The U.S. Pivots (Slightly) Toward Africa – By Michael Keating
Interesting article on US policy (or lack of it) in Africa.
Quote:
As Ambassador Carrington concluded at his UMass address: “Mali is a cautionary tale for any country seeking U.S. assistance.” Because the United States lacked real intelligence about what was going in Mali’s political circles, American actions helped to topple one of Africa’s oldest democracies. Unintended consequences, to be sure; but an undertaking deeply unworthy of – and damaging to – the kinds of outcomes the U.S. would like to see in Africa, and the principles it claims to stand for.
http://africanarguments.org/2012/12/...chael-keating/
AQIM Fractures: New Leaders & New Money in the Sahel
Clint Watts comments on the reported disunity amongst the Islamist rebels:
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Well, it looks like more money and fighters has led to more conflict than unity in AQIM. Analysis suggesting more of any one terror group input (Weapons, money, fighters, etc) will lead directly to a stronger collective whole (AQIM) naively ignores the one thing that is most difficult to quantify and analyze: Human nature.....
Across al Qaeda’s global footprint, decentralization has led to there being more incentive for affiliates to compete than cooperate. With Bin Laden’s death, donors spread their funds more diffusely and local affiliate illicit revenue schemes must increase. Ultimately, this change leads to al Qaeda affiliates with waning allegiance to al Qaeda Central.
Link:http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=840
Thinking about this I wonder how distant onlookers, even sympathisers, will react to such groups becoming more like robbers, than fighters. Distant feelings of legitimacy and possibly sympathy are nothing compared to the local reaction.
ECOWAS with UN OK and a French General
I'd seen that UN approval was given for the ECOWAS intervention force, presumably for diplomatic reasons and maybe funding? What I'd missed that a French General is assigned as commander:
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..the passage last week by the U.N. Security Council of a French-sponsored resolution authorizing military intervention in northern Mali by a 3,300-strong force of soldiers from the Economic Community of West African States. The soldiers are to be trained and commanded by French officers. A French general with experience in Africa and Bosnia, Francois Lecointre, has been named to command the mission.
As previously reported the EU will re-train the Malian military:
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About 400 European Union soldiers have been assigned, beginning next month, to train a 3,000-strong Malian army force that would be capable of redeployment to restore government authority in the stretches of northern Mali that have fallen under the control of AQIM forces.
Link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...ml?tid=wp_ipad
Late response to an earlier posting
Quote:
Originally Posted by Commando Spirit
A day later, Ansar Dine and the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA), a Tuareg separatist group, said they were committed to finding a negotiated solution.
Ansar Dine as well? I missed that one. Frankly, I am a bit surprised to read that.
Tunnels, logistics and some insight
A rather breathless AP article in part, based on local sources, with AQIM building tunnels and moving SAMs from Libya. Shades of Tora Bora? See:http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=18098473
The best parts are the comments by Robert Fowler, a Canadian diplomat, who was kidnapped for four months in 2008:
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Fowler described being driven for days by jihadists who knew Mali's featureless terrain by heart, navigating valleys of identical dunes with nothing more than the direction of the sun as their map. He saw them drive up to a thorn tree in the middle of nowhere to find barrels of diesel fuel. Elsewhere, he saw them dig a pit in the sand and bury a bag of boots, marking the spot on a GPS for future use.
In his four-month-long captivity, Fowler never saw his captors refill at a gas station, or shop in a market. Yet they never ran out of gas. And although their diet was meager, they never ran out of food, a testament to the extensive supply network which they set up and are now refining and expanding.
Going to Mali / Sahel? Read this book
Robert Fowler a Canadian diplomat seconded to the UN in Niger was kidnapped for four months in 2008, by AQIM and has written a book on his experiences 'A Season in Hell'.
It has been well reviewed on Amazon:http://www.amazon.com/Season-Hell-Ro...+robert+fowler
One review is a guide:
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Robert Fowler has written a unique account of what it is to be a captive of Al Queda. Unique, because Fowler is the highest-level representative of western governments ever to be taken by Al Queda. Also, because his background as a diplomat, senior government official and UN representative was precisely keyed to the menace of islamist terrorism; he knows his subject.
The book explains in painful detail the treatment he was subjected to for four months in the Sahara desert, the motivation of his radicalized captors and the perfidious actions - as well as the heroics - of the various actors involved. Fowler `gets' the big picture, and explains it in terms that provide a wake-up call to both the threatened governments of the Sahel region and the western governments that must support them.
Link to Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Season-Hell-...6964229&sr=1-1
For some background on SWC there is a thread on Niger, which covers his kidnapping:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=9303.
Fowler urges Canada to intervene
Robert Fowler, once a Canadian diplomat, has written an article:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/comme...rticle7015466/
He ends with advice on what the mission's objectives must be:
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This must be about damaging and degrading the capabilities and numbers of al-Qaeda in northern Mali that it won’t soon threaten the peace and stability of our friends across this vulnerable region. And it must also be about helping Mali’s armed forces to reoccupy and then defend their country once the jihadis have been diminished.
It won’t be about turning Mali into Saskatchewan or Nebraska. And it won’t be about exporting our social safety net or funding a government or anything else that isn’t directly related to damaging al-Qaeda.
Not seen this before, but it makes sense - earlier in the article:
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Over the past half-century, Canada and other developed countries have invested more than $60-billion in assistance to the countries of the Sahel. Does it not make sense to protect such a huge investment in the lives and welfare of something like half a billion Africans?
