Why Mali mission is crucial

CAN France prevent the African nation falling to al-Qa'ida?

130117 f mali map

TIMBUKTU, the fabled town at the edge of the vast Sahara desert in the West African nation of Mali, has since time immemorial denoted remoteness and mystery -- a place of legend so outlandish and removed from our collective consciousness that it has long epitomised myth rather than fact.

But as French Rafale attack aircraft scream overhead, dropping 250kg bombs, and helicopter gunships spew out volley after volley of heavy machinegun and rocket fire in an attempt to halt advancing columns of al-Qa'ida-linked Islamist rebels, there is no disguising the dangerous new reality that has overtaken the country previously best known as the home of Timbuktu.

For Mali, one of Africa's most strategic nations and long a much-admired bulwark of democracy, is now the setting for the latest battle against al-Qa'ida and its jihadist surrogates amid what many see as a replay of the circumstances that led to US-led western involvement in Afghanistan in 2001.

That France's Socialist president Francois Hollande, regarded as having been mostly weak and indecisive since he took office, should have made a decision to go to war in Mali at a time when, after Iraq and Afghanistan, public opinion in the West has little appetite for foreign military expeditions, underlines the seriousness of the situation.

So do statements by his Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who has disclosed that at the time of the French intervention, the jihadist forces, already in control of vast swaths of the country, were 48 to 72 hours away from capturing Mali's capital, Bamako.

The taking of Bamako, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said, would have had the most "appalling consequences". Few would disagree. But Fabius is probably being over-optimistic when he says the duration of the French intervention is "a question of weeks".

All the indications are that it is likely to be much longer, and that it is going to require greater international involvement than the modest help with transportation and midair refuelling being offered by countries such as the US and Britain.

One of the primary reasons for Hollande sending in units of his crack special forces was the fear that with a huge ethnic Malian community living in France, a jihadist regime in Mali would have had fertile soil in which to further sow the seeds of terrorism there and across Europe.

The intervention has provoked a fierce response from Islamic militants, with one of the jihadist leaders, Oumar Ould Hamaha, grimly warning that it has "opened the gates of hell for all the French". Hollande, he adds, "has fallen into a trap which is much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. And that is only the beginning."

However, as the former colonial power, France did not have an alternative but to intervene. Fears about a full-scale jihadist takeover of Mali -- turning it into another Afghanistan -- that could destabilise countries across Africa, including large-scale oil producer and Western ally Nigeria, are based in reality. So are apprehensions about the fate of more than 6000 French and other foreigners living in Mali at the hands of Islamists hell-bent on imposing a particularly barbaric form of medieval sharia law, involving stoning and mutilation and considered extreme even by the standards of the Taliban.

The Islamist advance in Mali has been swift and stunning. It is a consequence, as much as anything, of the removal from power in Libya of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Many Tuareg tribesmen from Mali's north, around Timbuktu, were enlisted to fight for his regime. When it collapsed, they returned home, carrying with them tonnes of state-of-the-art weaponry, including rockets, machineguns and anti-aircraft systems, that had been stored by the Gaddafi regime in warehouses across Libya.

By one account, Gaddafi had more than 1000 major arms depots, all of which were looted. "There is still a lot of stuff sloshing its way in all directions," a military expert has said.

Jihadist groups in the region are said to be well financed as a result of ransom payments made for European hostages.

About six months after the triumph of Libyan rebels, a military coup in Bamako overthrew Mali's democratic government and the power vacuum that has ensued provided a golden opportunity for al-Qa'ida through its local franchises, al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith), to move in.

Seldom before have guerilla armies achieved so much so quickly: in less than a year they had captured most of northern Mali. In Timbuktu, centuries-old shrines and earthen tombs, reflecting the local Sufi version of Islam in what is known as the City of 333 Saints, were destroyed by Ansar Dine, using axes, shovels and automatic weapons. Its fighters bashed in the door of a 15th-century mosque, claiming they were defending the purity of their Islamic faith against idolatry.

Like the Taliban, who blew up two 6th-century figures of Buddha carved into a mountainside near Bamiyan in Afghanistan, Mali's Islamists despise the Sufi tradition and adhere to Salafism, which is linked to the Wahhabi puritanical branch of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia that gave birth to al-Qa'ida.

Since then, al-Qa'ida-linked militants, including those from Ansar Dine, al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb and several other factions, have advanced relentlessly towards Mali while the world has looked on, unwilling or unable to do anything to stop them.

Months of negotiations between the UN Security Council and neighbouring countries in the Sahel region of Africa finally led to an agreement that they would muster a force of 3000 to send to Mali to drive the Islamists out of the vast tracts of countryside in the north -- about the size of France -- that they had captured.

