As every schoolboy knows, President Jefferson sent the Navy to
the shores of North Africa 19th century because, by Jove, “millions
for defense and not one cent for tribute!” The ensuing “wars of
Barbary” contained most of the elements that security policy makers
must contend with in a great and bustling democracy such as ours,
including variously disposed congressmen, some aghast at the cost
of it all and others delighted at the prospect of jobs in their
districts’ shipyards.
Mr. Jefferson — nominally a small-government man — insisted on
the imperative of projecting naval power to protect free trade.
Notwithstanding his professed love of the simple rural life in
Virginia, Jefferson was partial to French culture, not in the “A
Year in Provence” sense but with respect to the fast life of Paris,
including its life of the mind (though he drew a line when he saw
the life of the mind could be deadly to the head). He quarreled
with his good friend John Adams (a case of opposites attracting
each other if ever there was one) over the issue of French meddling
in American affairs during the latter’s administration. The
revolutionists ruling France sent intelligence operatives to
America to engage in subversive activities. Mr. Adams responded
with an early version of the Patriot Act and Mr. Jefferson
professed horror at this murder of civil rights.
The third president allowed the Alien and Sedition Acts to
expire during his first term, and the French showed their gratitude
by selling him the Louisiana Territory, leaving us with a
third-rate utilities company that blew a fuse during the Super
Bowl. With a different national perspective on terrorism and
piracy, however, they refused to join him in his suggestion for a
“perpetual cruise” in the Mediterranean, in effect an early version
— still another — of the “coalition of the willing” dreamed up by
Messrs. Cheney & Co. to put the kabosh on Saddam Hussein. Hurt
but undaunted — the British also turned him down — Mr. Jefferson
sent our young commanders to bombard Algiers and Tripoli but before
we reached a final conclusion to that unpleasantness Mr. Madison
went to war against Great Britain, guilty of kidnapping our seamen
on the high seas, and the third world was forgotten for a time.
Expeditions against the Barbary pirates have continued sporadically
forever, viz. the Libyan intervention of 2011, which did not end
well.
Vicki Huddleston, a top State Department official who served as
our ambassador to Mali during the Bush W administration,
stated last week that the French government paid $17 million in
ransom money to the highwaymen and religious zealots who have been
operating in the Sahara since the turn of the century (and much
longer under other nomenclatures). She was not generous with
documentary evidence, but it is no secret that money changed hands
at different times since the terrorist bands established roving
bases in the desert, with a particular fondness for the Texas-sized
territory in Mali north of the Niger river that borders on Algeria,
Mauritania, and Burkina Faso and that contains the redoubtable
Iforas mountains, the Bora Bora of the Sahel and currently the
focus of France’s military campaign to restore Mali’s territorial
integrity.
A coalition of indigenous secessionists with long-standing
grievances against the central government in Bamako and al
Qaeda-affiliated holy gangsters seized the whole area about a year
ago, very nearly bringing about the collapse of the Mali central
state. After eight months of “phony war” during which a) the holy
gangsters shoved the indigenous secessionists out of the main
population centers in the north and proclaimed their intent to
seize all of Mali and establish a West African caliphate and b) the
southern Malians quarreled among themselves about what to do next,
the jihado-highwaymen — no one knows quite how to describe these
folks so, with all due respect, we at TAS are trying out
different handles, mainly for their audio effect — attacked on the
river and threatened to do exactly what they had said they would
do.
However, the French were ready. Our gallant allies had
pre-positioned troops in nearby countries and, having secured a
U.N. Security Council green light late last year, they had no
inhibitions about going in and rescuing their Malian ex-colonial
subjects. This was noblesse oblige at its best, though
some spoilsports observed that France, whose electrical grid is
largely nuclear-powered, gets most of its uranium from Niger, which
happens to be next door to Mali.
French troops encountered stiffer resistance than they expected,
according to their own spokesmen, but in less than a month in the
field they have been able to liberate the major population centers
of the north from Islamist tyranny. Such was the local population’s
oppression that leading religious and civic leaders, including from
among the Tuareg tribal groups, have publicly welcomed the military
intervention and called for the restoration of a united Mali. In
the south, the French president, François Hollande, was acclaimed
with the kind of enthusiasm (“Papa Hollande!” “Vive la France!”)
that used to be reserved for the great de-colonizer, Charles de
Gaulle.
The French military certainly deserve credit for the successful
conclusion of the first part of the war, which may come to be
marked, in retrospect, with the conquest, in this order according
to reports, of Tessalit, a small town far in the northeast of Mali
near Algeria, Kidal, a few hundred miles to the south, and
Aguelhoc, in between the two. Kidal is the historic “capital” of
the Azawad, as the Tuareg refer to the heart of the territory they
call their homeland. Aguelhoc was the scene of a gruesome massacre
of disarmed Malian recruits at the beginning of last year’s war,
allegedly by Tuareg belonging to the “secular, democratic” MNLA
(National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad). Tessalit is an
important outpost not only for its proximity to southwestern
Algeria and its command of exits toward Niger, but for its
airfield. It was where the Malians — actually a unit mainly made
up of loyalist Tuareg, who were resupplied by a USAF airdrop but
were otherwise left to their own devices by the Bamako-based Malian
command — fought hardest last year before retreating into
Niger.
