Mali mainly, 2012 coup, drugs & more

[Commando Spirit]

Ansar Dine militants began attacking holy sites in the city on Saturday
Islamists in Mali have begun destroying remaining mausoleums in the historic city of Timbuktu, an Islamist leader and a tourism official said.

"Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu," Abou Dardar, a leader of the Islamist group Ansar Dine, told AFP news agency.

Islamists in control of northern Mali began earlier this year to pull down shrines that they consider idolatrous.

Tourist official Sane Chirfi said four mausoleums had been razed on Sunday.

One resident told AFP that the Islamists were destroying the shrines with pickaxes.

Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning from the 13th to the 17th centuries.

It is a UN World Heritage site with centuries-old shrines to Islamic saints that are revered by Sufi Muslims.

The Salafists of Ansar Dine condemn the veneration of saints.

"Allah doesn't like it," said Abou Dardar. "We are in the process of smashing all the hidden mausoleums in the area."

Islamists seized control of Timbuktu in April, after a coup left Mali's army in disarray.

The news that further monuments were being destroyed came one day after Islamists were reported to have cut the hands off two people.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist group operating in the area, warned that there would be further amputations, AFP reported.

Last Thursday the UN Security Council gave its backing for an African-led military operation to help Mali's government retake the north if no peaceful solution can be found in coming months.

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.

[davidbfpo]

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:

..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:

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

[Commando Spirit]

If child 'soldiers' are employed in Mali as we have seen in other African conflicts, e.g. Uganda, Sierra Leone and Somalia, I suspect that we [Western Nations] will see a devastating increase in soldiers returning with psychological injuries; more so than we have witnessed thus far in recent conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This is not really a huge leap of intellect as,no doubt, you will all have thought the same, but it's something I've been mulling over recently and so I thought I'd bring it into this debate in order for others to comment or air their views on the subject.

Disclaimer - This is not meant to be an antagonistic observation about PTSD or other psychological injuries and if this does flirt on the edge of your own line of taste vs distaste then I apologise, it is not my intent to offend.

Back to the topic. I do not think it unreasonable to expect that children will be used in Mali as fighters, be they intentionally and maliciously made to become addicted to drugs first [as in Uganda] or simply forced through fear of death or abuse. This predicted psychological issue may not be as widespread an issue if the UN force is made up of West African's as the article posted by Davidbfpo above suggests. However, add in a force of EU or perhaps US personnel and there we have the ingredients for this prediction to come to fruition, alas.

Show me a soldier from the EU who has to legitimately use lethal force on a child and I will show you a significantly increased risk of PTSD or a like injury. Are we ready for this? Are the medical support services in place and sufficiently well established or manned to treat these personnel? Perhaps medical personnel in SWJ/SWC may be in a position to comment?

In the UK Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) practitioners are trained within units to conduct the first line assessment of individuals from a psychological perspective but are they adequately resourced to deal with the potential numbers of personnel adversely affected?

Given the drive to downsize deployments throughout the EU and the US militaries, will we deploy adequate numbers of personnel to act as BCRs?

Lots of questions raised and I have a view on them all but I'd like to leave it there for now to the wider SWJ collective to comment as you see fit.

CS

[Piranha]

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.

[davidbfpo]

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:

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.