<
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/07/24/stopping_mali_from_becomin
g_somalia> Stopping Mali from Becoming Somalia
The United States needs to prevent Mali from turning into another failed
state in the heart of Africa.
BY WITNEY SCHNEIDMAN, BRANDON ROUTMAN | JULY 26, 2012
The parallels are striking: A government collapses in a divided country,
militant jihadist groups quickly fill the vacuum, and a humanitarian
disaster breaks out, threatening to breed chaos throughout the region. These
factors have long been associated with Somalia, the world's most enduring
failed state. But for months now they have begun to describe Mali, located
across the continent to the west, which is now poised to assume Somalia's
unenviable status as Africa's most troubled nation. And just as Somalia's
instability ripped through the Horn of Africa, so too could the chaos in
Mali mean trouble for the larger Sahel region in West Africa.
Things first started to go south in March, when soldiers staged a coup in
Bamako, overthrowing President Amadou Toumani Toure only weeks before a new
president was to be selected. Quickly thereafter, Tuareg rebels, who have
had grievances with the Malian government since the early 1960s, aligned
with jihadist forces, defeated the national army, captured the key cities of
Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao and declared the northern part of the country the
breakaway nation of Azawad.
Since then, Islamic extremists have gained the upper hand. According to one
source, Islamist factions have pushed indigenous Tuaregs out of northern
Mali completely. The government in the south is weak, technocratic, and has
been without its interim president, Diacounda Traore, since he left the
country for Paris following a beating in his office on May 21 by backers of
the coup. And there are no indications that the interim Mali government has
the ability to pursue a political or military settlement with the Islamists
in the north.
Mali had been the model counterinsurgency program for the United States in
Africa. The sudden collapse of this program, in which the Pentagon had
invested tens of millions of dollars over the last decade, suggests that
Washington had significantly misread the environment in Mali. As a result,
al Qaeda in the Islamic Margreb (AQIM) and its ally, Ansar Dine, now have
control of several relatively significant urban areas from which they can
plan attacks on American targets in West Africa and send resources to al
Qaeda affiliates in other regions.
Today, the northern half of Mali is now a virtual no-go area for journalists
and humanitarian workers; Ansar Dine controls the northern cities and AQIM
fighters have free rein throughout the countryside. Together they have
instituted a harsh form of sharia law and destroyed centuries-old monuments
including ancient Muslim shrines in Timbuktu -- actions reminiscent of
al-Shabab and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
But while the situation in northern Mali has deteriorated rapidly, the
international community has not responded in kind. Earlier this month, the
U.N. Security Council deferred a request by the Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) for authorization to deploy 3,200 troops in Mali
until it received "additional information" related to the goals and
objectives of the proposed intervention. ECOWAS has also called for the
creation of a government of national unity and elections. But State
Department officials following this issue suggest that it might take up to
12 months to structure a force that could stabilize the north of Mali.
During this time frame, State Department officials envision that elections
would be held in Mali, possibly by May or June 2013, and a newly elected
Malian government would be in place to signal its support for a
U.N.-authorized ECOWAS force to take on the Islamists in the north.
By that time, however, northern Mali is likely to be an al Qaeda stronghold
and a significantly larger force than ECOWAS is proposing would be needed to
dislodge the jihadists. Together, AQIM and Ansar Dine currently can count on
up to several thousand armed fighters. AQIM has generated millions of
dollars from ransoms paid by kidnapped Europeans and illicit drug
transactions, and will likely work to strengthen the military capabilities
of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, adding more
pressure to the challenges being faced by the Nigerian government,
Washington's key strategic partner in the region. As Gen. Carter Hamm, the
commander of Africom, recently remarked, the linkages between AQIM and Boko
Haram are the "most worrisome" of any security threat facing the United
States and African nations.
The conflict in northern Mali has already created more than 350,000
internally displaced persons and refugees who have fled to the neighboring
states of Mauritania, Niger, and Burkina Faso. In Mali, 4.6 million people
face food insecurity and further food shortages are looming. Mali has also
lost hundreds of millions of dollars in suspended aid from the United
States, the World Bank, and the EU, not to mention the loss of revenue from
tourism and foreign investment.
ECOWAS is right to want to move quickly to challenge the influence of the
Islamic extremist groups in the north. If the international community waits
another 12 months to intervene, al Qaeda will have grown stronger in
northern Mali and the human costs will be significantly higher. It is
appropriate that ECOWAS try to negotiate a national unity government to
restore Mali's territorial integrity. The reality, however, is that al Qaeda
does not negotiate. An intervention force will be necessary.
The African Union (AU) seems to have grasped this, signaling cautious
support for an ECOWAS intervention. At a recent meeting, the African Union
Peace and Security Council adopted a resolution endorsing the plan to deploy
regional forces under a Chapter VII resolution. The council also supported
the ECOWAS call for a 12-month transition in Mali and the organization of a
credible presidential election. The AU is not going to war, but ECOWAS wants
to intervene -- and it is a credible objective, especially with the
appropriate support as we've seen successfully implemented in Somalia.
The question is whether the AU or the U.N. Security Council is prepared to
support the deployment of a stabilization force before there is a
democratically elected government in Bamako. In the end, there may be little
choice. There is no indication that Diacounda Traore, the country's
70-year-old transitional president, will return from Paris any time soon to
head up the interim government. In fact, neither Traore nor Prime Minister
Cheikh Modibo Diarra participated in the July ECOWAS summit in Burkina Faso
that was convened to develop a road map for tackling the crisis, suggesting
a genuine power vacuum in Bamako.
Moreover, the Malian military is in complete disarray. Even with an
election, it is unlikely that a new Malian government would be able to
defeat the jihadists in Timbuktu and elsewhere, let alone exercise effective
administration of the nation in the next 12 to 24 months. In fact, it was
the frustration over the Toure government's inability to pursue and sustain
the brewing conflict with the Tuaregs that was a key contributing factor to
the March coup. (Another contributing factor was the NATO-supported
overthrow of Muammar al-Qaddafi. Many of the Tuareg fighters who had been
hired by Qaddafi to strengthen his forces returned to challenge the Malian
government with newly acquired arms.)
If there is any lesson to be learned from two decades of crisis and conflict
in Somalia, however, it is that inattention and inaction by the
international community fuels instability and enables conflict to spread
beyond borders. Thus, as the international community deliberates over how
and when to restore order and governance in Mali -- hopefully, sooner rather
than later -- it is clear that NATO can, and has a certain obligation, to
play a supportive role to the ECOWAS force.
Another painful lesson from Somalia is that there needs to be a legitimate
government to consolidate the security gains that any U.N. or AU-authorized
force might make. Malians are the ones ultimately responsible for restoring
a credible government -- but the country's Western partners would be well
served to invest as much, if not more, in governance, civil society, and job
creation than in counterinsurgency in order to achieve that outcome.
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Received on Thu Jul 26 2012 - 17:31:29 EDT
