General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhat the hell is going on it Mali?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_%282012%E2%80%93present%29http://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
(22,144 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)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
(12,275 posts)Why don't you just kick your own thread. Feels a bit like spam now. Just trying to help.
redgreenandblue
(2,088 posts)Must have been someone else.
FarPoint
(12,275 posts)I think it was with a video too....
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)and I am interested in just what is going on there. It is confusing.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)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
(18,807 posts)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
(54,268 posts)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
(27,711 posts)...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
(54,268 posts)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
(27,711 posts)...even from the grave.