Mali is getting even more deeply enmeshed in a guerrilla war pitting Islamist insurgents against French troops and their African allies. The latest developments include reports that, following air strikes, French troops are involved in their first ground combat. Rather predictably, despite their blood-curdling rhetoric–one fighter with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb told a Western reporter, “Even if they come at us with nuclear bombs, we will defend the terrain. This is going to be worse than Afghanistan!”–the rebel fighters generally prefer to melt away rather than confront far better-armed and better-trained French forces.
This is straight out of the Guerrilla 101 playbook. As Mao Zedong famously counseled: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”
While waiting for the enemy–in this case the French–to tire, the insurgents are striking out in other directions against easier targets. Thus they ventured into Algeria to kidnap foreign oil workers, including American, British and French citizens. While this kidnapping operation has already made a media splash, it is a miscalculation on the insurgents’ part.
For a start, it only reinforces the general perception throughout Africa and the West that the rebel fighters are savages who must be resisted, while doing little to undermine the French will to stay on the offensive. More significantly, this criminal act risks widening the number of enemies the rebels must face. By violating Algerian sovereignty, the Malian Islamists risk drawing into the conflict against them the Algerian armed forces, which repressed an Islamist uprising on their own soil in the 1990s with considerable brutality and effectiveness. And by kidnapping Americans, they could well lead to the deployment of U.S. Special Operations Forces to rescue the hostages and assist the French. Thus the rebels have actually handed a gift to their enemies.
That does not mean, however, that the campaign will finish anytime soon. It is one thing for the French to take a few towns out of rebel hands. Altogether more difficult will be securing the countryside and preventing the rebels from regaining control of the urban areas as soon as the French troops leave. As I note in my new book Invisible Armies, the average insurgency since 1945 has lasted nearly 10 years. The conflict in Mali, whatever the outcome of the battles currently being waged, has a long way yet to run.
Amusing to hear such bullish optimism when the fighting has hardly begun. Why are the Mali Jihadis perceived "throughout Africa and the West" as "savages who must be resisted?" In what way other than skin color are they more "savage" than Jihadis elsewhere? n nWhile we're on the subject, why are French colonial forces getting a pass on aerial bombing of civilian population centers and the inevitable collateral damage that results? n nIn any event, quotations from Chairman Mao and local tactics by the Mali savages are less interesting than the question of whether this African incursion by France will end its immunity from Islamist terrorism and bombs will begin going off in Paris cafes.
and if the french, i dunno left Mali and the maghreb to the 9th century these guys will what? n nwhy must they be resisted? n nis Africa now an international force projector? n n
The Tuaregs have been fighting for a separate Azawad since 1880. This is the 5th significant rebellion in the last 50 years alone. And considering that Azawad, as a land mass is larger than France and only contains 620,000 people, it seems to this observer that they should have it. Soon enough the Tuaregs or the climate or the geography will finish off al Qaeda there on their own. Then the Tuaregs will get back to what they always do, run around and rebel in general against Mali. So the challenge is to prevent the rebellion from expanding into southern Mali, becoming yet another African civil war.
outside of protecting the access to the Mediterranean and the Straits of Tiran what interest does the West have in the continent at all? baffled–cant get the concept that anti-terrorism now means going to each and every sinkhole, across this suffering globe of billions of souls awash in cheaply obtainable weaponry, where gangs of warlords and their child recruits proclaim their hatred of us. Or is this to be a humanitarian intervention as advocated by Susan Rice? The West has responsibility to prevent civil war and genocide on the African continent? That could be a recipe for Black Hawk Down after Black Hawk Down.