Breaking: Mali government closes all schools in Bamako district and in city of Kati
Following a day of fierce demonstrations in its capital Bamako as well as in the city of Kati, Mali's government orders schools there to be closed "until conditions of serenity and quiet have returned". Link to the communique, in French: http://www.coopfaso.net/didi/communi...bamako-et-kati
Jeune Afrique has a report on the demonstrations
Quote:
pour reclamer des concertations sur la transition, la liberation du Nord et le depart de Dioncounda Traore.
which can be found at http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/...nord-mali.html
The government calls upon the population "to unite behind the army, making an effort to reconquer the regions in the north of the country".
Huff & puff by Africa, NATO come quick?
The BBC reports an emergency UN Security Council meeting yesterday, calling for:
Quote:
the "swift deployment" of an international force to Mali.
The diplomacy appears to be a response to some reporting of both sides advancing.
In a twist that takes the "biscuit":
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On Tuesday, African Union chairman Thomas Boni Yayi said Nato should send forces to Mali to fight the Islamists. He said the Malian conflict was a global crisis which required Nato to intervene, in the way it had done in Afghanistan to fight the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Nato troops should work alongside an African force in Mali, he said.
The African Union has sub-contracted ECOWAS to intervene, although without any money of other physical support. Ah, what is ECOWAS doing? I have looked through previous posts:
a) April 4th 2012 'ECOWAS is preparing a force up to 3,000'
b) April 27th force 'ready to go'
c) September 24th Mali agreed to host ECOWAS
d) November 12th 'ECOWAS agreed to deploy, six months to prepare'
e) December 2012 UNSC gives support to ECOWAS
The BBC from New York reports:
Quote:
For logistical reasons the African force already approved by the UN was not expected to even begin its offensive before September or October...
Pathetic. I remain convinced this ECOWAS force will not deploy in Mali and even if it did it will never take the offensive. Now the African Union is throwing away its stance on no Western intervention, calling for NATO to fight in Mali!
Listening and reading the reporting it is almost as if Mali has been lost and AQ now has a new base - in a place far less hospitable than Afghanistan, the FATA and Somalia. As one expert has noted the "rebel north" is comparable in size to France (675k sq kilometers) or Texas (696k sq kms). Let me add somewhere we are familiar with, Afghanistan is 647k sq kms.
Can Mali be an AQ safe haven?
Quote:
The Sahel has recently shown glimpses of hope as jihadist groups have overtaken northern sections of Mali in the wake of Libya’s collapse. Despite the upheaval in Mali, disparate groups appear to be contesting each other’s claims to the desert. Isolated in remote portions of the Sahara and almost entirely dependent on illicit funding streams, the Sahel offers few advantages as an enduring global safe haven for al-Qaeda and many logistical burdens.
The emphasis is mine and the passage is a small part of Clint Watts wider review of AQ for FPRI in July 2012:http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2012/2012...s.al-qaeda.pdf
Can ECOWAS replicate the success of AMISOM in Mali?
Can ECOWAS replicate the success of AMISOM in Mali?
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Mali mainly, 2012 coup, drugs & more
Trying to make sense of Mali
A strange NYT article on the US role before the coup in Mali in mid-2012, one wonders why this had been in the public domain and challenges the value of the US DoD programme across West Africa:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/wo...nted=all&_r=1&
This alone suffices:
Quote:
According to one senior officer, the Tuareg commanders of three of the four Malian units fighting in the north at the time defected to the insurrection “at the crucial moment,” taking fighters, weapons and scarce equipment with them. He said they were joined by about 1,600 other defectors from within the Malian Army, crippling the government’s hope of resisting the onslaught.
A puzzling insight into the action / in-action behind the shifting front-line in Mali:http://africasacountry.com/2013/01/1...the-fairytale/
Such as this oh not subtle change:
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Second, virtually unremarked upon with all eyes in the East, several hundred French soldiers are deployed in Bamako to protect French citizens—of whom there are reportedly some 6,000 in Mali, of whom expatriates are a minority (press: please note). In the current emergency while the French troops are there ostensibly to protect their citizens and other civilians from terrorist attack, they implicitly secure the civilian government against its own military and against mobs like those ginned up by MP-22 and other radical associations. Meanwhile, soldiers from ECOWAS nations are arriving by the hundreds, although it is not yet clear what role they will play or where they will be stationed.
French Operations in Mali Roundup
French Operations in Mali Roundup
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A few thoughts on Mali...
I know the discussion over the next few weeks is going to be about tactics, "counter insurgency", training, how the West can better partner with African armies etc. I think that misses the big picture.
Think about this.
1. Ghana lies in the same neighbourhood (it is right next door to Cote D'Ivoire), but Ghana has been remarkably stable (just had a peaceful presidential election). The economy is growing and it is moving to "mid income" status.
It is "good governance" stupid. All the military assistance and strategy in the World will not erase the uncomfortable facts on the ground. The current state of the Malian Military is the best indicator that you are dealing with (a) a failed state and (b) extremely flaky "allies".
2. The next question is how do we make "good governance" happen. We need to come to terms with the fact that someone played a game of dice with artificial borders and gave those artificial entities "statehood" in the sixties. The neat lines in the Saharan sand mean nothing to the Tuareg people.
We have to rethink the Malian state and if necessary, let the maps reflect the reality on the ground. The more we postpone it the more time we waste.
3. We Africans need to partner with the Chinese (to help us with the economic stuff) and the West (to help us with security). The problem of "terrorism" in Africa cannot be solved without a solid economic and political strategy.
Neither the US nor France have a long-term economic strategy for that part of the World, so why not work with the Chinese to integrate the economics with the security?
I've always had my reservations about the US AFRICOM-led policy in the part of the World. The events in Mali proved me right (the massive amounts of money spent on the trans Saharan counter-terrorism initiative have been wasted).
It all starts from governance.