The French war in Mali

[Peter1469]

The French war in Mali

This article is about a think tank telling the US army to fight more like the French army (as it did in Mali in 2013). Not very likely- but I like the description of how the French did it. It was risky, and never would have been very successful against a peer-enemy. But it worked well against the motorized light infantry of the Islamists.

France went to war in Mali in January 2013 to expel the Islamic Ansar Dine militant group and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa. Across the border in Libya, the dictator Muammar Gaddafi was dead. Guns and ammunition poured into Mali from Libya’s civil war, which allowed the militant groups to carve out a fiefdom in the country’s northeast.

For French troops deployed to Mali, the goal “was simply to move as fast as possible,” the RAND report states. Within a day of the Islamist offensive, 200 French soldiers were on the ground organized as a sous-groupement tactique interarmes—a combined arms tactical subgroup.

Read the rest.

[waltky]

Prob'ly the only meal of the day for many students...

Halting school meals in Mali could keep thousands of children out of class - UN
Wednesday 28th September, 2016 - Taking away school meals from 180,000 pupils going back to class in Mali, where insecurity has closed schools in the north, may deprive even more children of an education, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

Halting a school meals programme due to a lack of funding will leave these children, in around 1,000 schools across Mali, without a guaranteed healthy meal each day, the WFP said. The U.N. agency said without these meals, many children may not go to school in the West African country, which faces a growing threat from Islamist groups in its desert north and has been rocked by a series of violent raids this year. "School meals are often the only nutritious meal a child receives a day, relieving families from further financial stress and motivating parents to send their children to school," Silvia Caruso, WFP's country director for Mali, said in a statement. "Teachers tell us that if the meals are no longer provided, there is a significant risk that parents will no longer send their children to school," said Caruso, adding that children find it tough to walk to or stay in school on an empty stomach.

Violence in northern Mali, which has forced teachers to flee and schools to remain closed, left nearly 400,000 children out of education months into the academic year in 2015, according to the U.N. children's agency UNICEF. More than a third of primary school-aged children in Mali are missing out on an education, more than four years after conflict involving rival armed groups and Islamist militants erupted, UNICEF said earlier this month. Armed groups have proliferated since Islamist groups took advantage of an ethnic Tuareg uprising in 2012 to seize the north of the country. A French-led intervention drove them back in 2013 but instability has continued and undermines a fragile U.N.-backed peace process.

Despite the insecurity and challenges of being able to reach people in need, the WFP said it had managed to provide school meals to an average of 170,000 children a year since 2012. "Going to school helps (the children of Mali) regain their childhood, and school meals play an important role in keeping them in school," Caruso said, adding that the WFP urgently needed US$3 million to resume its school meals programme in Mali. Dwindling funds and shifting donor priorities mean that more than 1.3 million children across West and Central Africa risk missing out on school meals from the WFP by the end of 2016, the U.N. agency said last month.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/...u/3160490.html

[waltky]

A move likely to disappoint allies...

Canada will not send peacekeepers to Mali in near future: officials
November 15, 2017 - Canada will not be sending hundreds of peacekeepers to support a United Nations mission in Mali in the near future, officials said on Wednesday, a move likely to disappoint allies who want Canadians to play a role in the West African country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau operations and Canadian defense experts paid three trips to Mali, where soldiers under the U.N. are fighting Islamist militants. Canada has decided to split the soldiers between various missions, with no more than 200 going to any one spot, and will offer up transport aircraft and helicopters. It is also pledging to help train peacekeepers. Any deployment would depend on talks with the United Nations that are likely to last many months, officials told reporters in a telephone briefing, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The option of sending forces to Mali one day is still alive, said one of the officials. The planning process takes at least six months “so you’re not going to going to see some kind of rapid deployment to any mission, let alone a complex one like Mali,” official said. At a separate conference on U.N. peacekeeping efforts, Trudeau sidestepped questions about the likely international reaction, saying the varied measures Canada was proposing would serve the U.N. better. “These are the things that actually create much larger impacts than the simple number of troops ... the U.N. often needs specialized equipment or specialized individuals,” Trudeau said.

Unhappy allies, earlier this year said Canada’s bid for a U.N. Security Council seat could suffer unless Trudeau lived up to his promises. “This approach will be a disappointment to some, and the Canadian government will have to work hard to overcome the credibility it has lost in not following through on its initial pledge,” said Jane Boulden, a security studies expert at Queen’s University in Kingston.

Government insiders said enthusiasm for the Mali mission faded as the extent of likely casualties and the complex nature of the conflict became clear. More than 80 members have been killed since 2013, making Mali the world’s deadliest peacekeeping operation. “Going somewhere for a very short period of time and leaving without having achieved anything ... may be worse than actually going somewhere,” said the official.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un...-idUSKBN1DF2XG