Editor’s note: This report was originally published on Oct. 30, 2012, and updated with new material on Jan. 21, 2013. France’s sudden military intervention in Mali has put the country’s twin crises at the top of the international agenda. A loose coalition of Tuareg nationalists, Islamic militias and transnational criminal networks has split the country in half, with a military-led coup government in Bamako seemingly incapable of crafting a decisive response. Meanwhile, the spillover is increasingly threatening regional stability. Updated to include new developments, this WPR special report reviews the conflict in Mali and the crisis in the Sahel. Mali [...]
France has been at war in Mali for just more than a week, and though you might not know it from much of the media coverage, France is winning. This fact has been overlooked in a good deal of commentary on the fighting for three reasons. First, the Islamist rebels the French set out to fight have proved surprisingly resourceful. Second, the Malian army has turned out to be hopeless. Finally, the seizure and murder of Western oil workers in Algeria by a group associated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has shown that the Islamists have some strategic depth. [...]
We are rapidly approaching the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. For some politicians, their initial stance on the war is something they might prefer to overlook. It will be interesting to see, for instance, if, during their nomination hearings, either Secretary of State-designate John Kerry or Secretary of Defense-designate Chuck Hagel is asked whether they still stand by their yea vote in October 2002 to give President George W. Bush the authorization to pursue military action against Saddam Hussein. For others, the inevitable retrospectives will fall into one of several predictable categories. Some will attempt to [...]
