Mali must not become another Afghanistan
by Debasish Mitra
JANUARY 20, 2013
French intervention in Mali is a classic example for history repeating itself. In 1893, France achieved its victory in West Africa's upper Niger River basin, now called Mali, only after El Hajj Umar, a charismatic but a fanatical warlord died in an explosion of a gunpowder cache in 1864. Mali, almost after 120 years has come back to haunt its former imperial ruler — France. Umar had toppled the Bambara kingdoms along the banks of the Niger and posed the greatest ever challenge to the French rule in West Africa.
The adversaries are back once again and so are the French, probably in their final showdown that began way back 120 years ago. A coalition of radical and jihadi groups, Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness, Jihad in West Africa and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, have retaken Timbuktu threatening the entire swath of space that lay in upper Niger and Senegal Rivers. It then took almost three decades for France to wrest control of the region where Umar had set up Tukulor Empire.
The empire may have collapsed long ago but the spirit that threatened the French hegemony had never really died. And like energy, it only transformed and metamorphosed into a diehard hatred for anything and everything that is Western and is even remotely related to the United States. Jihad against the West kept burning on the back burner till it was resurrected by Al Qaeda. Mali, since past half a decade, has turned into an "Al Qaeda Country" and into what Peter Chilson says: "the largest al Qaeda-controlled space in the world, an area a little larger than France itself. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that Mali could become a "permanent haven for terrorists and organized criminal networks."
Professor in the Security Studies Programme of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and the research director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, Daniel Byman, has been rather unequivocal in his assertion that Al Qaeda was and is still very much alive in Africa. In fact, Qaeda has been more than successful in ejecting itself out of Afghanistan in the wake of the American attacks, found a safer haven in north and west of Africa and has survived the US drone strikes in both Arabian Peninsula and Islamic Maghreb. "A witches' brew of … jihadists is stirring up trouble across the continent."
The question today is how much does Mali matter to the world, especially to Europe and the United States. Apparently, it matters. Not too long ago, in December last year to be exact, General Carter F. Ham, commander of the US Africa Command, sounded an alarm bell saying that Al Qaeda was "using northern Mali as a training centre and base for recruiting across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe." In fact, the radicals "operating in northern Mali have been linked to Boko Haram, the violent … group based in northern Nigeria, and to Ansar Al Sharia, a group in Libya which has been linked to the attack on the US consulate at Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans."
But, can these be reasons good enough to warrant yet another US intervention into another foreign land? French intervention to halt insurgents' march from north of Mali to south of the country has flagged off an animated debate on what should be the role of Washington, especially in view of its pronounced policy to wage an endless war against terror.
America's involvement in Africa is telltale. In 2012 alone the United States carried out more drone strikes in Africa than in Pakistan and Afghanistan taken together. Yet, direct US engagement in Mali is not warranted. And because, the local insurgent groups with all their brutality and ferocity, have only been fighting to advance their local or regional ambitions. Their links with Al Qaeda is more perceived and none of them, at least as of now, has either the capability or nurse any ambition to take their fight against America or Europe.
But, can the world afford to ignore these Malian insurgents and allow them to grow stronger till they achieve power and capabilities to stand against the United States and other countries? So when observers appear smug and complacent saying, "Mali is not the next Afghanistan" they are either seeking to take refuge in the sandy deserts of Africa or are living in their own paradise.
Al Qaeda's modus operandi has always been to leverage domestic unrests, recruit dissidents and indoctrinate them into violence to conquer space. Mali fits the bill well for Al Qaeda and the situation there is worse than in Yemen and Somalia. We are afraid, Mali, thus, will not take decades to turn into another Afghanistan.
French intervention in Mali is certainly justified and ought to be seen, even if it turns protracted, as a pre-emptive measure to prevent creation of another Afghanistan. Fall of Mali to the insurgents must be prevented because if so happens it will set off a contagion, worse than the Arab Spring. Al Qaeda's aspiration to set up a caliphate will then be only a matter of time.
The author is the Opinion Editor of Times of Oman.
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