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| Africa Subsaharan |
| EU mission seeks to rebuild Mali army after U.S. faltered |
| 2013-05-21 |
| * EU mission piecing army back together, one battalion at a time * Army imploded last year despite years of U.S. training * EU focus on building units and restoring cohesion to ranks Under a blazing sun and the critical gaze of British and Irish instructors, a line of 11 Malian soldiers lie prone in the dust firing AK-47 rounds at targets, one-by-one. "One out of 10 - not very good," Captain Ibrahim Soumassa, commander of the Malian unit, tells one of the men. "We're at 25 metres. When we're at 100, it'll be difficult." A European Union training mission faces a considerable challenge as it seeks to succeed where years of U.S. instruction failed by turning Mali's rag-tag army into a force capable of facing an Islamist threat stretching across the Sahara. Years of corruption and neglect led the army to a string of defeats against al Qaeda-linked militants last year, leaving northern Mali under Islamist control and sparking a military coup by disgruntled officers in the capital, Bamako. Only a lightning intervention in January by France - which warned that the al Qaeda enclave posed a threat to Europe - disloged the well-armed Islamist fighters from northern Mali's towns. Paris now plans to pull out most of its troops and hand over to a United Nations peacekeeping force. But the EU overhaul of Mali's army - one battalion of 700 men at a time - is at the heart of long-term efforts to keep the nation's desert north free not only of Islamist militants but also of traffickers ferrying cocaine, contraband and illegal immigrants into Europe. General Carter Ham, speaking in January before handing over leadership of the U.S. military command in Africa, recognised the United States had failed during years of counter-terrorism training in Mali to pass on "values, ethics and military ethos". |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 Ouch, Pappy. That's damning with very faint praise, indeed. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2013-05-21 22:24 |
| #1 I'm sure they'll be quite proficient at paperwork and procedure. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2013-05-21 18:33 |