France has taken up the challenge of defeating Al Qaeda's new stronghold in northern Mali, its largest since the fall of Afghanistan in 2001. Paris has taken on a well-armed and well-funded group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which poses a serious threat to Africa and the West. The US has a backseat role in this fight, but a big stake in the outcome. AQIM has already demonstrated it can strike back by taking hostages at an oil installation in Algeria; it may be capable of attacks in Europe as well.
AQIM was for long among Al Qaeda's weaker franchises. Emerging from an Algerian terrorist group in 2006, it had some early success blowing up the United Nations headquarters in Algiers, but for most of its existence has been confined to kidnapping westerners traveling the remote deserts of Algeria, Mali, Mauretania and Niger as well as other criminal enterprises. It amassed a sizable war chest, more than $200 million according to Algerian sources, from the ransoms paid. Then it accumulated huge amounts of weapons from Libya after Gaddafi's fall.
Last spring after a military coup in Mali, AQIM found a partner in a local jihadist group in Mali, Ansar al Dine, and together they swept out government forces from the north of Mali, before turning on a Tuareg independence movement, the predominant ethnic group in the north and initially a partner. AQIM and Ansar al Dine now control a vast Saharan stronghold the size of Texas.
Together, they began destroying the Islamic heritage of the fabled city of Timbuktu, much as Al Qaeda and the Taliban destroyed Afghanistan's historical treasures in Bamiyan Valley the years before the 9/11 attacks. Jihadists from across Africa and as far as Pakistan are flocking to Mali for training, money and weapons.
Ansar al Dine is led by a former Tuareg rebel, named Iyad ag Ghaly, who was a diplomat for Mali in Saudi Arabia, 2008 to 2010. The Saudis expelled him for contacts with extremists in the Kingdom. His goals are probably mostly local, but he established extensive contacts with the AQIM leadership, helping negotiate release of foreigners kidnapped by Al Qaeda for years.
The combustible mix of AQIM, Ansar al Dine and Tuareg rebels is complex. AQIM itself has split in to factions with different leaders but the same general agenda. All are well armed, thanks to looting of the Libyan arms depots; indeed AQIM has acquired so many weapons from Libyan caches that it's the best armed Al Qaeda franchise in the world today.
Almost all of Mali's neighbors, except initially Algeria, are horrified at what's taking place in the north. The Moroccan foreign minister told me recently the jihadist emirate is the greatest threat to regional stability in north and west Africa in more than over a decade. Today, AQIM is the fastest growing Al Qaeda franchise in the world. Based on previous experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere once Al Qaeda establishes a presence in a failing state it becomes difficult to root it out entirely.
So Paris, Mali's former colonial ruler, stepped into the breach. This month it stopped an advance by the jihadists on the capital in Bamako. Now it's attacking their bases in the north. The French know more about Mali than other major powers do. The French should - it's their creation, an artificial state known as French Sudan with borders created by Paris created 1880. French intelligence has better insights into Tuareg and jihadi militants than the US or UK. But it also has baggage from the colonial era, with many Africans and Arabs resenting French interference.
