic schism within artificial borders – as Britain did elsewhere. The French may have been invited in by the Malian government. But it's a government brought to power by military coup last year, not one elected by Malians – and whose troops are now trading atrocities and human rights abuses with the rebels.

Only a political settlement, guaranteed by regional African forces, can end the conflict. Meanwhile, French president François Hollande says his country will be in Mali as long as it takes to "defeat terrorism in that part of Africa". All the experience of the past decade suggests that could be indefinitely – as western intervention is likely to boost jihadist recruitment and turn groups with a regional focus towards western targets.

All this is anyway about a good deal more than terrorism. Underlying the growing western military involvement in Africa – from the spread of American bases under the US Africa Command to France's resumption of its post-colonial habit of routine armed intervention – is a struggle for resources and strategic control, in the face of China's expanding economic role in the continent. In north and west Africa, that's not just about oil and gas, but also uranium in countries like Niger – and Mali. Terrorism has long since become a catch-all cover for legitimising aggressive war.

The idea that jihadists in Mali, or Somalia for that matter, pose an existential threat to Britain, France, the US or the wider world is utter nonsense. But the opening of a new front in the war on terror in north Africa and the Sahel, accompanied by another murderous drone campaign, is a potential disaster for the region and risks a new blowback beyond it.

The past decade has demonstrated beyond doubt that such interventions don't solve crises, let alone deal with the causes of terrorism, but deepen them and generate new conflicts. More military intervention will bolster authoritarian regimes – and its rhetoric further poison community relations in the intervening states. It seems the price has to be paid over and over again.

http://www.guardian.co.uk

Just a quick aside, has the other threads been deleted on this subject?

 

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Another update

The BBC, Mali and the cock up theory of history

The suggestion that the transformation of Mali into a ‘mess’ and a 'global threat' might have been a ‘cock up’, constitutes the outer limits of acceptable criticism for the BBC.



The mainstream British media tends to view foreign policy through a very narrow lens at the best of times, and the BBC’s worldview tends to be more circumscribed than most.

On Monday Evan Davis interviewed William Hague on the Today programme about Britain’s role in Mali. During his gentle interrogation of the Foreign Secretary, Davis used a number of concepts that have become part of the political vocabulary of Western foreign policy in recent decades.

Thus he declared that ‘the French were trying to prevent the spread of non-government’ in Mali and asked Hague to summarize his strategy for dealing with ‘these ungoverned spaces where extremists roam’. He then described Mali as the latest addition to the world’s ‘non-governed rogue states.’

But it also belonged to a category of ‘non-governed rogue non-states’. This transformation was relatively recent, Davis insisted, since eighteen months ago Mali had been a ‘ fragile state, but it was a state.’ Now, this former ‘secure poor state’ had become ‘a mess.’

How had Mali gone from being fragile, poor but secure, a non-governed non-state that was also rogue? Was it, Davis politely suggested, something of a ‘cock up’, given the British role in the overthrow of Gaddafi and the subsequent outflow of weapons to Tuareg rebels in northern Mali?

Naturally Hague denied this, and insisted that British involvement in Libya had ‘saved lives’ in Libya itself. In addition it had ‘mitigated’ the situation in Mali and prevented its collapse from getting worse.

Davis’ suggestion that the transformation of Mali into a ‘mess’ and a ‘global threat’ might have been a ‘cock up’, constitutes the outer limits of acceptable criticism for the BBC. I have lost count of the times in which seemingly combative interviews by BBC journalists with government ministers in fact accept without question the essential view of foreign policy propagated by the government itself; namely, that the policies of Britain and its allies are essentially dictated by moral and humanitarian considerations and a common concern for international law and global security and a desire to eliminate ‘terrorism’ or ‘al Qaeda.’

According to this narrative, such imperatives oblige the West to deploy military force in the world’s ‘ungovernable spaces’ in order to restore order, good government and security for the good of the countries concerned, and the world as a whole. This is why Britain and its allies support ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Syria, why sanctions are being imposed on Iran, why France is now in Mali.

