Vol. 77/No. 4      February 4, 2013

According to a recent Time article, this is Paris’ 50th military intervention in Africa since 1960, when most French colonies won political independence.

Among these conflicts was Paris’ bloody 1954-62 war to maintain control over Algeria in which, according to Algerian sources, up to 1.5 million Algerians were killed.

The U.S. military has thus far played a very limited support role in the French intervention in Mali, with the Barack Obama administration holding off for further consideration Paris’ appeals for logistical and surveillance support.

For decades, Washington has been Paris’ main imperialist rival for economic and political influence in the former French colonies of Africa, particularly Central Africa.

In more recent years, Paris has also faced growing competition from Beijing for resources and markets on the continent. China is today the main export market of Mali, as well as many other former French colonies.

Paris’ aim: ‘total re-conquest’

The Socialist Party government of France is cobbling together an African-led force of several thousand troops from the Economic Community of West African States to supplement its forces—particularly for use on the front lines of the coming perilous march northward.

But the arrival of African cannon fodder has proceeded in dribs and drabs up to now, with a few hundred soldiers from Togo, Benin and Nigeria currently on the ground in Mali. Nigeria has promised to send 1,200 soldiers; Chad, 2,000; and Niger said it would deploy troops along its border with Mali.

On Jan. 17, European Union foreign ministers approved sending a force of 450 troops to Mali starting in mid-February to work with the African force and the Malian army.

Meanwhile, French forces after days of airstrikes took control of the central Malian town of Diabaly Jan. 21, which Islamist forces had occupied a week earlier, reported the Associated Press.

Among those cheering on the French government’s intervention—and pressing for greater U.S. involvement—is the Investor’s Business Daily.

A Jan. 17 editorial titled, “Mali War Makes the Case for ‘Colonialism,’” called for France and the U.S. to “Declare that Northern Mali will be under the rule and (yes) the protection of the Western powers until further notice.”

The burgeoning war in Mali is fueling growing divisions in the White House and Pentagon over the degree of U.S. involvement there.

“MIA in Mali—The White House scotches Pentagon plans to help the French,” headlined a Jan. 16 Wall Street Journal editorial, which noted that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had stated Jan. 14 that Washington would “provide whatever assistance we can to try and help” French forces. But the Obama administration argues that any support must be “nonlethal.”

The White House did agree Jan. 17 to provide U.S. Air Force transport planes to move French troops and equipment to Mali. “The U.S. expects to make, at least initially, up to 30 trips,” officials told the Journal.

Washington also dispatched about 100 military trainers to six countries that may send troops to Mali—Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana.

Benjamin Benson, a spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command, declined to comment when asked if Washington was using surveillance drones, Reuters reported Jan. 22.

Washington established the U.S. Africa Command in 2007 as part of long-range efforts to strengthen U.S. clout throughout the continent.

Washington’s approach in Africa over the past decade, according to a Jan. 18 Journal article, has been to maintain as “light a U.S. footprint as possible,” training local armies and providing some logistics and intelligence support.

But recent events “are now spurring a reconsideration of the military role the U.S. should take on the continent,” unnamed U.S. officials told the paper.

Since 2002 the Pentagon has sent troops designated as “trainers” to Mali as part of a Trans-Sahara “counterterrorism” program. Operation Flintlock exercises, led by U.S. special operations forces, had been held annually in Mali since 2007.

Roots of current conflict

The current conflict in Mali began in January 2012, with a rebellion by Tuaregs, a nomadic Berber people living in northern Mali, a vast desert region. For decades they have fought the Malian government for control of their territories. The Tuaregs, who call themselves Imohag, also live in Algeria, Libya, Niger and Burkina Faso.

The army was split on how to respond to the Tuareg rebellion. While some Malian troops defected to the Tuareg’s side, other mid-level officers, frustrated over the govern-ment’s inability to crush the revolt, led a coup two months later.

Recent major Tuareg rebellions took place in 1990-95 and 2007-2009. The main Tuareg rebel group leading the current struggle, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), was formed in October 2011 with the influx of a few thousand Tuareg mercenaries from Libya who had served the government of Moammar Gadhafi before his overthrow.

Islamist forces enter breach

In June 2012, the Islamists pushed out the Tuaregs and imposed Sharia rule. The Malian government has said the Tuareg rebels are allied with the Islamists, which the MNLA denies.

Since last June, some 200,000 Malians have fled south to escape the Islamists’ strict and brutal rule. Many MNLA fighters have moved west into Mauritania to avoid being caught up in the conflict between French forces and the Islamists, reported CNN.

News reports in the capitalist media play up support for the French invasion among layers of the population, particularly in southern Mali among residents of Bamako, Mali’s capital, where many families fleeing Islamist rule have gone. “French flags selling out in Mali’s capital,” was how the Christian Science Monitor put it.

The stakes for Paris in Mali extend beyond its interests in the country itself. Mali is positioned in the center of Paris’ former colonial possessions of West Africa, which today comprise some of its most important economic interests on the continent.

This includes Algerian oil and gas, Mauritanian gold, cocoa from Ivory Coast, and uranium from Niger. The latter is France’s second biggest source of imported nuclear fuel, which accounts for most of the country’s power generation.

Imperialists’ fears of broader repercussions of an Islamist takeover of Mali were brought home during a Jan. 16-19 assault and hostage operation by a split-off from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb called the Signed-in-Blood Battalion at the Tigantourine gas facility in southeastern Algeria, a joint venture between Norway’s Statoil, Britain’s BP and the Algerian state company Sonatrach.

Algerian military operations ended the crisis, with the death of an unknown number of Algerian hostages and at least 37 foreign hostages from Japan, the U.S., the United Kingdom and France, among others.

With a population of 15.5 million, 90 percent of whom live in the south, Mali is among the 25 poorest countries in the world by per capita income.

Eighty percent of the labor force is engaged in farming and fishing with 65 percent of the land area desert or semidesert. Life expectancy is 53 years. With almost 109 deaths per 1,000 births, the country has the second highest infant mortality rate in the world. At the same time, it is rich in some resources and is the third largest gold producer in Africa after South Africa and Ghana.

Production of cotton in Mali, which involves 40 percent of rural households or 2.5 million people, has been devastated through trade policies imposed by Washington and European countries. Cotton produced below the cost of production there has flooded the Malian market, driving Malians out of farming and deeper into poverty.

Since 1999, gold has become Mali’s top export commodity. Mining is concentrated in the southern part of the country. Large industrial mines are operated by companies from South Africa, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. There are also more than 350 artisan mining sites, employing as many as 200,000 gold miners.
 
 
Related article:
French troops out of Mali!  
 
 
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