Mali

Published by TPOS on 17 January, 2013 - 20:01

i don't understand what's going on. Why have the French gone there? Have the British gone too? what's happening there?

Submitted by Hummus on 17 January, 2013 - 22:06

There is something happening in Mali? The only thing i know about Mali is that it is an African country. It's near Algeria, which is another country that has recently popped up in the news. My knowledge stops there.

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Submitted by Seraphim on 17 January, 2013 - 22:16

You guys need to read the news more often.

Instead of watching silly Star Plus drama's.

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Back in BLACK

Submitted by You on 17 January, 2013 - 22:28

Last year there was a failed coup against the government about 2 months before the elections there - the basis for the coup was that the government was not doing enough to fight the rebela.

Within a few days of the coup, the rebels went from having little control to controlling half the country. So the coup failed, and (I think) a civilian government was reappointed (probably with the coup leaders pulling strings behind the scenes).

They captured timbuktu too, the place where the hajj caravan used to start in ottoman times.

First thing they did was to destroy the (mud built) city of "300 saints" while the locals looked on in dismay (like many places, the majority of population of Mali is what some would class as "sufi" oriented. 90% or so AFAIK.)

The rebels captured half the country, but most of the population is in the other half.

The rebels at that time were made up of two groups - tuareg bedouins and alqaeda affiliated others. the latter then decided that sharing with the Tuaregs wasnt to be so they turned their guns on them.

Now the rebels, that controlled half the country but only 10% of the population started to march south, towards other towns and some estimates suggested that the capital could fall within days.

I am pretty sure the govenment probably had big problems before and after so wont be something that is offered as a model to others. I have no idea which side is better/worse, the government or the rebels.

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"For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens 'as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone'" - David Cameron, UK Prime Minister. 13 May 2015.

Submitted by abualabbasassaffah on 18 January, 2013 - 00:43

inshallah may allah help the people of mali

if this is my last post

 

asalamualaikum

Submitted by TPOS on 18 January, 2013 - 20:31

Thanks for the background info You.

Seraphim wrote:
You guys need to read the news more often.

Instead of watching silly Star Plus drama's.

If anyone's going to be watching any dramas, I'd recommend Pakistani ones - they have a lot more substance and a lot less silly sounds and effects. Or Korean dramas, they're funny. Don't watch Star Plus!

I've had this window open for days and still haven't got round to reading the story :/ politics can be so depressing.

Ok I'll read it now, you can read it too:

The bombing of Mali highlights all the  lessons of western intervention

As , there is one simple statistic that provides the key context: this west African nation of 15 million people isin which western powers - over the last four years alone - have bombed and killed Muslims - after Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, , Somalia and  (that does not count the  in that region). For obvious reasons, the rhetoric that the west is not at war with the Islamic world grows increasingly hollow with each new expansion of this militarism. But within this new massive bombing campaign, one finds most of the vital lessons about western intervention that, typically, are steadfastly ignored.

First, as  from this morning makes clear, much of the instability in  is the direct result of Nato's intervention in Libya. Specifically, "heavily armed, battle-hardened Islamist fighters returned from combat in Libya" and "the big weaponry coming out of Libya and the different, more Islamic fighters who came back" played the precipitating role in the collapse of the US-supported central government. As Owen Jones wrote in  this morning in the Independent:

"This intervention is itself the consequence of another. The Libyan war is frequently touted as a success story for liberal interventionism. Yet the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship had consequences that Western intelligence services probably never even bothered to imagine. Tuaregs – who traditionally hailed from northern Mali – made up a large portion of his army. When Gaddafi was ejected from power, they returned to their homeland: sometimes forcibly so as black Africans came under attack in post-Gaddafi Libya, an uncomfortable fact largely ignored by the Western media. . . . [T]he Libyan war was seen as a success . . . and here we are now engaging with its catastrophic blowback."

Over and over, western intervention ends up - whether by ineptitude or design - sowing the seeds of further intervention. Given the  still plaguing Libya as well as enduring anger over the Benghazi attack, how long will it be before we hear that bombing and invasions in that country are - once again - necessary to combat the empowered "Islamist" forces there: forces empowered as a result of the Nato overthrow of that country's government?

 

Second, the overthrow of the Malian government was enabled by US-trained-and-armed soldiers who defected. From the NYT: "commanders of this nation's elite army units, the fruit of years of careful American training, defected when they were needed most — taking troops, guns, trucks and their newfound skills to the enemy in the heat of battle, according to senior Malian military officials." And then: "an American-trained officer overthrew Mali's elected government, setting the stage for more than half of the country to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists."

In other words, the west is once again at war with the very forces that it trained, funded and armed. Nobody is better at creating its own enemies, and thus ensuring a posture of endless war, than the US and its allies. Where the US cannot find enemies to fight against it, it simply empowers them.

Read the rest here: 

 

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"How many people find fault in what they're reading and the fault is in their own understanding" Al Mutanabbi

Submitted by Hummus on 19 January, 2013 - 09:30

I didn't read the long article, so Algeria and Mali must be best friends then, considering Algeria's doing anything on behalf of Mali?

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Submitted by LookingToSee on 19 January, 2013 - 17:05

if im  not wrong, Mali was a french colony hence the french intervention...

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Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Submitted by Abu (not verified) on 27 January, 2013 - 15:04

What rubbish !  So you would leave Mali ti fall to the islamists would you ?  This diatribe against the West carry more weight if you were not living here in luxury compared to some of the people in the countries you talk about .Why dont you pack your bags and head off to the islamic paradise ......

Submitted by abualabbasassaffah7 (not verified) on 27 January, 2013 - 20:21

Abu wrote:
What rubbish !  So you would leave Mali ti fall to the islamists would you ?  This diatribe against the West carry more weight if you were not living here in luxury compared to some of the people in the countries you talk about .Why dont you pack your bags and head off to the islamic paradise ......

i would see it as allah wills a country run by the way of allah then a bunch of man made laws like you seem to love it and be in control of the enemies of allah instead of ours

 

 

Submitted by Joie de Vivre on 28 January, 2013 - 18:05

Abu wrote:
What rubbish !  So you would leave Mali ti fall to the islamists would you ?  This diatribe against the West carry more weight if you were not living here in luxury compared to some of the people in the countries you talk about .Why dont you pack your bags and head off to the islamic paradise ......

Really only one poster was outright in favour of Islamist fighters. What you read as a diatribe, if you wanted to reply, could warrant a more intelligent discussion of the issues. I don't intend to say much about it.

The French will have an eye on French interests and it seems they are backing the side supported by most Malians.

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  • It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. -- Wallace Stevens
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