Virtually the whole northern half of Africa is awash in weapons looted in the wake of the NATO war for regime change in Libya, and all those weapons are making the French invasion of Mali a lot less convenient than they’d figured.
“At the start, we thought they would be just a load of guys with guns driving about in their pick-ups, but the reality is that they are well-trained, well-equipped, and well-armed,” noted one French official. “From Libya they have got hold of a lot of up-to-date sophisticated equipment which is much more robust and effective than we could have imagined.”
They perhaps should have imagined this, as the Tuareg secessionists that initially took northern Mali did so with weapons from Libya, quickly overwhelming the Malian military. The Islamist factions then quickly defeated the Tuaregs. This makes it difficult to imagine why France would assume the group would be any worse armed than the Tuaregs were.
At any rate, France has sent only a few hundred ground troops, and is planning to rely on troops from Senegal and Niger for most ground fighting, while launching air strikes against the northern cities in the open-ended war. This means France will likely be able to pound the region at its leisure, barring significant anti-aircraft weapons having found their way into northern Mali, but any efforts to actually occupy it will be very much more difficult.
So much for the hope that socialists would be better than sarkoshlitz. It's all the same these day. Of course, underestimating the enemy is a Western specialty. Is France setting itself up for another whooping? They sure deserve it.
Right on the money !!! The mere admission of a "surprise" should tell us all we need to know .
The French military has been doing armed interventions in the same general area on a regular basis for about 40 years now, ranging from ponctual aerial raids against rezzous, to years long so-called COIN with boots on the ground, and various proxy wars against Lybia.
They know what they are doing, no need to worry about them – let's just hope that the pols do as well, which is certainly not a given…
Because once the islamists have been dealt with, on a very temporary basis (they'll be back, they've been around since the bloody 1990's algerian civil war, worst case scenario, they'll just shift to Mauritania, Niger,… still with the same support from Gulf petro-monarchies), the REAL nut to crack will be how exactly to deal with the Tuaregs, their so-far unrecognized right to self-determination… and how this can be set within the larger context of both Mali being a failing State, and the surrounding countries all being opposed to a Tuareg Nation?
Not an easy task.
"Funniest" thing is how the whole situation escalated, Hollande had made clear he wasn't too keen on France continuing to be "Africa's policeman" – he just had pulled the plug on a French intervention in C.A. -, and the idea was to let African troops in, within the framework of a "Nation-building" effort aimed at propping-up the gvt & civil structures, with no French involvement other than training & support (FWIW, the two main "big buddies" of the Mali army over the last years have been the German Army and the AFRICOM, who both provided training, vehicles, weapons,…).
Apparently, the islamists tried to pre-empt what was supposed to be an effort starting to bear fruits sometimes mid-late 2013 and to take hold of strategic ground.
At least, the Southern Mali population seems to be very grateful, for now, the islamists have been stopped/driven back, and the pledges of African troops have jumpstarted, including some "heavy hitters" like Nigeria or Chad.
Blowback is a bitch, US/NATO war mongers.
Well trained? Heck, we're training more in Syria. Fighting an enemy is one thing, but training them first so they can fight back is the height of stupidity.
Why are France and England fighting against the Islamists . Did not you support the Islamic terrorists in Yugoslavia ,, Libya , Egypt , Ivory Coast and now Syria . How do you know you are on the right side this time , when you have been on the wrong side most of the time .
Eric, they're on the side of "chaos" each and every time. Seems they're true to form once more.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/world/africa/fr…
Over the last four years, the United States has spent between $520 million and $600 million in a sweeping effort to combat Islamist militancy in the region without fighting the kind of wars it has waged in the Middle East. The program stretched from Morocco to Nigeria, and American officials heralded the Malian military as an exemplary partner. American Special Forces trained its troops in marksmanship, border patrol, ambush drills and other counterterrorism skills.
But all that deliberate planning collapsed swiftly when heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya. They teamed up with jihadists like Ansar Dine, routed poorly equipped Malian forces and demoralized them so thoroughly that it set off a mutiny against the government in the capital, Bamako.
(follow-up)
The same American-trained units that had been seen as the best hope of repelling such an advance proved, in the end, to be a linchpin in the country’s military defeat. The leaders of these elite units were Tuaregs — the very ethnic nomads who were overrunning northern Mali.
(…)
According to one senior officer, the Tuareg commanders of three of the four Malian units fighting in the north at the time defected to the insurrection “at the crucial moment,” taking fighters, weapons and scarce equipment with them. He said they were joined by about 1,600 other defectors from within the Malian Army, crippling the government’s hope of resisting the onslaught.
“The aid of the Americans turned out not to be useful,” said another ranking Malian officer, now engaged in combat. “They made the wrong choice,” he said of relying on commanders from a group that had been conducting a 50-year rebellion against the Malian state.
The virtual collapse of the Malian military, including units trained by United States Special Forces, followed by a coup led by an American-trained officer, Capt. Amadou Sanogo, astounded and embarrassed top American military commanders.
I guess the French want to be like Israel. It's much easier to use air power than fighting man to man on the ground.