Unfortunately, from time to time, these well-meaning efforts produce the occasional ‘cock up’ like Iraq, or the spillover of the Afghan war into Pakistan, and now Mali. Absent from this ‘cock up’ discourse is any attempt to analyse the strategic, economic or the broader geopolitical considerations that have shaped the various interventions of the last decade or so, or the general policy of militarisation that has underpinned them, or any attempt to understand the history or the internal dynamics of the societies where these interventions take place.

Why was Africom created and why has the Pentagon become so concerned with Africa? How is that ‘al Qaeda’ is able to reproduce itself so easily in these ‘ungoverned spaces’? Is Al Qaeda in the Maghreb really a creation of the Algerian secret services, as some analysts have suggested?

Are the ‘threats’ depicted by Western governments really as serious as these governments say they are? Is military intervention the only ‘solution’ to reactionary Islamist formations of the al Qaeda type? Or do such interventions actually provide such organizations with a raison d’etre?

Is it true, as an interesting article in Ceasefire Magazine suggests, that French intervention in Mali might be driven by a desire to ensure access to uranium for its huge nuclear industry? Could it be that these governments also find chaotic and fragmented states politically useful and convenient?

Are these ‘rogue’ and ‘failed’ states really a threat to ‘our way of life’, as so many of our leaders insist, or do they provide a pretext for permanent militarization and neo-colonial interventions? How is it that the same governments that declare ‘terrorists’ and ‘jihadists’ to be their enemies will also work with them on occasion?

Such questions are rarely answered or even asked in the mainstream media. And the result is that the public could be forgiven for believing that foreign policy is conducted by a well-meaning gaggle of jolly good chaps, fighting the forces of darkness in the world’s peripheral places, prone only to the folly of good intentions and the occasional cock-up.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php...he-bbc-mali-and-the-cock-up-theory-of-history

 

[Independent]

Is it true, as an interesting article in Ceasefire Magazine suggests, that French intervention in Mali might be driven by a desire to ensure access to uranium for its huge nuclear industry?

The 'it's all about access to resources' accusation is one that is now made routinely. How true is it?

1. The first thing to realise is that it's a completely generic observation. Most countries have some sort of potential resource you could say was 'strategic' if you wanted to (although strangely, the west doesn't seem to have bothered to do much exploiting in Mali during the previous 20 years of stable democracy). So, it's not a blinding revelation of a 'secret motive' to say there is potentially oil here, gas there. It doesn't prove anything in itself.
2. Secondly, it's not really a choice between 'western exploitation of resources' or some other way. In the energy extraction industries, especially oil, it is hugely expensive to prospect, drill and transport these resources. Only 1 in 20 oil wells will succeed (depending on the area) and it costs a small fortune to drill every one. The expertise for this is heavily concentrated in western countries. If you're not going to develop it with the west, you're probably not going to develop it at all.
3. What's more, the key customers are also western countries. For any north African country, good relations with the west are a prerequisite if you're going to benefit from such resources or you might as well leave them in the ground.
4. In this particular case it is absurd to suggest that the whole thing is staged for the benefit of the French nuclear industry. As I posted in the other Mali thread, this very same group attacked a French uranium mine in Niger a couple of years ago (long before anyone dreamed of the Mali conflict) - amongst other targets. How does that help the French uranium industry? This is just making stuff up.
5. Looking at the way events unfolded, the French intervention came about very abruptly because the hardline forces suddenly extended the conflict into the south of Mali and threatened to take over the whole country. The original plan, to bring in other African armies and train up the Malian army, was no longer viable. It was act now, or don't act at all. These events were very hard to forsee (and in fact no one predicted them).

Could it be that these governments also find chaotic and fragmented states politically useful and convenient?

Above all, the thing that these theories fail to take into account, is the vital role that political stability plays in the energy extraction industry. These projects are very long term, vastly expensive, and don't make money for years. The very last thing they need is political instability. And right now, the very worst kind of political instability you can get is Al Qaeda linked.