But amid the usual bureaucratic procrastinations that are a feature of such decisions, the African force was not expected to be deployed before September.

The jihadists' steady advance towards Bamako demonstrated the futility of that decision -- which undoubtedly contributed to the decision by France to act when it did.

Whether the Islamist takeover of northern Mali can be reversed is the big question, and on that there will be little optimism, despite the confidence emanating from the Elysee Palace.

Already, following the first wave of French attacks, the Islamists have regrouped and retaken key towns close to Bamako that were lost by the militants when the French began their bombardment on Sunday.

No clear estimate of the size of the Islamist force has emerged, but witnesses on the ground speak of thousands of well-armed fighters in hundreds of vehicles who have repeatedly overrun supposed strongholds of the Malian army on the route out of the north towards the heartland around Bamako.

They are said to have significant foreign backing. There is intriguing talk of support for them -- as there has been in the past for the Taliban -- from Algeria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Repeatedly during the recent US election, President Barack Obama insisted that al-Qa'ida was on the run. The speed of the Islamist takeover in Mali suggests otherwise, and for those alarmed by what this means for global terrorism, the outlook could hardly be more portentous.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr this week underlined the gravity of the situation.

"The great issue here is the advance of Islamist rebels on the south of Mali, which would threaten a situation akin to Afghanistan, with Mali given over to terrorist activity," Carr said.

A band of countries across Africa south of the Sahara desert would be threatened by such a development, he added. He pledged Australian support for West African nations once the French intervention had achieved its purpose in providing stability and security for Mali.

Stephen Harmon, an American professor who has been in Mali doing research work, has described the country as being "front and centre of terrorism in northwest Africa", while Richard Fenning, of the global risk consultancy Control Risks, has categorised al-Qa'ida's offensive in Mali as a classic example of the jihadist strategy of taking over ungoverned space in Islamic countries.

Defending Bamako and keeping the jihadists out of the Malian capital looks feasible to most strategists, provided the French are prepared to do what is necessary. There's a considerably smaller likelihood of success in expelling Islamists from the rest of Mali and preventing the country from becoming another failed state that attracts extremists and terrorist plotters from across the world.

Already, there are reports of militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as African countries such as Benin and Nigeria, pouring in to join the battle in Mali. This is sounding alarm bells across Africa, where there are fears that much of the crucial Sahel region could be destabilised by events in Mali, with an arc of instability running through Mauritania, Niger, Chad and Sudan and the Horn of Africa, which would open up fertile new ground for al-Qa'ida and the transnational criminals and drug merchants that are part of its network.

The region is already beset by Islamic terrorism. Hundreds have been killed in repeated attacks by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria, Africa's biggest nation, which has long been racked by conflict between its Christian and Islamic communities. In Somalia, too, al-Qa'ida-linked al-Shabaab militants, who already control much of the shambolic but highly strategic state, are now striking across East Africa, attacking targets in Kenya, long a beacon of democracy in the region.

That there are links between the various jihadist groups is clear. So is the reality that at the top of the pile is al-Qa'ida. Despite the killing of Osama bin Laden, it remains a potent force and is now focused on what Mali's Islamists have shown is an extremely vulnerable part of the world, its instability making it ripe for the picking from the terrorists' point of view.

Mali's emergence as a key element in the battle against al-Qa'ida contrasts, of course, with its long-standing status as a global backwater, with Timbuktu perceived to be the remotest place on earth.

Home to 15.8 million people, 1.62 million of whom live in Bamako, Mali has been best known for its musicians.

Before a spate of kidnappings by the jihadists, Timbuktu was a popular tourist destination that attracted thousands of foreigners to an annual music event, the Festival of the Desert.

But that is now but a memory: a town that has for centuries been a centre of Islamic culture and learning, with about 20,000 catalogued manuscripts dating back to the 12th century, is now in the eye of the storm as al-Qa'ida and its surrogates ruthlessly enforce shariah law and seek to establish a new base for militant Islam.

It is a fair bet that President Hollande didn't take the decision to intervene lightly. It would have been difficult at any time. In the midst of a crippling financial crisis in France and across the eurozone, it must have been even more so.

It is, however, a reflection of the seriousness of the crisis and the sense of foreboding surrounding the challenge posed by the Islamist foothold in Mali that he felt forced to act, against all his normal political instincts. He deserves praise for his courage.

There is much riding on his decision and the success of his strategy, for if it fails to prise the Islamists out of the heart of Africa, al-Qa'ida and its surrogates will have gained dangerous momentum.

The French have ahead of them in Africa a mighty task of immense strategic importance to the region and the world.

They deserve support.