Blog 6- More War in Mali

In recent news regarding the skirmish between French and Malian troops in Africa, the French continue to advance on Taliban and Muslim extremist groups in the surrounding area. The French, or “Paris,” as the article would say, are losing hope that their counter efforts against the terrorist groups will be ending anytime soon. In fact, despite their great efforts and results from prior offensives, the French are now beginning to understand that not all terrorist cells in the area will be stamped out. The best that they can hope for is that enough of the terrorist forces will be of course lessened in numbers as well as pushed back by French and Malian forces into a region of the area that is much more isolated from larger populations—potential targets. The French believe that this will halt, to some degree, the frequency and severity of the terrorist attacks in Mali and the surrounding regions. One French intelligence analysis says, “Final success in this case probably comes in us decimating Islamists in Mali, and send them scattering to open, unsecured parts of the Sahel — where their ability to organize and execute terror is greatly diminished,” 

In a former blog regarding the French assault on terrorist forces in Mali in January of this year, I addressed the event in which several heavily armed terrorist groups stormed the Malian Air Strip/military headquarters in the country warranting the French involvement in the battle. Since the French involvement in January, some 50 radicals have been killed along with 2 major al-Qaeda masterminds and 3 French soldiers. According to French intelligence, there are some 800-900 terrorist operatives still live in the area—a dramatic decline since the French involvement. Although the French are not necessarily declaring this war a “war against terror” as their basic objective, they do understand that religious ideology plays a strong part in the lives of their enemy and that the majority of their opposition will much rather die fighting than accept defeat of capture—making this war hard to win for the French and Malian troops.  

http://world.time.com/2013/03/05/french-officials-warn-success-in-mali-wont-end-islamist-threat/ 

Nathaniel Funkhouser 

03/08/2013

10:15am