Damsel in distress

France has answered a call from Bamako to stop an Islamist insurgent move southward.  Their quick march towards the capital of Mali against an army led by American-trained officers has

left observers struggling to distinguish between fact, spin, and falsehood.

I won’t be surprised if we discover that the story is more complicated than the narrative so far, which is more or less “damsel in distress” and runs along these lines:  Northern Mali is already in the hands of Sunni extremists affiliated with Al Qaeda and responsible for destroying Sufi shrines and documents.  They were intending to move south to take over the capital, which appealed to France for help. The Brits and Americans are said to be in supporting military roles.

Just who made the appeal, and who is really in power in Bamako, is not clear to me, and no one seems to be asking.  Instead they are rushing to do something.  The UN Security Council will reportedly meet today.  It had already in December approved an ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) military mission of doubtful capabilities to retake the north, but assembling that and deploying it was going to take months.  ECOWAS is said to be accelerating its effort.

These military moves may be absolutely necessary.  Damsels do sometimes have to be rescued, even if they are not without blemish in precipitating their distress.  Mali’s military has played a dubious role in bringing on this crisis.  Still, stopping an extremist takeover of Mali sounds like a pretty good idea to me.  It is certainly preferable to fighting entrenched extremists for years, as in Yemen.

But I have no confidence that the north can be retaken by purely military means or that Bamako can be held without dealing with whatever brought on this crisis.  Mali has had a pretty good reputation for sustaining democratic processes, but clearly something went awry.  A few French bombs are not going to set things straight, even if they do discourage the Islamists from moving south.

For those interested in the deeper issues, this event at USIP in December is a good place to start.  Those who imagine that civilian instruments of foreign policy can be jettisoned with the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, or that military means alone will solve the challenges we face, had better think again.  These damsels will keep turning up where we least expect to find them.  We don’t need to rescue them for their sake.  What difference does it make if Malians elect their leaders or not?

We rescue governments, democratic or not, for our own sakes:  fragile or collapsed states in the hands of extremists have a way of generating explosive packages on international flights, capturing tourists for ransom and investing heavily in the drug trade and human trafficking.   These evils in Mali are far more likely to affect Europe in the near term than the United States, so it is a good thing that Europeans are taking the lead.  But if they lead only with military means and ignore civilian requirements, whatever they do won’t last long or work well.

PS:  @joshuafoust points out that @tweetsintheME (Andrew Lebovich) has elucidated at least some of the ethnic, religious and other background to the conflict.  For some of the musical context, click here.

PPS:  Jennifer Welsh reviews the legal basis for the French military intervention.

PPPS:  The counter-narrative of enemy-producing Western intervention hasn’t taken long to emerge.