BAMAKO/PARIS: Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels launched a counteroffensive in Mali yesterday after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds, seizing the central town of Diabaly and promising to drag France into a brutal Afghanistan-style war.
France, which has poured hundreds of troops into the capital Bamako in recent days, carried out more air raids in the vast desert area seized last year by an Islamist alliance grouping Al Qaeda’s north African wing AQIM alongside Mali’s home-grown MUJWA and Ansar Dine militant groups.
“France has opened the gates of hell for all the French,” a spokesman for MUJWA, Oumar Ould Hamaha, told Europe 1 radio. “She has fallen into a trap which is much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia.”
Paris is determined to shatter Islamist domination of northern Mali, which many fear could become a launchpad for terrorism attacks on the West and a base for coordination with Al Qaeda in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.
MUJWA, which has imposed strict Shariah law in its northern fiefdom of Gao, promised France would pay for air strikes on the city. Dozens of its fighters died on Sunday when rockets hit a fuel depot and a customs house being used as a headquarters.
Launching a counter-attack far to the southwest of recent fighting, Islamists dislodged government forces from the town of Diabaly, just 350km northeast of Bamako. French and Malian troops attempting to retake the town were battling Islamists, residents said. The rebels infiltrated the town overnight from the porous border region with Mauritania, home to AQIM camps housing well-equipped and trained foreign fighters.
France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as the policeman of its former African colonies, convened a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the Mali crisis.
“We knew that there would be a counter-attack in the west because that is where the most determined, the most organised and fanatical elements are,” French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
France has said its sudden intervention on Friday, responding to an urgent appeal from Mali’s president prompted by an advance by a heavily armed rebel convoy, stopped the Islamists from seizing the dusty capital of Bamako.
President Francois Hollande says Operation Serval — named after an African wildcat — is aimed at supporting the 15-nation West African bloc ECOWAS which received UN backing in December for a military intervention to dislodge the rebels.
Under pressure from Paris, regional states have said they hope to send in their forces this week. Military chiefs from ECOWAS nations will meet in Bamako today but regional powerhouse Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has cautioned that training and deploying troops will take time.
Hollande’s intervention has won plaudits from Western leaders but raises the threat level for eight French hostages held by Al Qaeda allies in the Sahara and for the 30,000 French expatriates living in neighbouring, mostly Muslim states.
Concerned about reprisals at home, France has tightened security at public buildings and on public transport. The fighting in Mali has already driven hundreds of refugees across the border into Mauritania, aid groups say.
Officials in Washington have said the United States would share intelligence with France and was considering sending unarmed surveillance drones. Britain has made available two giant C17 transport planes which will ferry French medical gear, tanks and other equipment to Mali this week. Reuters
