- By Kavkaz Center
French president Francois Hollande, who arrived on Saturday in Mali, addressed the people of Timbuktu, reports news agencies.
Hollande said that the French troops are not planning a long stay in Mali. Paris aims to assist the puppet regime troops of Mali and completely defeat the Mujahideen in few weeks period.
Hollande stayed in Mali for several hours and then flew to Paris.
Meanwhile, military experts have expressed doubts about the success of the war.
So, according to the Dutch news agency ANP from the Western-backed puppets-held capital Bamako, the Dutch military expert Ko Kolijn said that perhaps the Mujahideen of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have set a trap for the French army .
In his dispatch, entitled “Rebels in Mali invincible (Rebellen Mali zijn onverslaanbaar)”, he noted ,in particular:
“The French and Malians took over a large area, but it does not mean they won. The rebels themselves have left the cities and went to the north. They acted according to a predetermined plan. The French did not follow them. The inhospitable desert areas will remain in the hands of the rebels. This is similar to the tactics of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
All the land south of the Timbuktu will be controlled by the government, and to the north – by the rebels. Outside Mali rebels are still able to find refuge in neighboring Niger and Mauritania. This could lead to a military intervention of France in these countries, as well.
The French will remain in Mali until they train the Malian army to defend their southern Mali. It could take 2-3 years for the French to achieve this. The French will ask for help from Europe, but in the Netherlands, for example, we do not have French-speaking officers to train Malians”.
France will also try to involve African regional grouping ECOWAS to control Mali.
But the ECOWAS (“Economic Community of West African States”) does not have the resources for a quick deployment of its forces in Mali. Because of this, Western donors of the puppet regime will be forced to pour large sums of money to maintain the occupation of Azawad (Northern Mali).
International invaders will have to spend very large financial resources to create equipment and develop new ways to gather intelligence on the Mujahideen.
“And for this form of warfare France itself does not have the necessary capacity”, said the BBC News.
That is why the French have expressed their desire to get help from US, Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and other EU countries, as well as Russia.
Nobody questions France’s rapid deployment but the ability to hold on to the cities and territory is an immense challenge. It is not clear how they will be able to sustain the recent gains”, said Alex Vines, head of the Africa programme at Chatham House.
“The Islamist extremists have not been defeated; they have melted into the heat haze of the desert”, he added.
Additional difficulties for African and French invaders will represent the population of Azawad which fully supported the Mujahideen. In their news reports from the occupied Timbuktu and Gao Western media diligently tried to present the situation as if the gang units of the French occupants had been “greeted by cheering crowds of smiling people”.
Meanwhile, as reported, in particular, by Sahara Media, the population expressed its dissatisfaction with the invasion of France and held a demonstration in Timbuktu in support of the Mujahideen of Ansar al-Din. Residents of the town of Gao also emphasized that the best days of their lives they had were during the period of Sharia rule under the Mujahedeen.
“It is remarkable that despite the evident failures of Western military force to achieve its objectives against an Islamist insurgency in Afghanistan, there is a continuing conviction that it can do so elsewhere”, says analyst David Petrasek.
“While there can be little doubt that it might achieve tactical success in killing specific and identified al-Qaeda or Taliban enemies, there is little evidence to show that it is eliminating the insurgent groups they lead. On the contrary, the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan appear stronger than ever – so confident, in fact, they now refuse Western requests to negotiate”, adds Petrasek.
And if in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing al-Qaeda is a spent force (as the U.S. is keen to emphasize), how is it that groups acting in al-Qaeda’s name can seize half of Mali and, in the words of the French defense minister, “threaten the security of Mali, our own country and Europe.”
And, if it took 12 years for the IEA to get the US to admit defeat and start withdrawing 150 thousand NATO contingent from Afghanistan, how long it will take for the Mujahideen to deal with the 9 thousand weak and poorly trained aggressors from ECOWAS? Much less, is the answer.
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