What country is the actual target of the French intervention in Mali? There isn't much to win in that country. While their might be some oil and Uranium somewhere in the ground nothing is yet developed. Next door though there is much more to win like fully developed gas and oil fields.
The people in Algeria seem to think it is their country that is the target and they are fuming that their government allowed French overflights. This press review quotes several opinions, written befor the current hostage crisis, that express these concerns. One Laid Seraghni opines:
The author argues that the intervention will ‘affect and destablise all the countries in the Sahel region, including Algeria, whose borders are so great that the state can not counter the infiltration of terrorist groups’. ‘According to him,’ Le Temps writes, ‘this intervention ‘would force Algeria to consider the military option to protect its borders and the Algerian population in the region of Kidal (Mali). The Algerian army will face the rebels of Ansar Eddine, AQIM and MUJAO’. Additionally, the intervention will leave Algeria ‘surrounded by the French army operating Libya, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mauritania, Chad and Mali’. The article argues that Algeria is being ‘targeted by France,’ using Seraghni’s piece as backup: ‘Since colonization, Algeria has always claimed its independence and sovereignty. The Algerian revolution of 1957, derailed the plan to create an independent Tuareg state controlled by the colonial power. Algeria refuses to admit French bases on its territory, whose primary mission is to monitor and pressure the Algerian state’. Seraghni argues that ‘Anyone who follows relations between Algeria and France knows that it is not Mali which raises the attention of French power, but Algeria.’ The author accuses French elites of having ‘never forgiven the independence of Algeria, which paved the way for the decolonization of Africa’ concluding by reminding readers to recall ‘the phrase of Charles de Gaulle who declared that ‘France has no friends, she has only interests.’
Political science professor Ahmed Adimi has similar concerns and this theory:
It was France that was behind the creation of the movement for the Azawad and I speak of course of the political organization and not of the people of Azawad who have rights as a community. The French knew that their intervention in Libya would lead to a return of the pro-Qaddafi military Tuareg to Mali. They also planned the release of Libyan arms stockpiles across the Sahel band. The project is to transform the region into a new Afghanistan, the result of long term planning.’
I admit that I have still much to learn about the extremely complicate relations (a long and recommended read) between governments, security forces, smugglers, jihadis and the various tribal and ethnic populations in the dirt poor area. But there are indeed some signs that outer forces, mostly the U.S. and the French, have – sometimes competing – designs for the wider area of which the rather rich Algeria is a part.
The Pentagon is pushing for more war and is sending troops to "train" those African countries that are supposed to invade Mali. As South America and other regions can tell U.S. trained troops often turn out to be especially brutal and often independent of civilian control. Some of the Malian troops the U.S. trained ended up changing sides. One officer, trained in the U.S. on at least four occasions, overthrew his government.
Algeria has been very reluctant, despite several high visits from Secretary of State Clinton, to cooperate and to take up any role in the fight.
The hostage takers that attacked an oil installation in Algeria came from Libya, not from Mali. Could they, just like the Libyan gangs in Syria who were supported by 25 CIA officers in Benghazi, be operating on some special outside support and advice? Maybe in the hope that Algeria would cry uncle and scream for outside help?
If so it did not work out as planned. The Algerians, as usual, took on the issue themselves and made clear that negotiations with the hostage takers were out of question. They solved the situation by force.
The U.S. and others are miffed about that:
Algeria’s unilateral decision to attack kidnappers at a natural gas plant — while shunning outside help, imposing a virtual information blackout and disregarding international pleas for caution — has dampened hopes that it might cooperate militarily in Mali, U.S. officials said. The crisis has strained ties between Algiers and Washington and increased doubts about whether Algeria can be relied upon to work regionally to dismantle al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa.
Isn't the same said about Pakistan? Doesn't that sounds like a threat?
I would not be surprised when, within a few month, we see France and the U.S. cheer leading those who are now Al-Qaeda in Mali as freedom fighters against a "brutal Algerian regime."
