The Obama administration is \u201cmarkedly widening its role\u201d in the escalating French-led neo-colonial war in Mali, according to a report published Monday [4 Mar 2013] in the Wall Street Journal<\/i>.<\/p>\n
According to unnamed French officials cited in the report, US Reaper drones have been utilized to track down alleged Islamist fighters in the Ifoghas mountain region of northern Mali, supplying targeting information for some 60 French airstrikes in just the past week.<\/p>\n
A force of 1,200 French troops alongside another 800 US-trained special forces soldiers from Chad and units of Mali\u2019s own army have engaged in fierce clashes with the insurgents, who have operated in the region for many years and are well acquainted with its terrain.<\/p>\n
Given the new, more violent stage of the war\u2014which as of Sunday had claimed the lives of three French Foreign Legionnaires and dozens of African troops\u2014the French Foreign Ministry announced last week that it would not withdraw its 4,000-strong expeditionary force \u201cin haste,\u201d effectively signaling that a withdrawal previously scheduled for later this month would almost certainly be postponed. French officials told the Associated Press that the country\u2019s troops would remain in Mali at least until July.<\/p>\n
Chadian officials claimed over the weekend that the country\u2019s troops had killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who is alleged to have led the armed group that seized the Amenas oilfield in Algeria in January. Belmokhtar is said to have links with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).<\/p>\n
\u201cChadian forces have totally destroyed the principal bases of the jihadists in the Adrar massif of the Ifoghas [mountains], to be more precise in the town of Ametetai,\u201d Chad\u2019s military command announced on Saturday. The announcement came one day after Chad\u2019s president, Idriss D\u00e9by, claimed that another AQIM leader, Abou Zeid, had been killed in the same operation.<\/p>\n
French and US officials were more cautious about the claims, saying that they had been unable to verify the killings. Washington has extensive experience with reporting alleged jihadists having been killed, only to have them turn up again very much alive.<\/p>\n
French military commander Adm. Edouard Guillaud cautioned in an interview on Monday that while the deaths were \u201clikely,\u201d the French forces did not recover the bodies of the two men. Guillaud urged \u201cextreme caution,\u201d warning, \u201cthere is always the risk of being contradicted later by a dated video.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stepped-up use of US drones in the Mali war follows last month\u2019s announcement of the deployment of at least 100 US troops to neighboring Niger, where an agreement was reached with the local government to allow Washington to set up a drone base on the country\u2019s territory. While presently, the US claims that it is only flying unarmed surveillance drones, the establishment of the base creates the conditions for the Obama administration to spread its campaign of remote-control killings throughout West and Central Africa.<\/p>\n
While justifying its intervention as a response to the growing presence of Al Qaeda-linked forces\u2014which overran northern Mali only after they were utilized by Washington as ground troops in the US-NATO war to topple the regime of Col. Muammar Gaddafi in neighboring Libya\u2014the real aims being pursued by US imperialism are asserting US hegemony over the region\u2019s extensive oil, uranium and other mineral wealth and countering the rising economic influence of China.<\/p>\n
The Journal<\/em> article quoted an unnamed Western official as stating that the US role in Mali represented a \u201crare North African success story,\u201d in which Washington had rolled out a new \u201ccounterterrorism strategy of working \u2018by, with and through\u2019 local forces.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, US imperialism is attempting to prosecute its predatory campaign in Africa by counting on the region\u2019s servile national bourgeois elites to provide African troops as a proxy force.<\/p>\n \u201cIn recent years,\u201d the Journal<\/em> reports, \u201ca Joint US Special Operations Task Force in Africa has provided Chad\u2019s Special Anti-Terrorism Group, the unit involved in the operations last week, that allegedly killed Mr. Belmokhtar and Mr. Zeid, with equipment, training and logistical support.\u201d<\/p>\n Chad has reported that 26 soldiers from the unit have been killed since the launching of the offensive in Mali.<\/p>\n Chadian officials acknowledged that the Chadian unit fighting in Mali, the Special Anti-Terrorism Group, had been trained by US Green Berets. According to the Journal<\/em> ,<\/em> US officials claimed that \u201cAmerican forces didn\u2019t accompany the Chadian unit into Mali.\u201d Any such direct involvement by US forces in ground fighting in Mali would undoubtedly be carried out covertly.<\/p>\n In addition to the Chadian unit, other US-trained African troops are being readied for possible deployment to Mali.<\/p>\n Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of AFRICOM, the US military command overseeing the African continent, flew last week to Mauritania for closed-door meetings with the country\u2019s president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, and senior military officials. He also addressed Mauritanian, US and French soldiers engaged in combined military exercises in southern Mauritania, near the border with Mali.<\/p>\n The exercise, known as \u201cFlintlock 2013,\u201d is part of an annual series organized by Pentagon since 2000, before the so-called \u201cglobal war on terror\u201d and the invocation of Al Qaeda as a pretext for worldwide interventions.<\/p>\n On Monday, Abdel Aziz, speaking at a joint press conference with Niger\u2019s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, said that he was prepared to send Mauritanian troops to Mali \u201cto provide stability and security.\u201d He said his government would \u201ctake on this responsibility as soon as possible,\u201d while adding that it had already deployed troops to the country\u2019s border with Mali to block supply lines and escape routes for insurgents there.<\/p>\n While the US-French intervention in Mali has been cast as a humanitarian venture aimed at rescuing the Malian people from Islamists, the reality is that the war has unleashed immense human suffering.<\/p>\n The United Nations refugee agency has reported that some 40,000 Malians have fled the fighting, seeking safety in refugee camps in neighboring Burkina Faso. The bulk of those crowded into the refugee camps in Dijbo, in northern Burkina Faso, are Tuaregs, who left to escape the French bombing and out of fear that Malian troops would exact retribution on the minority population for having risen in revolt against the central government.<\/p>\n Another 4,000 have fled into Mauritania since France, backed by Washington, launched its military intervention on January 11. A week after the initiation of the neo-colonial war, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees warned that \u201cin the near future there could be up to 300,000 people additionally displaced inside Mali, and over 400,000 additionally displaced in the neighboring countries.\u201d This assessment is rapidly being confirmed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are scared of reprisal killings,\u201d Malian refugees told the UN news agency IRIN. \u201cWe are scared of attacks from Malian soldiers. No one dares return.\u201d The news agency reported that farming families had been unable to tend their fields because of the fighting and had fled in fear of starvation. It also reported that, while schools have reopened in the city of Timbuktu, they are largely empty because so many students and teachers have joined the surge of refugees.<\/p>\n \u201cWho can assure our safety, our security? No one. I do not have confidence in anyone,\u201d Timbuktu school director Amhedo Ag Hamama, now volunteering as a teacher in Mb\u00e9ra refugee camp in eastern Mauritania, told IRIN.<\/p>\n Stocks of food and water are proving inadequate to deal with the number of refugees, threatening to produce a humanitarian catastrophe.<\/p>\n