If Mali matters, what doesn’t?

Op/eds on why Mali matters and why we must help save it are sprouting this winter just as fast as the Islamist rebels move south towards Bamako.  What they don’t tell us is what we should bump off the priority list.  Syria?  Egypt?  Afghanistan?  Yemen?  Maybe Iraq, which we aren’t paying much attention to anyway?  Nor do they acknowledge the obvious:  Mali didn’t seem to matter much a couple of weeks ago, when the threat of Islamist extremists might have been met cheaply and easily; why does it matter now, when it will cost much more in (mostly French) treasure and (mostly Malian) lives to fix?

I doubt Mali really does matter more than a lot of other places:  neighbors Mauritania and Niger as well as nearby Nigeria for starters.  Some argue its location makes it particularly important.  I might argue that its isolation and forbidding topography and climate make it an ideal place to keep an eye on Islamic extremists.  Secretary of Defense Panetta is saying we have to prevent them from establishing a base in Mali.  Why?  Without easy access to an international airport, it would be hard for Al Qaeda to use Mali as a base for attacking the United States or even Europe.  I much prefer they be there, under watchful eyes, than plotting out of sight in Munich (or Boston).

Their presence in “ungoverned” space panics the Defense Department.  Certainly their trafficking (drugs and people) and kidnapping enterprises are troublesome, especially to any Westerners in the neighborhood (witness what is going on nearby in Algeria).  But such spaces are only ungoverned if you ignore the people who live there.  The indigenous tribes will have their own forms of governance, which may be better adapted to the topography and demography than the Western-style governance Bamako has been trying to assert–with negative results–for many years.  We’d do well to recognize that traditional governance really is governance and worry about getting its mechanisms on our side.  That is going to be difficult with the French shooting up the countryside.

While Mali’s democracy is not holding up well under pressure from Tuareg rebels and radical Islamists in the north, there is no reason to believe that the population is interested in harboring Al Qaeda or other extreme groups.  Malian women and music are not going to readily conform to Islamist requirements.  French troops, who will provide the Islamists with a rallying cry against foreign intervention, may be necessary to blunt an immediate threat, but a far more nuanced approach is needed to win the war.  All those displaced people are not necessarily going to blame the Islamists for the humanitarian crisis that is rapidly emerging.

Mali is the West’s next test:  can we act earlier, smarter and with appropriate tools to discourage Islamist radicalization?  It is not more important than other places, just more urgent because of our own failure to respond appropriately to a threat that was well known.  There are political and economic equations to be solved, not just a military one.  We failed to act quickly enough, when it would have been cheaper and easier.  Now let’s see if we can react smartly, with civilian as well as military responses.