Mali: Islamists Advance Against French

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Islamist rebels who control northern Mali advanced southward Monday, seizing the town of Diabaly, 400 kilometers north of the capital, Bamako.

France's Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a French television station that the rebels took Diabaly after fierce fighting with the Malian army.

VOA correspondent Anne Look, who is in Bamako, reports the Malian army is sending reinforcements to the area from Koulikoro, a base 60 kilometers from Diabaly.

She says a Malian military source told her the Islamist fighters in Diabaly are very well armed.

http://www.voanews.com/content/un-security-council-to-meet-on-mali/1583197.html
 
In other news:

I see the French needed to borrow two of our cargo planes to help transport their white flags to Mali.
 
Quote from pspr:

I wonder who is funding the Islamists. Our friends the Saudi's again?
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Who cares? As long as the French understand that they need to stick to wines and smelly cheese, I'm good with it.
 
Quote from Tsing Tao:

The French are currently getting their frog asses kicked.
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Fabulous Fab was a good frog. He didn't take any shit during the abacus inquisition.:cool:
 
Quote from pspr:

I wonder who is funding the Islamists. Our friends the Saudi's again?
More...

This article suggests so:

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/01/04/mali-wahhabis-and-saudis-following-the-money-trail/

A well-armed and supplied Wahhabi movement in the African country of Mali, funded by the Saudis, has taken over most of northern Mali and has begun to, amongst other Wahhabi practices, destroy tombs of Islamic African kings, the world famous Mansas of Mali that are world heritage sites.

This latest in a series of extremist Wahhabi movements exploded on the scene following the western attack on Libya and the destruction of the Gaddafi government in 2011.

Mali, as in most of the central and western Sahel region in Africa, is in the midst of a years-long drought that has left hundreds of thousands starving and millions more, especially children, damaged by malnutrition. With the pastoral nomadic economy collapsing, where did the sudden major influx of funds come from that allowed the rapid expansion of the Wahhabi movement in the Sahel to take place?

While human trafficking and to a much lesser extent, drug smuggling, has been a source of income for the criminal elements of the Tuareg peoples of the region, since the western military destroyed the Gaddafi government in Libya in 2011, the major destination of the human traffickers, the numbers of migrants trafficked by the criminal gangs to Libya has fallen to a fraction of its past levels and most of the cash flow for these criminals has dried up.
 
Ibrahim Komnotogo, a resident of Diabaly who heads a USAID-financed rice agriculture project, happened to be outside the town when the jihadists encircled it. He has 20 employees and contractors who he says are stuck inside the town, which has a population of 35,000. He told The Associated Press that al-Qaida-linked rebels have sealed off the roads and are preventing people from leaving.

Komnotogo says he fears the Islamists are planning to hide within the mud-walled neighborhoods and use the population as a human shield.

http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2013/01/16/france-in-direct-combat-in-mali-within-hours
 
Hostages have been seized in Algeria:

Meanwhile, "foreign workers at a gas field in Algeria were believed to have been kidnapped Wednesday in what the U.K. government described as an 'ongoing terrorist incident,' " NBC News reports. Reuters says there may be more than 40 hostages, and that Americans may be among them.

It adds that "the raid, claimed by an al-Qaida affiliate, came after Islamists had vowed to retaliate for France's military intervention in Mali."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...g-in-mali-foreign-hostages-grabbed-in-algeria
 
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