Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A Malian soldier tried to disperse looters in the streets of Timbuktu on Tuesday.
SEGOU, Mali — French paratroopers arrived in the ancient desert oasis of Timbuktu on Monday, securing its airport and main roads as thousands of residents poured out of its narrow, mud-walled streets to greet French and Malian troops, waving the two countries’ flags, with whoops, cheers and shouts.
“Timbuktu has fallen,” said the city’s mayor, Halle Ousmane Cissé, in a telephone interview from the capital, Bamako, where he has been in exile since the Islamist militants took over the city 10 months ago. He said he planned to return to his city on Tuesday.
The rapid advance to Timbuktu, a day after French and African troops took firm control of the former rebel stronghold of Gao, may spell the beginning of the end of France’s major involvement in the conflict here.
The French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was a little more cautious than the mayor in his assessment of the situation in Timbuktu on Monday evening, saying on television station TF1: “French and Malian forces are liberating the city. It’s not completely finished, but it’s well on its way.”
The French president, François Hollande, suggested on Monday that French troops might soon stop their northward advance, leaving it to African soldiers to pursue the militants into their redoubts in the desert north. “We are winning this battle,” Mr. Hollande said in televised remarks. “When I say, ‘We,’ this is the Malian army, this is the Africans, supported by the French.”
He continued, “Now, the Africans can take over.”
In a new move to support the French military effort, Britain said on Tuesday that it would send another 240 military personnel to Mali and elsewhere in West Africa, in addition to the 90 already deployed there, to bolster the training of Malian and other African troops involved in the campaign against the Islamist militants.
Officials said about 40 would be based in Mali, and another 200 elsewhere in west Africa, possibly in Ghana or Nigeria. They said precise numbers and other details of the deployment in Mali would depend on a meeting in Brussels later on Tuesday to develop plans for a European Union-led training mission inside Mali.
The officials said the additional troops would be deployed rapidly, joining 20 British air force personnel already supporting the deployment of a C-17 Globemaster military transport ferrying French troops and equipment to Bamako, the Malian capital, and another 70 needed to operate a British Sentinel surveillance aircraft that Britain dedicated to the French mission last week.
The announcement of the new troop commitment by 10 Downing Street raised immediate concerns in Parliament, where lawmakers voiced fears that Britain could be dragged deeper into the conflict and find itself unable to avoid a combat role, as Prime Minister David Cameron has promised.
Defense Secretary Philip Hammond sought to soothe the disquiet by saying that the government in London remained committed to avoiding any combat role for British troops. France, he said, had “made it clear that it envisages a short-term intervention” to stabilize Mali. “It is not our intention to deploy combat troops,” he said. “We are very aware of the dangers of mission creep.”
In Paris on Monday, President Hollande said that the difficult task of flushing militants from the vast empty stretches of Mali’s arid northern countryside was the job of African troops. “They’re the ones who will go into the area of the north, which we know is the most difficult because the terrorists are hidden there and can still lead operations that are extremely dangerous for neighboring countries and for Mali,” he said.
Finding these fighters, who have long been accustomed to hiding out in remote areas, has been tough for French troops, who have sophisticated tracking equipment and surveillance drones, said Col. Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman, noting that the fighters often travel in civilian vehicles.
African troops have been trickling into Mali over the last few days from neighboring states, part of what is expected to be a 5,000-member force intended to restore the northern half of the country to government control.
A European Union mission to train several thousand Malian soldiers has yet to begin, however, and any extensive combat operations led by African troops are not expected until August or September, after the brief rainy season.
Television footage from Timbuktu captured scenes of jubilation as thousands of people drove cars, trucks and motorbikes through the streets, honking their horns.
With Timbuktu Retaken, France Signals It Plans to Pull Back in Mali
This article
With Timbuktu Retaken, France Signals It Plans to Pull Back in Mali
can be opened in url
http://newscarducci.blogspot.com/2013/01/with-timbuktu-retaken-france-signals-it.html
With Timbuktu Retaken, France Signals It Plans to Pull Back in Mali
