One's got to love
the sound of a Frenchman's Mirage 2000 fighter jet
in the morning. Smells like... a delicious
neo-colonial breakfast in Hollandaise sauce. Make
it quagmire sauce.
Apparently, it's a
no-brainer. Mali holds 15.8 million people - with
a per capita gross domestic product of only around
US$1,000 a year and average life expectancy of
only 51 years - in a territory twice the size of
France (per capital GDP $35,000 and upwards). Now
almost two-thirds of this territory is occupied by
heavily weaponized Islamist outfits. What next?
Bomb, baby, bomb.
So welcome to the latest
African war; Chad-based French Mirages and Gazelle
helicopters, plus a smatter of France-based
Rafales bombing evil Islamist
jihadis in northern Mali. Business is good; French
president Francois Hollande spent this past
Tuesday in Abu Dhabi clinching the sale of up to
60 Rafales to that Gulf paragon of democracy, the
United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The formerly
wimpy Hollande - now enjoying his "resolute",
"determined", tough guy image reconversion - has
cleverly sold all this as incinerating Islamists
in the savannah before they take a one-way
Bamako-Paris flight to bomb the Eiffel Tower.
French Special Forces have been on the
ground in Mali since early 2012.
The
Tuareg-led NMLA (National Movement for the
Liberation of Azawad), via one of its leaders, now
says it's "ready to help" the former colonial
power, billing itself as more knowledgeable about
the culture and the terrain than future
intervening forces from the CEDEAO (the acronym in
French for the Economic Community of Western
African States).
Salafi-jihadis in Mali
have got a huge problem: they chose the wrong
battlefield. If this was Syria, they would have
been showered by now with weapons, logistical
bases, a London-based "observatory", hours of
YouTube videos and all-out diplomatic support by
the usual suspects of US, Britain, Turkey, the
Gulf petromonarchies and - oui, monsieur - France
itself.
Instead, they were slammed by the
UN Security Council - faster than a collection of
Marvel heroes - duly authorizing a war against
them. Their West African neighbors - part of the
ECOWAS regional bloc - were given a deadline (late
November) to come up with a war plan. This being
Africa, nothing happened - and the Islamists kept
advancing until a week ago Paris decided to apply
some Hollandaise sauce.
Not even a
football stadium filled with the best West African
shamans can conjure a bunch of disparate - and
impoverished - countries to organize an
intervening army in short notice, even if the
adventure will be fully paid by the West just like
the Uganda-led army fighting al-Shabaab in
Somalia.
To top it all, this is no
cakewalk. The Salafi-jihadis are flush, courtesy
of booming cocaine smuggling from South America to
Europe via Mali, plus human trafficking. According
to the UN Office of Drugs Control, 60% of Europe's
cocaine transits Mali. At Paris street prices,
that is worth over $11 billion. More
Friday 18 January 2013
Burn, burn - Africa's Afghanistan
Posted @ 18:45
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