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Africa Subsaharan
Where have the jihadists gone?
2013-01-31
France triumphs in the desert, but faces a tougher time in the longer run
Despite their knowledge of the terrain and experience of guerrilla war, the rebels had chosen to fight like a conventional army, taking and holding cities, travelling along roads in vehicles that presented a clear target for French jets. Now they will revert to what they do much better: surviving as guerrillas in the desert.
Guerrillas' classic problem has been how to move from guerrilla warfare to holding territory. In this case, I don't think they could pass up the temptation: an entire country, ripe for picking, their own little (actually it's pretty big) Afghanistan on the road between north and west Africa. The Tuaregs had a beef and all they had to do was give the beef a Salafist flavor. It was Swat all over again, only better. The Bamako government fell apart, the usual kind of tired military coup led by some dishpit captain. The whole Malian army is 7,500 men. The ECOWAS force seemed (and was) reluctant to take on the turbans. Even if they did, they were supposed to get there sometime around September. In a purely African context, that is strictly a ground war against an ill-trained and poorly motivated African army, things looked pretty grand. It looked like the whole country was about to go under.
So what next? France has promised to stay put until Mali is stable but it does not intend to lead the effort. That job will fall to the Malian army as well as to African helpers. They will be sorely tested.
Going for the whole country, rather than just being content with oppressing the north, is what did the turbans in. They had to push into Diabaly, and they made no secret of the fact that Bamako was on the list. That would give the murderous branch of Islam a happy home right in the heart of West Africa. The Frenchies aren't blind, and when they put their little Gallic minds to it they're pretty good at strategizing. That's why they zipped in from Diabaly to Timbuktoo in jig time.
Mali's loose mix of jihadist and Tuareg rebel groups has dispersed. The lighter-skinned ones and ethnic Arabs tended to go north into the desert; the dark-skinned ones fled south to the arid farmlands.
The dark-skinned ones are the Malians and Nigerians and the Islamic riff-raff that likes wearing masks and waving guns, the bigger the better. The "lighter-skinned ones" seem to have had a heavy percentage of Paks mixed in with the Algerians and Mauretanians and such.
They are less united than before. The aim of the French and their Malian allies is to separate the religious zealots, hailing mainly from Algeria and beyond, from native Malians and the less fanatical rebels.
Mokhtar Belmokhtar's been a "Lion of the Desert" for a good, long time, an Islamic bandido making a good living kidnapping Europeans and holding them for ransom. The Tuaregs, who are Berbers, didn't like being shoved aside by the Arabs (and probably even less when a bunch of Paks showed up). "Azawad" wasn't going to be Tuaregland; instead it was going to be Jihadistan.
A splinter of the extremist Ansar al-Dine group may already be ready to talk. So may some of the Tuareg groups demanding autonomy if not independence. But the more defiant zealots may have the whip hand among the rebels in terms of cash and leadership. People in Diabaly, a town briefly occupied by the rebels earlier in January, said that Arabic-speaking foreigners were in command.
Kind of like if the French had taken over the 13 colonies after the Revolutionary War.
The diehard types are likely to carry on the fight. Though they used to concentrate on kidnapping and smuggling rather than launching terrorist attacks, some of them know how to make car-bombs and suicide vests. They may target Malian, French and other allied forces once they drop their guard in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.
That's what the Qaeda arm expects to do, probably will do. Once they metastasize into an area they start setting up the car bomb and boom vest factories so they can export death and destruction to the countries around them.
Even after years of American training, the ill-disciplined Malian army on its own is no match for the rebels. Malian soldiers are alleged to have killed 16 unarmed Muslim preachers in a bus near Diabaly at the end of last year, perhaps associating them with jihadists. Many religious Muslims were outraged and may have become rebel sympathisers.
I don't think a single incident like that would turn a large number of people into rebel sympathizers. It might make people angry, but people of remotely normal mental processes would want the people who did it punished, rather than deciding it would be a good thing for an army of foreigners to take over the country. Plus, the rebels are Berbers, not the Bambara-speakers inhabiting the south, and the invaders are Algerians and Mauritanians and such.

I think Mali has a good chance of getting rid of the infestation, at least until the turbans begin recruiting Bambara-speakers. I think Boko Haram is much more the model than AQIM. But they seem (at this distance, through the distorting lens of news media) to be genuinely outraged at the sadism their intended Islamic masters brought with them.
Posted by:tipper

#8  of course the Black Jihadists must know their place among the exalted Saudis and Paks, purest of the pure
Posted by: Frank G   2013-01-31 18:29  

#7  tw, if you squeeze a partially-deflated balloon, the air inside the balloon goes to the area where there is least external pressure on that balloon.

That it's a land (to Islamists) of "inferior Blacks" is irrelevant. It's that an opportunity presented itself and Islamists took advantage of it.
Posted by: Pappy   2013-01-31 17:16  

#6   The "lighter-skinned ones" seem to have had a heavy percentage of Paks mixed in with the Algerians and Mauretanians and such.

Why would a significant number of Pakistanis get involved with what they must think of as inferior Blacks when they've got perfectly good avenues for jihad in India, Afghanistan and at home in Pakistan? Could it be that doing jihad in the home territories isn't as much fun anymore, even if the Americans are leaving soon?
Posted by: trailing wife   2013-01-31 15:54  

#5  Despite their knowledge of the terrain and experience of guerrilla war, the rebels had chosen to fight like a conventional army

The first eleven words are a questionable assertion. Some of them may be experienced in guerilla warfare; some of them may be familiar with the terrain. Given the largish number of non-Tuareg Islamists (who are essentially the 'rebels' this article cites) it's amost certain that the odds of being both are low.

Now they will revert to what they do much better: surviving as guerrillas in the desert

Again, a questionable assertion. Not all of them will "do much better", given that many of them are outsiders. The experienced among them are going to be occupied with keeping their 'brothers' alive, should they choose to do so.
Posted by: Pappy   2013-01-31 14:18  

#4  NO WAIT! This cannot be!

Blair, moreover, appears to be sticking by the Niger uranium allegation despite the White House retraction, insisting that it was based on sources besides the forged letters. U.S. officials had hinted, also, that other sources had pointed to Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium in Africa, but that none of these leads was considered strong enough to include in the President's speech.

Linkie
Posted by: Besoeker   2013-01-31 14:09  

#3  Mali was a key stepping stone to the uranium in Niger and to unifying jihadi control across the Maghreb. Motion stopped but what comes next is iffy.
Posted by: lotp   2013-01-31 13:51  

#2  Yes, let's do wring our hands most moistly over the fact that the French triumph isn't a victory at all but just the disappearance of the jihadis. Tusk, tusk and all that.

I'm happy to see the jihadis go somewhere else -- someday they'll get zapped, and in the meantime they've learned that they can't stand up to a real military.

I'll take it.
Posted by: Steve White   2013-01-31 13:03  

#1  We've seen this movie before.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2013-01-31 12:52  

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