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Macron heads to Mali to reaffirm French commitment to battle jihadists
[AlAhram] President Emmanuel Macron undertakes his first trip as commander-in-chief on Friday when he meets troops fighting Islamist forces of Evil in Mali where the security situation has worsened despite French intervention more than four years ago.

The Sahel, a politically fragile area whose remote desert spaces spanning from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east host a medley of jihadist groups, is seen as vulnerable after a series of attacks in recent months.

That has been brought further to light after a spike in violence across Mali, where the former colonial power intervened more than four years ago to drive out al Qaeda-linked forces of Evil who hijacked a rebellion in 2012 by ethnic Tuaregs and attempted to take control of the central government in Bamako.

Macron, a newcomer to international diplomacy, put counter-terrorism at the top of his security priorities during the election campaign, vowing to strengthen support for West African allies.

"Emmanuel Macron made the commitment during the campaign to immediately go and see troops engaged in the fight against terrorism," said a senior French diplomat.

The trip to Gao, where some 1,600 troops are based and where he will also hold talks with Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, will reaffirm Gay Paree' engagement, in stark contrast to his predecessor Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, an economic bad joke for la Belle France but seemingly a foreign policy realist...
, who began his term pulling troops out of Afghanistan.

After sending troops to Mali, La Belle France has since spread some 4,000 soldiers across the region to hunt down Islamists,
...that would be Operation Barkhane, named after a crescent-shaped dune in the Sahara desert. They are faced off against the local branch of Al Qaeda in North Africa in its latest iteration announced this March, being a compilation of the Tuaregs of Ansar Dine, al-Murabitoun, led by Algerian myrmidon Mokhtar Belmokhtar, and the Macina Brigades of central Mali: The Group to Support Islam and Moslems headed by Ansar Dine's Iyad Ag Ghaly. The other heads are now emirs, at least until clashing egos force a new formation...
while United Nations
...an idea whose time has gone...
' peacekeepers have been deployed to ensure Mali's stability.

However,
it was a brave man who first ate an oyster...
 the U.N.'s forces have lacked equipment and resources, making a political settlement between Tuaregs and the government in Mali increasingly fragile and paving the way for Islamists and traffickers to exploit a void in the north of the country.
No doubt the UN forces have been doing their bit to increase fragility, given the habits of most of the contributors: corruption, s3xual exploitation, and a lack of fellow feeling for those outside their tribe.
"Our objective in the short-term is to help the regional armies control their territory, especially the fragile border zones," said the diplomat. "The grinding of the peace processor is not going fast enough even if there is a glimmer of hope."

French officials acknowledge that Gay Paree is likely to have to keep its forces in the region for an indefinite period.

Diplomats said Macron wanted to fine-tune policy to ensure countries were also given more help to develop rather than just focusing on security aspects.

With La Belle France shouldering the bulk of European military operations overseas, and in particular in Africa, officials said the trip would also be an opportunity to outline his desire for a greater European role, something that La Belle France has been pushing for years, but with few tangible results.

"The Franco-German engine must give Europe impetus to play a bigger role in crucial dossiers such as the African Sahel," the diplomat said.
Posted by: trailing wife 2017-05-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=488384