Mali - France's Afghanistan?

[768]

Islamic country, with IS and AQ presence, long term military involvement with attempts to build a coalition against Islamic terrorism (including the UK in small part, though you'd struggle to know from our news) and train local troops over something on the order of a decade.

When Macron came into office he'd said French troops would remain until the day there is no more Islamic terrorism in the region.

Doesn't look like it's really stabilised the situation much and France is now ending their operation, with the Malian government now looking to bring in Russian private military to replace the French. The French are saying that would be incompatible with their remaining troops.

Difficult not to see comparisons with the US' unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan and wonder what's going to happen in the voids or where the troops that have been pulled back are going to find themselves deployed in the next few years. It'd be interesting to see Russian influences mapped from eastern Ukraine, around the Middle East and through the Sahel region, etc. Or is it an isolated situation, not all that relevant to the rest of the world?

Looks like Timbuktu's off the list for a while longer either way.

[randlemarcus]

Can't say I disagree with M Macron on this one. He has been offered a golden opportunity to disengage because the Malian government wants a set of little blue men to kill all Islamic fundamentalists, and has quite rightly thought "Sacre Bleu, time to sashay away"