F.William Engdahl: The War in Mali and Africom's Agenda!E

Target China. Mali at first glance seems a most unlikely place for the NATO powers, led by a neo- colonialist French government of Socialist President Francois Hollande, and quietly backed to the hilt by the Obama Administration, to launch what is being called by some a new Thirty Years War Against Terrorism. Mali, with a population of some 12 million,and a land mass three and a half times the size pf Germany, is a land locked largely Saharan Desert country in the center of western Africa, bordered by Algeria to its north, Mauritania to its west, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Niger to its southern part. People I know who have spent time there, before the recent US led efforts at destabilization called it one of the most peaceful and beautiful places on earth, the home of Timbuktu. Its people are some ninety percent Muslim of varying persuasions. It has a rural subsistence agriculture and adult illiteracy of nearly 50%. Yet this country is suddenly the center of a new global war on terror. On January 20, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron announced his country's curious resolve to dedicate itself to deal with the terrorism threat in Mali and north Africa. Cameron declared, It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that has an absolutely iron resolve. Britain in its colonial heyday never had a stake in Mali. Until it won independence in 1960, Mali was a French colony. On January 11, after more than a year behind the scenes pressure on the neighboring Algeria to get them entangled in an invasion of its neighbor Mali, Hollande decided to make a direct French military intervention with US backing. His government launched airstrikes in the rebel held north of Mali, against a fanatical Salafist band of jihadist cutthroats, calling itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).  The pretext for the seemingly swift French action was a military move by a tiny group of Islamic Jihadists of the Tuareg people, Ashar Dine, affiliated with the larger AQIM. On January 10, Asnar Dine, backed by other Islamist groups attacked the southern town of Konna. That marked the first time since the Tuareg rebellion in early 2012, that Jihadist rebels moved out of traditional Tuareg territory in the northern desert to spread Islamic law to the south of Mali.