Whereas, Al Qaead linked organisations seem to thrive in chaos.

For these reasons, it is hugely unlikely that this war was sought by France or any other western country.

 

[titus]

French President Visits Mali to Cheers of Support

French President Francois Hollande bathed in the cheers and accolades of the thousands of people of this embattled city on Saturday, making a triumphant stop six days after French forces parachuted into Timbuktu to liberate the fabled city from the radical Islamists occupying it.

Thousands of people stood elbow-to-elbow behind a perimeter line in downtown Timbuktu, hoisting the homemade French flags they had prepared for Hollande’s arrival.

Just before French troops arrived in Timbuktu last week, the retreating Islamic extremists set fire to a portion of the collection at the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research. It was their final blow, not just to Mali but to the world. The oldest manuscripts in the repository date back nearly 1,000 years, and are crucial to Africa’s identity, because they show that the continent had a written record, not just an oral history, said the library’s acting director Abdoulaye Cisse.

Although an inventory has not yet been completed, the director believes less than 5 percent of the library’s priceless manuscripts were destroyed, because the majority of the library was spirited out of the library and hidden hundreds of miles away in the capital, said Cisse.

Despite the outpouring of joy, many expressed worry about France’s long-term intentions. Mali’s military has proved to be no match for the better-armed Islamic extremists, who seized a territory equal in size to France last year, after the army simply abandoned their posts. Hollande made clear that France intends to hand off the control of the recuperated terrain to Mali’s military, and to the African troops pledged by neighboring countries.

“Now, it’s the Malians who have the responsibility to assure the transition, and especially the security, of their country,” he said at the airport. Asked by reporters how soon French troops will begin to draw down from Timbuktu, he said: “The handover is soon enough.”

As Hollande’s convoy rolled out of town on the carpet of sand that leads to the airport, the French president passed the billboards erected by the Islamic rebels, saying: “The city of Timbuktu was founded on Islam, and will be judged on Islamic law.” He passed storefronts where advertisements were blotted out, because they showed figures of women. The occupiers banned music and alcohol, smoking and dancing, playing football, and wearing jewelry, makeup or perfume. They lashed women who showed so much as a centimeter of skin, amputated the hands of thieves, and stoned a couple to death, because they had had children out of wedlock.

“We have just spent 10 months in hell. Everything that demarcates the liberty of man was forbidden to us. We couldn’t smoke, we couldn’t listen to music, we couldn’t wear the clothes we wanted to wear,” Ben Essayati said.

One of the thousands of people who came out to see Hollande on Saturday took the time to write out a personal message, penned on a piece of particle board, which he hoisted above his head. It said: “Hollande, for us you represent the angel which stopped the calamity.”

So, after reading this and other articles about Mali, I begin to wonder if anyone in Mali other than the rebels themselves actually want them in power. Tell me how "Islamic" are these people who are looked at as tyrants by the people they ruled over?

 

[سيف الله]

Salaam

Oh of course, reminds me of the Iraqis when they were cheering the Americans for their 'liberation' in 2003.

The people of Mali will realise in time that Western (French in this case) powers only operate on one overriding principle.

'How will this benefit me?'

Some updates

The other side of French airstrikes on Mali: ‘They ruined everything I had'

French President Francois Hollande is triumphant about his operation in Mali, but stories are emerging which show a different side of the war. Journalist Gonzalo Wancho tells RT that for every two rebels killed in airstrikes, a dozen civilians died.

“We’re learning what happened in battle day by day. In the town of Konna, we heard stories from the fog of war. [Rebels] fled to the north when French troops showed up. It’s reported that the cost of that victory was high. While French planes killed only two rebels, the number of civilian casualties were an estimated 14,” journalist Gonzalo Wancha told RT.

It comes just days after French President Francois Hollande declared “victory” in northern Malian cities. But the victory also had its price:

“I wasn’t home when the bombing began. I started praying when I learned my house was under attack. They ruined everything I had – my family and my livelihood. [My children were 11, 10, and 6]. They all died,” Idrís Meiga, a farmer from Konna, told RT.

