English
By Professor Hussein Solomon
RIMA Occasional Papers, Volume 5 (2017), Number 11 (June 2017)
On the 1st of June came news of yet another attack on French soldiers in Mali – this time in Timbuktu. Paris has deployed approximately 1600 troops as part of Operation Barkhane to rid the Sahel of the Islamist threat. These French troops, in turn, are cooperating with the UN mission in Mali or MINUMSA. In response to the June attack, the French have launched several offensives in which scores of jihadists have been killed. In truth, however, these deadly cat and mouse games between intervention forces and the Islamists in Mali have been going on since 2013 – the year Islamists were ousted from their northern Mali stronghold by a French-led intervention force.