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 truth in Africa’s most populous nation is advanced, 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 on the point of changing into the primary nation ruled by Osama bin Laden’s heirs.
This must seize the president’s consideration. Not simply because Mali’s collapse would ship shockwaves throughout the Sahel and past, destabilizing an already unstable area and creating new sanctuaries for terrorist teams. But in addition as a result of a foremost wrongdoer 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 truth in Africa’s most populous nation is advanced, 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 on the point of changing into the primary nation ruled by Osama bin Laden’s heirs.
This must seize the president’s consideration. Not simply because Mali’s collapse would ship shockwaves throughout the Sahel and past, destabilizing an already unstable area and creating new sanctuaries for terrorist teams. But in addition as a result of a foremost wrongdoer for this catastrophe is somebody whom Trump likes to invoke with contempt: French President Emmanuel Macron.
France’s failure in Mali represents one of the crucial spectacular examples of strategic incompetence in current reminiscence. And the implications threaten the broader world.
The scenario 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 reducing provide routes. Lengthy strains snake from gasoline stations. Faculties 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 lots of 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 vanity.
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 Providers 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 unsuitable strategy. Fairly than addressing the underlying communal conflicts and defending focused populations, France maintained its aggressive counterterrorism posture, pursuing armed teams and neutralizing their leaders at any time when potential. 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 had 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 widespread 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 assist 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 commonplace was not possible 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 intensive 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’t afford this final result. Mali’s fall would metastasize throughout the Sahel, with Burkina Faso—already wracked by violence—possible 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 lengthen far past West Africa. A terrorist statelet in Mali would grow 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 is able to 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 is able to require Paris to commit actual assets, not simply rhetoric. It might additionally require participating regional powers—Ecowas and the African Union—not sidelining them. Lastly, it might require recognizing that counterterrorism absent political options is nugatory, a lesson america discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan that the French apparently must relearn within the Sahel.
The choice—watching Mali grow to be al Qaeda’s first conquest—is unthinkable.
