Mali mainly, 2012 coup, drugs & more

[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