The essence of this article was written for Sahara Focus, before the terrorist killings in Paris on 13 November. It has not been changed since then, other than to draw attention to the fact that many of the subsequent commentaries on the killings have made reference to France’s intervention in Syria and Iraq, as if this intervention may have been causally related to the attacks. In other words, the attacks, as the Islamic State group (IS) is claiming, may have been revenge for France’s attacks on the IS in Syria and Iraq.
A careful monitoring of English-language (BBC) radio reporting on the events in Paris in the 12 hours following the attacks noted no references to the words Sahel or Barkhan, and only one to Mali. A cursory review of the French media over the same period indicates a similar lack of association between the terrorist attacks and France’s intervention in the Sahel. That, we suspect, is because the French military intervention in the Sahel, under the name of Operation Barkhan, is of a different order and nature to that in Syria and Iraq. It may also be because French people, as with most other Europeans, are less aware of what is going on in the Sahel than in the Middle East.
One reason why Europeans and other Western countries are generally uninformed about what is going on in the Sahel is because the French authorities have given out very little information about what their troops are doing in the region. This may well be for security reasons. But it is strongly suspected to be linked to the increasing deterioration in the region’s political and security situation since the initial flush of military success at the start of the French intervention in January 2013.
A second reason is related to the fact that an increasing number of European and other Western countries do not want to draw domestic attention to the fact that they are deploying troops to join the international, mostly UN-led, forces already in the region. These are known to include the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and the US.
Nevertheless, although we are not yet aware of any French or other Western media raising questions about possible links between the predominantly French intervention in the Sahel and terrorist attacks in Europe, several prominent French newspapers, including Le Monde and La Tribune, directed considerable attention during the two weeks prior to the Paris killings to the deteriorating political and security situation in the Sahel and the failure of France’s intervention there.
Indeed, an article in Le Monde on 2 November likened the situation in Mali, following France’s intervention, to that in Iraq and Afghanistan: a total failure.
France is accused of marrying the American conception of the fight against terrorism, at least as it was in the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld era, without appreciating the tragic consequences of those interventions. We would add the more recent Libyan intervention of 2011 to those in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the consequences, more directly comprehensible to France, have probably been more geographically widespread and arguably even more ineffective and disastrous.
How does one measure ‘failure’? It is not easily measured quantitatively. However, Le Monde makes the telling point that if we take just Mali, then the security situation in the north is more precarious than at the start of Operation Barkhan, some 18 months ago, and possibly also more precarious than before Operation Serval, some two and a half years ago, in spite of the international military presence. As for the political situation in Bamako, that, in Le Monde’s view, is now worse than on the eve of the overthrow of President Amadou Toumani Touré.
In Mali, the apparent initial military success, which began in January 2013, has looked increasingly questionable as time has gone on. No one doubts that heavy fighting initially took place in the Tigharghar mountains of northern Kidal region and that some 600 or so jihadists, according to approximate French military figures, may have been killed.
But military questions remain. In particular, why were so many jihadists allowed to flee from a region that was relatively easy to surround, and so re-establish themselves in such far away places as Tunisia and Libya? The answer is that Algeria did not secure its borders and allowed Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) fighters, whom its secret intelligence service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), had been supporting, to cross through Algerian territory into both Tunisia and Libya.
France may not have felt able to challenge Algeria on that matter. But it certainly could have done much more to stop the fleeing forces of Iyad ag Ghali from safely crossing the Niger River at Gao and so being able to regroup and fight another day – as they are still doing.
This question has never been satisfactorily answered. With French planes strafing the road from Douentza through Hombori to the river bridge at Gao, why was there no concerted air attack on Iyad’s forces before they crossed the bridge? The question has, of course, been asked many times by local people. Now, nearly three years later, the question has become whether the French deliberately wanted Iyad and his men to escape.
As we reported in August (SF0815:2), Mondafrique had referred to Iyad as a ‘triple agent’. He was the Algerian DRS’ ‘man in Mali’, having been protected and supplied by the DRS since the early 1990s. But he also had connections with the Mali and Saudi authorities. With more and more evidence coming to light that the French military authorities haven’t prioritised his capture, we might suggest that he might even be called a quadruple agent.
Looking across the rest of the Sahel, beyond Mali, it is very difficult to gain an accurate assessment of what France’s Operation Barkhan is actually doing. While the reticence of the French military authorities to disseminate too much information of its activities for strategic reasons is understandable, the failure to do so, especially as the military and political situations across the region appear to deteriorate, begins to raise questions about France’s overall strategy in the region and the effectiveness of its intervention.
