Still, despite the confidence of the French Defence Minister,
concrete action looks far away. The U.N. Security Council
resolution calls on the Malian government and ECOWAS, a bloc
of West African states that includes Mali, to jointly prepare
a plan to retake the country’s north. While ECOWAS nations
all share concerns over the havoc in Mali spreading across
its borders, there are pronounced deficits in trust between
various parties. Moreover, as related in a report published
in late September by the International Crisis Group, a
Brussels-based think tank, the ECOWAS armies are accustomed
mostly to conflict in forested areas and will need
considerable help to launch a successful campaign in the
Malian Sahel. The bloc, says the ICG report, “displays a
rhetorical ambition that goes beyond its capacity to deliver.
”
The French and their European partners say they will provide
training and logistical support to the Malian army, but will
not put any boots on the ground. Though it’s clear that most
Western countries, especially the U.S., have no desire to get
mired in yet another military imbroglio abroad, many analysts
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northern Mali without direct foreign—specifically French—
assistance, involving possible air strikes and intelligence
sharing. Considering the operational difficulties France
faced during last year’s Libyan mission, it’s all the more
likely the U.S. would be dragged into Mali’s conflict to
some extent.
The abject mess the Malian army finds itself in doesn’t
help, either: in March, disaffected units led by Captain
Amadou Sanogo toppled the civilian government. A quashed
counter-coup in April involving some of its most crack
regiments led to more fissures in the military. Power in the
capital, Bamako, is now awkwardly shared by a civilian
president and prime minister installed by ECOWAS as well as
Sanogo, ensconced in the barracks town of Kati in Bamako’s
environs. At the same time, an emboldened ethnic Touareg
insurgency, joined by Islamist factions and armed with
weapons lifted from Muammar Gaddafi‘s arsenals in Libya,
swept through the country’s restive north and declared it an
independent country.
