Madness in Mali

French, Mali forces head toward Timbuktu

So a victory on the ground is coming soon, clearly. Can AQIM be stopped from retreating into the Sahara in Algeria or Niger?

Presumably not. Maybe if there was more air support the militants could be picked off as they retreated from cities, but that would encourage them to stay put or take hostages with them.

Depends on what you mean by victory. I am nervous when anyone talks of victory in a land war in North Africa and the Middle East, as they never end that tidily.

How possible would it be to closely monitor remote areas of the Sahara from the air and hit arms depots and such with strikes? The desert might be expansive, but it isn't like a mountain range or a jungle where you can hide things in the environment.

Presumably, breaking their control of the area and preventing them using it as an Afghanistan-style safe-haven is what the French would consider to be a victory.

There are mountains in the Sahara. Also, dunes are of such size there that they can conceal very easily unless you're looking straight down. Spy sats can do so of course, but the sheer expanse makes it like finding needles in haystacks.

Algeria will be vigilant for obvious reasons, but I'm not sure if any of the surrounding countries are up to it....

The problem is a combination of too much territory to cover (the Sahel is about 1000 miles long) and no easy way to tell the difference between the insurgents and normal civilian caravans.

Algeria? Maybe, the Algerian army has established a very firm 'don't fuck with us' attitude.

Niger (and Mauritania)? Probably not.

African Union says its Mali response was slow

You don't say?

edited 27th Jan '13 9:11:25 PM by DeviantBraeburn

It doesn't help that African armiess (with a few exceptions) are notoriously undisciplined, poorly equipped, and given to larceny. One reason the French are being accepted is because they don't nick everything not bolted down in the process of "liberation".

AQIM torched ancient libraries in Timbuktu, and have burned down many historical buildings. They also shot several people for celebrating the arrival of the French.

I think we can take 2 thing from this:

1. AQIM are hypocritical, troglodytic bastards, who I hope the Gauls With Grenades introduce to the business end of a FAMAS in short order.

2. Digitize like fuck. Seriously, get everything written down from old manuscripts everywhere, translate them into as many languages as possible, release them free online and store them in redundant server sites across the globe, or, better yet, off-planet. Who knows, perhaps we could even find a way to transmit and store them on Mars or the Moon. We can't risk losing cultural heritage like this in the event of war - think of the looting of the Spanish baggage at Vitoria, the libraries of Warsaw in WWII, and now this.

Digitize? Do they even have labtops in Timbukto?

I'd think they'd have enough equipment to digitize at least some of the writings.

,

They had been making a start on it when AQIM showed up. Africa isn't just mud huts and tribesmen and shanty towns and militias, you know.

Dare I quote Heinrich Heine with regard to these fanatics? "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings." (This quote was true when he wrote it (1823) and it is still true today.

They tried. Some German scholars stayed for a a few days after the Islamists took power and copied as much as they could, they said that most of the originals are probably already lost. Other scientists (local and foreign) did the same but it is impossible to save all of them. Those are very fragil writings and very difficult to decipher.

It is unfortunately impossible to digitalize every single piece of writing, I don't even want to know what would happen if something similar happened in Egypt (just to give you an example, there are more than 1.000.000 papyri in the archives and we have only translated cerca 50.000! Each year we discover more papyri then we translate!). We could find someday lost works of Aristoteles, Platon, Tacitus.... There are already many databases where you can find all sorts of documents et all. (it makes the life for a poor student much easier btw). Big museums have made copies of their most important documents which are stored somewhere safe.

edited 28th Jan '13 8:09:01 AM by Zarastro

I assume that they'll have stolen a lot of documents too, for the purpose of selling them for more funds. Their interpretation of Islam hasn't stopped them from kidnapping and dealing drugs, it won't stop them from stealing and dealing with heretical texts.

Then again, maybe some lulzworthy hypocritical situation may develop where some militants got shot for this crime by a leader who also heads a cigarette-smuggling operation (who then confiscates the texts and sells them on when no-one's looking).

As for their killing a man who celebrated the French intervention, that's some classic Bond-Villain stroppiness right there.

- as a British tax payer I have to say - great! :)

edited 28th Jan '13 4:06:54 PM by betaalpha

British boots on the ground.

edited 28th Jan '13 2:02:11 PM by Achaemenid

So I'm wondering how France and Mali's army will handle Kidal - it's supposedly controlled by the MNLA (Tuareg rebels) rather than Islamist fighters, who have fled. But then, Al Jazeera reports it's controlled by both the MNLA and a breakaway sect of Ansar Dine. I daresay they'll go in and return it to Mali's control anyway.

The above link has a message of hope about the priceless manuscripts - the most precious ones have probably been hidden or smuggled out of the country.

How likely is it that the MNLA will actually risk contesting those towns? The French seem willing to not shoot the crap out of them so far and I don't see what the rebels stand to gain by changing that.

200 men? Sounds like a company strength force to me, although given recent defence cuts it could be a regiment. And since those men will have to be replaced at some point, it could end up being one of those open ended deployments that don't often end well.

Seems like the french are kicking ass pretty well. and good on the Brits for joining the fight.

Damn shame about those libraries though. I hate it when terrorists do that shit. It's like those Buddha statues in Afghanistan all over again.

I think the mileage very much varies depending on what brand of Islam you practice on whether you see the destruction of the manuscripts as desecration or as a justifiable thing according to the faith. It's hard to pick out who is the true voice of Islam for negotiation purposes if most of the factions decry the others as heretics and not followers of the true Islamic faith.

The French are going to find that out (again) in Mali once the main bit of the fighting is over.

edited for derp.

edited 29th Jan '13 1:47:32 AM by TamH70

If everyone except the hardcore Islamist factions in North Mali surrender at the sight of French troops I won't be surprised. The difference in firepower seems overwhelming, and there's very little to gain from a defence that amount to suicide. The most hardcore factions will probably fight to the death simply because that's how they roll. More practical factions should be open to negotiation.

Looking badass with a FAMAS◊

@Best: You forgot the option of running away, only to fight again another day.

As for the antiquities, I think the hard-core Islamists see them as tokens of national identity (i.e. in competition with global Jihadism for membership and loyalty). I forget who said that all history is local.

It might be that giving prominence to these kind of objects is interpreted as a form of idolization among extreme hardliners. Then you have the possibility of people not realizing what they are, or just some plain old looting going on.

Potential good news on that front. Unconfirmed reports that the locals made a substantial effort to save the manuscripts, but veracity and details are in doubt.

Even if it's true that the locals harbor enough animosity against the Islamists to throw down their arms when the French arrive, the real question is if they'll pick them back up six months or a year down the line when the Mali troops begin to wear out their welcome. Considering the lack of political acumen that the putschists are displaying, I'm very worried that might be the case. On the other hand, if the French can a) administer the recaptured provinces well, b) convince the Mali government to accept a UN or maybe AU/ECOWAS-assisted peacekeeping force, and c) then make sure the peacekeepers can do their jobs, there's a chance. Although the UN peacekeeping record isn't perfect, it does have its success stories in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and East Timor (just to name a few). Backed up with French/NATO firepower as needed (see KFOR), there's a good chance that a peacekeeping initiative could bring about some kind of successful agreement between the Tuaregs and the Bamako government.

There's a lot of ifs in that scenario, of course, and lots of ways it could be derailed. But it's one of the few ways I can see this all ending well. Except for Ansar Dine and the other hardliner factions, but that's the idea, or so I'm told.

edited 29th Jan '13 11:37:30 AM by SabresEdge