Portent of things to come? A new war in Africa

Why We Must Help Save Mali

By VICKI HUDDLESTON, NYT

SANTA FE, N.M.

FRENCH airstrikes that began on Friday have stopped, for now, a network of terrorists, criminals and religious extremists from taking over Mali. Until the French stepped in, the near-collapse of the military had threatened to turn Mali, a landlocked, desperately poor country, into a desert stronghold for jihadists.

America, which has spent more than $500 million over the last four years to keep Islamist militants at bay in West Africa, has its hands full in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Libya, among other places, but it is in our national interest to support the French. North African countries, in particular Algeria, must also help save Mali from catastrophe.

This conflict is not like other African wars that had only marginal effects on the West. The Islamists in Mali have linked up with Boko Haram, the Nigerian militant group that blew up United Nations offices in Abuja in 2011, and with Ansar al-Shariah, which is thought to be responsible for the murders last September of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

The French aerial attacks have stopped the Islamists — including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, its offshoot the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine, a group of Tuareg rebels from the north — from seizing an airport and river port, and marching on the capital, Bamako. But the militants are reconstituting and rearming in their northern desert stronghold.

(More here.)