What the hell is going on it Mali?

[redgreenandblue]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_%282012%E2%80%93present%29

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/06/mali-war-over-skin-colour

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/world/africa/an-aura-of-conflict-grows-in-a-divided-mali.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/07/20127362254280117.html

So France is in now, and the US is going in as well? Is this the new Afghanistan?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. French adventurism

[FarCenter]

2. We've been actively engaged in the Sahel from Morrocco to Sudan.

Remember Darfur, South Sudan, etc. Besides being a climate hell-hole, the Sahel is the seam between the Islamic Arab world and the Animist/Christian sub-Saharan African world.

Despite withering agricultural resources being consumed by a booming population, it also holds a variety of mineral and petroleum resources.

Religious, racial, linguistic and other ethnic differences make it ripe as a playground for foreign interests.

[FarPoint]

3. Didn't you post this exact same thread yesterday?

Why don't you just kick your own thread. Feels a bit like spam now. Just trying to help.

[redgreenandblue]

4. I didn't.

Must have been someone else.

[FarPoint]

5. Probably so...

I think it was with a video too....

[Mojorabbit]

6. One of my favorite bands is from there

and I am interested in just what is going on there. It is confusing.

&playnext=1&list=PL5E3C3A6434BCFB6A

[ellisonz]

7. Toureg Islamic Extremists took over the north of Mali.

They've banned all music and have destroyed a UNESCO World Heritage site in Timbuktu. They continued advancing south and the government of Mali has requested international intervention.

[Posteritatis]

8. Mali and the rest of ECOWAS have been pushing for intervention for months.

It's actually been in the news and everything, and no, it isn't exclusively about the United States or something similarly batshit, though I'm sure people will spin it that way. It also isn't a new development; armed intervention was a guarantee as far back as November when the Security Council called for it on the request of just about every country in the region. I or anyone else reading the news could have told you then that this was going to happen (though I expected it to be a few months later).

Also, interventions in that part of Africa happen every few years, sometimes without force, sometimes with quite a bit of it, depending on the specific situation.

[DFW]

9. A French friend of mine used to vacation there a few decades ago

He said "les Maliens" were a very cool, gentle, laid back people. I'm having a hard time reconciling his experiences with the violence and horror being perpetrated in the north of Mali now. Banning music, women's rights, basically instituting Taliban-style dark times runs contrary to the nature of the people my friend described. Indeed, reports indicate that the Islamists were able to overrun the population due not only to local corruption, but because of their naturally docile nature. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the Islamic hardliners now controlling the north are not all natives of Mali.

[ellisonz]

10. They are mostly Tuaregs...

...the South of Mali is mostly Mande.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali

The Tuaregs are kinda like the Kurds, a people without a state.

[DFW]

11. I know who the Tuaregs are

However, this is the first instance I know of where they have organized (or, more likely, been organized) to the point where they have taken over even a part of a country, even one so fragile as Mali. A normally nomadic people, this situation begs the question as to who is behind their sudden political and territorial ambitions.

Much as I welcome any solution to removing them as a political (and quasi-military) power, I wouldn't want to be a British or French soldier who falls into their hands as a prisoner.

[ellisonz]

12. Gaddafi and Osama...

...even from the grave.