French Army kills top Al Qaeda leader in Mali (Emir of AQIM)

Task and Purpose ^ | June 6, 2020 | JOHN IRISH AND TANGI SALAÜN, REUTERS

[BeauBo]

France said on Friday its military forces had killed al Qaeda's North Africa chief Abdelmalek Droukdel, a key Islamist fighter that its forces had been hunting for more than seven years, during an operation in Mali.

"On June 3, French army forces, with the support of their local partners, killed the emir of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his closest collaborators, during an operation in northern Mali," French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly wrote on Twitter.

The announcement of the death of Droukdel comes almost six months after former colonial power France and regional states combined their military forces under one command structure to focus on fighting Islamic State-linked militants in the border regions of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Droukdel was among North Africa's most experienced militants. He took part in an Islamist militant takeover of northern Mali before a French military intervention in 2013 drove them back and scattered fighters across the Sahel region...

Parly said that French forces, which number about 5,100 in the region, had also on May 19 captured Mohamed el Mrabat, a fighter she identified as a veteran militant in the region and member of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.

"Our forces, in cooperation with their local partners... will continue to track these (people) down without respite," Parly said...

Parly said earlier this week that about 100 special forces from other European countries would be deployed to the region to support French and regional troops.

[Mark17]

Dems will mourn his death.

I am sure they probably will. Do you suppose the rat 🐀 bastards will get the local chapter of Al Qaeda lives matter to schedule riots over it? 😁

[Herakles]

two things:

1. France has an army? Or is it virtual make believe like the games on Xbox?

2. It's good they did not kill a black porn star looser on drugs in Minnesota or those racists MF’s would be in really deep shit.

[SunkenCiv]

Jihadist disco -- dis goes dis way, dis goes dat way.

[FreedomPoster]

And a lot of their anti-Islamic-radical operations are via the French Foreign Legion, which is a pretty no-nonsense operation.

[Cronos]

you simplify it.

1914-1918 most of the western front battles were fought on french soil - they lost more men in WWI than America has lost in all of her wars.

1940 their military leadership was still stuck in WWI - they imagined they were safe behind the Maginot line. When it failed, they floundered. The men fought, but the generals gave up hope early - probably broken from Verdun 24 years earlier.

[2CAVTrooper]

Legion.

[Atlantic Friend]

Operation Barkhane (the French Army deployment in Mali) involves “Metropolitan” French units as well as “Etranger” (FFL) units. As of the 4th of July, 2019, fifteen of these soldiers had died in operations in Mali. Probably just so you could ask whether they were real dead soldiers of only an Xbox feature...

[ought-six]

“you simplify it.”

I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to explain away the continent’s largest modern army being defeated in six weeks and their nation occupied in humiliation.

The French military under Napoleon was formidable for about a dozen years, but it was pretty crappy before and since. Hell, it even lost to Mexico (granted, it was a half-assed effort to begin with, and totally inept in its execution; though there was one French garrison that fought bravely, to its credit).

[Cronos]

The thing is - in WWII, the Anglo-French command responded to the German armored breakthrough in the Ardennes quite early on.

The thing is that the Allies had very little in the way of mobile forces to deploy against the German spearhead. The bulk of the army, including most of its armor, was tied up in Flanders fighting Army Group B, what they had thought was the main German invasion force.

The Meuse, near Sedan, was the best place to stop the German Army Group A. So when the German broke through this line, the way to the Channel lay open to the German panzers.

The French ought to have been able to hold this line. They had bunkers and other well-fortified positions all along the western bank of the river and sloping up to cover the entire river with anti-personnel and anti-tank fire. The Germans had to cross with just infantry since tanks don't swim. They also had very little artillery support, and none of it was strong enough to take out the French bunkers.

But

I would recommend the book STRANGE DEFEAT, by the historian Marc Bloch, a French reserve officer, who wrote the book in 1940.

He says that in addition to the French high command being criminally incompetent, French society was so fractured (by everything from the Drefus affair, to class conflict, to anti-Catholicism) there was no national ideal to fight for.

The way this manifested in the short campaign of 1940 was that after the breakthrough at Sedan, the French military leadership (in the shape of Gamelin) and the civilian politicians (in the shape of Reynauld) simply gave up. As early as May 15th, Reynauld was talking surrender and Gamelin was saying he could not win, and all of this was making the press.

I'd really recommend Bloch's book; he wrote it in 1940, after he walked away from the reserve unit he was a captain in. He later joined the resistance, and was killed in 1944; his book was released in 1946, and is hugely respected in France for exposing the 3rd republic's flaws.

[Cronos]

The French military under Napoleon was formidable for about a dozen years, but it was pretty crappy before and since.

They were formidable yes, but even after and before they were formidable. Don't forget that Louis XIV with his policy of Réunions defeated Spain and the Hapsburgs. Of course this stab-in-the back alliances with Protestant powers and later with Muslim powers against the powers (HRE, Spain) that were fighting the Ottomans, was despicable

Post Napoleon, don't forget that Napoleon III was responsible for the creation of Italy, defeating the Austrians

The Mexican war wasn't really lost - Napoleon just realized he was fighting in Mexico when he needed troops in Europe against the Prussians.

They did win the Crimean war and then two decades later lost the war to the Prussians

[ought-six]

Thanks for the book recommendation. I’ll see if my local library has it (they are opening on a restricted basis, but they ARE opening!).

[ought-six]

“They did win the Crimean war and then two decades later lost the war to the Prussians.”

The Brits and the Turks had a lot to do with victory in the Crimean War (well, maybe not so much the Turks), and Russia was pretty much a paper tiger in any event.

[Chgogal]

Viva la France!

https://youtu.be/LxcdfvrZhvc

[Reily]

France did convict Soros on financial fraud.
As far as I know no effort was made to request extradition.

[Reily]

Traditionally their leadership both political & military fails the French soldier. Go to Verdun and look at ossuary of the French dead from that battle. Crazy brave!

[Cronos]

Thank you for this interesting discussion.

hmm... the Brits during the Crimean war — the entire ‘Charge of the light brigade’ is what got me interested in that war in the first place!

While I wouldn’t dismiss the British effort - or the Turkish cannon-fodder, this was led by the French to a large extent.

Russia was a paper tiger yes.

So yes, you are correct, the Crimean war was little better than the French wars against arrow-wielding African tribes

[Cronos]

I bought an eBook - it’s about $3 on Amazon.

I also recommend Orlando Figes, “Crimea”

[ought-six]

Turkish cannon fodder is right! So much for the vaunted Ottoman warriors (though, interestingly, Turkish troops fought well in Korea).

[Herakles]

Thanks for the info.