Posted on 06/22/2016 12:18:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
For most Americans, the battle in Mali with militant Islamist terrorists is as an obscure and peripheral sideshow in the Global War on Terror. However, the UN peacekeepers and French troops deployed there know the Mali sideshow is most deadly.
StrategyPage.com recently reported that Mali is now the most physically dangerous UN peacekeeping mission, exceeding the risks UN peacekeepers confront in eastern Congo, South Sudan, Sudan's Darfur region and in Lebanon. Since 2013, 81 UN peacekeepers have been killed in Mali. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon peacekeeping mission operates next door to Syria's chaotic civil war, and some analysts believe its peacekeepers are increasingly vulnerable to spillover from Syria.
Geographic isolation is one reason Mali gets little U.S. media attention, but recall that prior to al-Qaida's 9-11 terror attacks, Afghanistan received little notice beyond U.S. defense agencies. Mali might as well be as obscure a nowhere as Timbuktu. The idiom "Timbuktu" means a "an inaccessible location." Check your atlas. The physical Timbuktu is a city in Mali.
Like Afghanistan, Mali is large (about twice the size of Texas). Mali is wedged among Algeria (a major oil exporter) and the Saharan nowheres of Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. The African states of Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Senegal lie to the west. Algeria has a comparatively strong government, but the other nations are extremely fragile.
West African powerhouse Nigeria is south of Niger. Nigeria's vicious Islamist militant Boko Haram terrorist group does attract international media. Boko Haram's Islamist terrorists hack Muslim and Christian tribespeople with machetes, they rape and enslave Christian schoolgirls, and then they tout their savageries on the internet.
Boko Haram -- now an official affiliate of ISIS -- seeks sensational headlines that magnify the effects of its terror attacks. Spectacular crimes all but ensure sensational global headlines -- the nightclub slaughter committed by an Islamist terrorist in Orlando, Florida is a chilling example.
Mali, however, rarely rates mention, much less a spotlight headline, but the fight there connects to militant Islamist operations in Algeria and Nigeria.
The UN calls its Mali peacekeeping operation the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali. MINUSMA is an awful acronym, but blame the bureaucrats, not the soldiers. Currently 10,900 soldiers and 1,100 armed police serve with the force. France has an additional 1,000 to 2,000 soldiers in Mali. The size of the French contingent may vary week to week, since the French troops are assigned to a French military task force operating throughout west and central Africa (primarily but not exclusively in in former French colonies).
Even with Malian forces, there aren't enough troops to secure the huge country and monitor is porous borders. So the UN is seeking another 2,500 soldiers. The troop increase could serve a diplomatic purpose. Tuareg tribespeople in northern Mali see the Malian Army as an occupation force. The Tuareg are increasingly at odds with al-Qaida's Saharan Africa affiliate, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. A more robust UN presence would further the peace process between the Tuareg and the Mali government. The Tuareg believe UN peacekeepers would insure the Mali government compliance with a tentative peace agreement. Unfortunately, none of the nations currently supplying peacekeepers want to reinforce MINUSA until the Mali government provides the Tuareg with economic aid and political autonomy.
AQIM does not want peace. Militant Islamist extremists thrive on the chaos of conflict so they take every opportunity to stir tribal war and incite grievance.
Why? AQIM'S Islamist militants aren't fighting for Tuareg autonomy. They are 21st century religious internationalists waging ware on behalf of Islamist global imperialism. Mali may be a backwater, but for Islamist militants, a win anywhere on Earth furthers their global goal.
There was a kid in the same dorm who spent many of his growing up years in Mali. His Dad was posted there with the State Department. He said it was considered an armpit posting among armpit postings.
I knew a LEGAL emigrant from Mali ~ He told about the brutal, reprehensible life his people were forced to live. (his family had enough wealth to e$cape).
Many years ago, Mali was a literal HELLhole, and I don’t suppose it improved in any measure during the regime of barack hussein obama?
barack hussein continuously betrays Americans, Africans, and God-loving Christians every other day!
Spawn of Satan, return ye to Hades, where thou wast born!!
Spawn of Satan; return thee now to Hades, from whence thee came!
A good friend of mine was raised in Mali as his dad was a Missionary to that country.
In the early 90’s, a military officer in Mali led a rebellion and arrested the dictator. He ordered fair elections, in which he refused to run and used the military to enforce the election results. His name was Toure and he ran in the early 2000’s and won the Presidency.
For most of the 90s and early 2000s, Mali was one of the most stable countries in Saharan Africa due to the military supporting free and open elections. When Toure was overthrown a few years ago in a coup d’état, the country entered into it’s current period of conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Toumani_Tour%C3%A9
Doesn’t matter where you put muzzies, they’re a problem.
Sort of like Moishe Tshombe of the Belgian Congo in the early 1960s. Sad that these type of leaders are very much the exception and not the rule.
Not so much. There is no good reason for us to have any people there, we got no people, no problem.
Our degree of on-the-ground involvement is a measure of our idiocy, which unfortunately seems unlimited.
You too? My two friends had parents that were missionaries there too.
Agree. We shouldn’t be there.
The UN is greatly influenced by muzzie nations. We shouldn’t be a part of that.
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