Comment du Jour

French Forces Tackle Al-Qaida in Mali

French fighter jets screamed into action pounding rebel targets while ground forces deployed in the capital Bamako and provincial towns in Mali, a West African state partially under the control of Al Qaida backed terrorists.

The lightning action came as the Islamic rebels, who already hold half of this land- locked country, were making a move to seize more territory in this former French colony.

The Mali crisis started last year when rebel Tuareg tribesmen and Al- Qaida militants of the shadowy Ansar Dine movement seized the north of Mali, a land in the midst of political turmoil.  The rebels soon enacted an austere form of Islsmic fundamantalism which evoked the Afghan Taliban.

World attention focused on the Islamic militants trashing mosques and monuments in the legendary city of Timbucktu, as to enact a rigid fundamantalist regime.

The world watched.  France in the midst of its presidential election did not act.

Though French governments of the Gaullist right or Socialist left have traditionally intervened when the National Interest was at stake, the new government of Socialist President Francois Hollande did shamefully little.

In December the UN Security Council passed a tough resolution which allowed an African peacekeeping force of 3,300 troops to intervene by September--too little and too late. France acted.

As this writer suggested elsewhere early in the crisis, Mali is the perfect place and operational arena for the famed French Foreign Legion.  Units of the Legion are spearheading operations in Mali, and along with government and other African units, will attempt to beat back the fundamentalist rebels.

As a French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stated sagely, "Rebels in Mali threatened to create a terrorist state on the doorstep of France and Europe."