The conquest of these towns means that for now the French-led
forces command the marches of the Iforas mountains. With the
liberation of Timbuktu, the second phase of the war begins, with
its goals of pacification and eradication.
The French occupation of Kidal offers a clue to their way of
reconciling these goals, which on the surface at least seem
contradictory. But, as Mohamed Abdelaziz, president of Mauritania
to Mali’s west, has repeatedly insisted, there can be no peace
until the armed bands, whatever their rationale and
self-justification, have a run of the yard, especially when the
yard is the size of Texas, not to mention its backyard, the rest of
the Sahara desert.
When the Ansar Dinne movement led by the Tuareg leader Iyad Ag
Ghali withdrew from Kidal under the pressure of air attacks in
advance of the approaching troops, the secular Tuareg of the MNLA
resurfaced and occupied part of the town, according to Malian
reports. The French air strikes stopped and French units advanced
into the town without the Malian forces that accompanied them
during the march north — seemingly at the request of the MNLA. The
latter offered to join with the French to eradicate Ansar Dinne and
AQIM and its offshoot the MUJAO, West African Jihad, a mainly black
African Islamist formation, blacks and whites (usually
indistinguishable to the naked Western eye) in the region not being
on the best of terms.
Is the offer credible? The French command cannot know until it
finds out, but it is not necessarily unwise to give it a shot.
Although President Hollande early in the campaign announced France
was in it for the duration, more recent official statements from
Paris suggest his government would like to be out of there as
quickly as possible, with reductions in French forces, now
numbering close to three thousand counting air crews, beginning as
early as March. They have to pass the baton.
Or at least the boots. The most capable non-French forces in the
coalition appear to be, at least for now, the Chadians, who have
sent in nearly a thousand troops already, battle-hardened from the
almost interminable civil wars in their own country and familiar
with the physical and demographic terrain they are on.
Niger’s president, Mahmadou Issouffou, was forceful in his
denunciation of any deals with “terrorists” behind the backs of the
legitimate authorities, however weak. He himself has dealt sternly
with any hints of terrorist incursion on his territory, and he
certainly does not want anyone, even France, encouraging the Tuareg
to start making deals with the ex-colonial power without regard for
the post-colonial ones.
The French understand this and quickly made the correction,
saying their troop deployments were governed by safety concerns and
any negotiations with the MNLA would require their preliminary
disarmament and their recognition of Bamako’s role. But the French
are keenly aware that the Malian army and civil administration are
not yet ready to undertake the job of restoring the country’s
territorial integrity in a meaningful sense. French policy is to
edge the self-proclaimed “secular and democratic” MNLA (which also
claims to place a great emphasis on gender equality, which would be
as much a gesture toward traditional Tuareg culture as toward
currently correct political-think in Paris) toward a compromise on
governance that would fall short of independence.
In any case it appears unlikely, as well as anyone can gauge
public opinion in this territory, that the Tuareg civic and
religious leaders in the north who have some degree of democratic
legitimacy would accept a regime dominated by the MNLA leadership.
The non-Tuareg communities of the region certainly would not.
Against this background, it may be that Ambassador Huddleston
was asked — by whom? — to undercut French efforts by bringing up
the issue of ransom money. But is it in the U.S. interest to
subvert France’s Sahel policy? What is the alternative? Only a week
or so ago Mrs. Huddleston was writing in the papers that there was
no alternative to helping Mali defend itself against the Islamist
hordes and a damn good thing someone was doing it. Then why cast
doubts on our gallant allies’ motives now, in their moment of need?
Actually, the State Department sent a bill to the French for the
cost of our shuttling some of their troops and supplies in on
military transport planes. The French reportedly were not amused,
and maybe this is a way of reminding them they should be more
responsible in the way they spend money.
It is also possible the ambassador spoke entirely of her own
volition. But then what is her narrow interest in this affair? If
the French paid ransom money to such men as Moktar Belmoktar, the
leader of the aptly named “blood brigade” that attacked the vast
Algerian natural gas complex at In Amenas last month, resulting in
the death of dozens of hostages, surely she knew about it. It is
not public knowledge exactly when this money was paid to criminal
gangs, with kickbacks to Islamist emirs and high Malian officials,
by the French and other EU countries whose nationals had been
grabbed, but the ambient corruption in Mali is not news. It was in
full swing on her watch, in the mid-’00s, and she had nothing to
say about it then. Why not? Is she trying to deflect the obvious
criticism of our policy in the Sahel, a policy in the making of
which she had an important role? Such criticism, which is direly
needed as the administration rearranges its top national security
team, can be constructive. We might as well review what we did or
did not do, what we knew and chose to ignore, because these kinds
of questions go to the heart of the frustrations and difficulties
characteristic of the “savage wars of peace” that are a cruel but
inexorable part of the world we live in.
