The United States has stepped up its assistance to France’s mission to help Mali force out an insurgent occupation of the northern region of the African country. The insurgency, which reportedly has ties to Al Qaeda, recently took control of an area roughly the size of Afghanistan in northern Mali but, according to the French military, is slowly being pushed back by a series of airstrikes. The United States assisted France earlier on in what has been dubbed Operation Serval by aiding in the collection of intelligence, now it is also airlifting French troops into Mali. C17 transport planes have begun flights from a French base in Istres to Bamako, Mali’s capital city. So far; five US flights have landed. “The priority,” said French military spokesman Thierry Burkhard, “is to move heavy, bulky things.” Approximately 2,000 French troops are currently in Mali and 500 more are expected to arrive soon.
The insurgency has remained defiant, despite facing a coalition of troops from France, Nigeria, Chad, and Mali. So far this coalition has made considerable gains. Mali and French forces were reported to be in control of the central Malian town of Diabaly on Tuesday.
In general, the French military has been received well by the Malian people.
“I want to thank the French people,” said a Diabaly resident. He said French airstrikes had chased away the militants without harming any civilians, a claim echoed by other residents.
“None of us were touched,” he said. “It was incredible.”
“If the support remains consistent, it won’t take more than a month to free Gao and Timbuktu,” said General Ibrahima Dahirou Dembele, the Malian Army chief of staff.
At the same time, the intervention has provoked Islamist sympathizers and those resentful of Western powers getting involved militarily in a part of the world they usually ignore. This has already manifested itself in the hostage crisis at a gas field in southern Algeria. However, even within their own borders French officials are cautious of retaliation.
“We have an enemy abroad that we fight in Mali – terrorists groups – and there is also an enemy from within that is made up of a few dozen individuals that went to fight in Afghanistan, in Syria, and who would like to go to Sahel,” said French Interior Minister Manuel Valls. France has attempted to increase its interior security by using 700 troops to patrol the streets of Paris. Pierre Jacquemot, an associate research fellow at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations, has said he thinks it is unlikely that Malians living on French soil would carry out an attack in retaliation for the military intervention. “The Malian community in general supports the French intervention and the securing of the territory, and isn’t very responsive to the Salafi and jihadi arguments,” says Mr. Jacquemot.
Still some argue the way the crisis emerged and accelerated to the point where Western states felt compelled to get involved illustrates how much the region is neglected by the foreign policy of nations such as France and the US. “…This crisis should serve as a powerful reminder of the necessity of much stronger preventive diplomacy in Africa in general,” wrote Howard French, an associate professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, “when I spent time in Mali in the summer of 2011, Western diplomats seemed scantily informed and almost blasé about the situation there.”
