The French Method: How Africa’s Old Colonial Nemesis Fights Terrorism in the Sahara

from truthdig:


The French Method: How Africa’s Old Colonial Nemesis Fights Terrorism in the Sahara

Posted on Oct 23, 2013
By Susan Zakin

Since 2001, Susan Zakin has lived and worked in Madagascar, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Kenya, and recently completed a novel set in West Africa and suburban Virginia.

Few Americans outside the Pentagon have been watching Mali, where a midsummer election marked the end of a painful year of civil war and incendiary Islamic radicalism. What happened in Mali, one of West Africa’s most vibrant nations, is a primer on containing radical Islam. But it wasn’t the U.S. that got it right. It was Africa’s old colonial nemesis, France.

In foreign policy circles, it has become a truism that failed states are breeding grounds for terrorist recruitment. Yet when it comes to intervention abroad, the U.S. has veered between extremes of caution and blind optimism. In Mali, a country well on the way to becoming a failed state, the U.S. hung back while France intervened swiftly and efficiently. On Aug. 11, seven months after French troops landed on the ground, Mali peacefully elected a new president, former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Keita faces daunting challenges, but democracy in Mali had been restored, at least for the moment.

It almost didn’t happen. But the lessons of Mali could help us contain terrorism in the future—and they just might offer insight into the real risks of defunding government.

The official breakdown of Mali’s civil society began in early 2012, when Tuareg fighters trained by Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi returned to Mali bearing gifts: AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and, according to some reports, SA-7 surface-to-air missiles. The Tuareg militants, fighting under the banner of the MNLA, the Mouvement National de Libération de L’Azawad, rapidly gained control of Mali’s north. The Tuareg, whose survival skills in the desert are legendary, claimed a right to national sovereignty, or at the very least, full participation in Malian society. But it is worth noting that the militants were seasoned fighters who had spent the majority of their adult lives not in Mali, but in Libya. ...............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_french_method_how_africas_old_colonial_nemesis_fights_terrorism_in_the_