Meiga’s story is not unique. In fact, it is becoming all too common to hear of similar tragedies in northern Mali.

“Some kids came running up to us and said their mom had died. I brought them to our house. Their mother died after an hour of clinging to life. The children have nobody else but us,” resident Abdul Kampó said.

Another story involved a mother who died from shell splinters, leaving three children behind – including a newborn baby.

Two young brothers drowned in a nearby river as they attempted to flee from the fighting.

These residents refuse to be persuaded by military claims of “victory.”

“People [in the town] say [French] war crimes must be prosecuted under the Geneva Convention,” Wancha said.

And while Hollande maintains that French military intervention in Mali will be short lived, the consequences of this war will affect the lives of these innocent civilians for a lifetime.

Meanwhile, airstrikes continue in Mali’s far north. Earlier Monday, 30 jets targeted training and communication centers of Islamist militants in the town of Tessalit.

The move was an effort to cut off nearby supply routes. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France’s Inter radio that rebels “cannot stay there a long time unless they have new supplies.”

It is believed that French civilians are being held hostage by militants in the area.

Both France and the Malian government have come under criticism for their alleged activity against terrorists and Islamist supporters in the African country.

Days ago, three suspected Jihadists who were arrested in the liberation of Timbuktu said they were tortured by Malian soldiers who used a method similar to waterboarding.

“To force me to talk they poured 40 liters of water in my mouth and over my nostrils, which made it so that I could not breathe anymore. For a moment I thought I was actually going to die,” said one of the men who said he was from the central Malian town of Niono.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, Malian government forces executed at least 13 suspected Islamist supporters and “forcibly disappeared” five others from the towns of Sévaré and Konna last month.

http://rt.com/news/mali-konna-france-hollande-438/

 

[Independent]

Oh of course, reminds me of the Iraqis when they were cheering the Americans for their 'liberation' in 2003

Wrong comparison. it should remind you of when the Kuwaitis cheered for their liberation.

The people of Mali will realise in time that Western (French in this case) powers only operate on one overriding principle.
'How will this benefit me?'

Yep. Just like everyone else.

French President Francois Hollande is triumphant about his operation in Mali, but stories are emerging which show a different side of the war. Journalist Gonzalo Wancho tells RT that for every two rebels killed in airstrikes, a dozen civilians died.

And this report is from....Russian TV, the state-funded broadcaster. The same channel that supported Gaddafi. The same channel that said that the Libyan rebels had no popular support. The same channel that still backs Assad. What do you expect them to say?

And while Hollande maintains that French military intervention in Mali will be short lived, the consequences of this war will affect the lives of these innocent civilians for a lifetime.

Yes, there are many who have lost their lives or suffered some form of assault by either side. The Malian army is undisciplined and partly composed of malitia who themselves had dubious track records in the past. But the reason all this is happening is because of the Tuareg revolt followed by the Al Qaeda backed invasion. The guys that should get the lion's share of the blame are the guys who started it.

Unfortunately there will inevitably be revenge attacks for what happened during hardliner rule. It will not be pleasant. They will take the law into their own hands. What are they seeking revenge for? Things like this: "They tied up the head of a family and then raped his wife in front of him, and then his daughter. I saw it with my own eyes. I thought my family would be next, so we fled. They raped many women. They took them into the dunes for two or three days and then they came back for more." (Moustafa Ag Sidi Malian militia) (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21283829).

Bad stuff happens in war. In almost all wars, 'collateral damage' (ie civilian casualties) exceeds military deaths - sometimes by a factor of 10. The primary blame is with the Muslim hardliner groups including Ansar Dine who hijacked the Tuareg revolt and then sought to impose their own, strict version of Sharia law on a country that (although mostly Muslim) has its own fantastic mostly non-Arab culture.

You should not support the hardliners because they are external invaders, they wrecked one of the world's poorest countries, they betrayed the Tuareg, and they don't even follow the religious rules they imposed on others.