U.S. President Donald Trump has a behavior of exaggerating threats the place they barely exist whereas ignoring real catastrophes unfolding in plain sight. His current claims that Christians are existentially threatened in Nigeria are wildly overblown—the fact in Africa’s most populous nation is complicated, with violence afflicting Muslims and Christians alike. However whereas Trump fixates on a phantom downside, a really actual calamity is reaching its crescendo in Mali, the place al Qaeda-affiliated militants are strangling the capital because the nation teeters getting ready to changing into the primary nation ruled by Osama bin Laden’s heirs.
This should seize the president’s consideration. Not simply because Mali’s collapse would ship shockwaves throughout the Sahel and past, destabilizing an already risky area and creating new sanctuaries for terrorist teams. But in addition as a result of a foremost perpetrator for this catastrophe is somebody whom Trump likes to invoke with contempt: French President Emmanuel Macron.
U.S. President Donald Trump has a behavior of exaggerating threats the place they barely exist whereas ignoring real catastrophes unfolding in plain sight. His current claims that Christians are existentially threatened in Nigeria are wildly overblown—the fact in Africa’s most populous nation is complicated, with violence afflicting Muslims and Christians alike. However whereas Trump fixates on a phantom downside, a really actual calamity is reaching its crescendo in Mali, the place al Qaeda-affiliated militants are strangling the capital because the nation teeters getting ready to changing into the primary nation ruled by Osama bin Laden’s heirs.
This should seize the president’s consideration. Not simply because Mali’s collapse would ship shockwaves throughout the Sahel and past, destabilizing an already risky area and creating new sanctuaries for terrorist teams. But in addition as a result of a foremost perpetrator for this catastrophe is somebody whom Trump likes to invoke with contempt: French President Emmanuel Macron.
France’s failure in Mali represents some of the spectacular examples of strategic incompetence in current reminiscence. And the implications threaten the broader world.
The state of affairs on the bottom is dire. Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, a jihadi coalition affiliated with al Qaeda, has successfully besieged the capital of Bamako, ambushing gas convoys and slicing provide routes. Lengthy strains snake from fuel stations. Colleges have closed. Western embassies are urging their nationals to flee. The militants have demonstrated an ominous new sophistication, utilizing drones and conducting coordinated operations throughout a whole bunch of miles. This isn’t a ragtag insurgency anymore; it’s a proto-state in formation.
How did we arrive at this precipice? The reply lies in a decade of French hubris, tactical myopia, and postcolonial conceitedness.
When Paris launched Operation Serval in 2013 to push again jihadis advancing on Bamako, it was hailed as a swift success. French troops recaptured key cities and restored authorities management. However as analysts on the London-based Royal United Companies Institute have documented, this victory proved illusory. The armed teams merely dispersed, altering their technique to a extra diffuse, population-centric insurgency that embedded itself in native communities and exploited intercommunal conflicts.
France’s response—Operation Barkhane, a sprawling regional counterterrorism marketing campaign that started in 2014—doubled down on the mistaken strategy. Relatively than addressing the underlying communal conflicts and defending focused populations, France maintained its aggressive counterterrorism posture, pursuing armed teams and neutralizing their leaders every time attainable. The consequence? Violence elevated dramatically, with the variety of violent occasions rising 70 % in 2021 alone, and tens of 1000’s have been killed and greater than 2.5 million individuals displaced.
However France’s strategic failures have been compounded by one thing extra insidious: the suffocating legacy of colonialism. The perceived supremacy of France, derived from its colonial previous and highly effective army, formed well-liked expectations—many Malians couldn’t fathom how the previous colonial energy was incapable of defeating native armed teams. This cognitive dissonance fueled conspiracy theories and anti-French sentiment that the army junta skillfully exploited after seizing energy in 2020.
Macron’s inconsistency made issues worse. France bombed insurgent convoys to help Chad’s Idriss Déby in 2019 after which endorsed his son’s unconstitutional energy seize in 2021 whereas concurrently lecturing Mali’s junta about democratic norms. The double customary was unimaginable for Malians to abdomen.
The French departed in August 2022, leaving a vacuum that Russian mercenaries—first Wagner, now the “Africa Corps”—have did not fill. Russian forces have suffered in depth casualties and alienated massive sections of the inhabitants by way of brutal ways, together with abstract executions of ethnic Fulani civilians.
Now Mali faces the unthinkable: changing into doubtlessly the primary nation dominated by al Qaeda within the terrorist community’s four-decade historical past.
The broader world can not afford this consequence. Mali’s fall would metastasize throughout the Sahel, with Burkina Faso—already wracked by violence—seemingly subsequent. The militants have already claimed their first assault in Nigeria and are exploiting illicit economies throughout the tri-border space between Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. The implications prolong far past West Africa. A terrorist statelet in Mali would turn out to be a magnet for jihadis worldwide and a coaching floor for assaults on Europe and past.
Trump enjoys nothing greater than shaming European leaders for his or her failures. This may be one occasion the place he’d be solely justified. Macron’s Mali misadventure has created a gathering storm that threatens to engulf a whole area. France broke it, and France wants to steer the hassle to repair it.
Macron ought to take the lead in cleansing up France’s mess. This may require Paris to commit actual sources, not simply rhetoric. It could additionally require partaking regional powers—Ecowas and the African Union—not sidelining them. Lastly, it could require recognizing that counterterrorism absent political options is nugatory, a lesson the US realized in Iraq and Afghanistan that the French apparently have to relearn within the Sahel.
The choice—watching Mali turn out to be al Qaeda’s first conquest—is unthinkable.
