The Benefits and Costs of Taking on Al Qaeda in Mali

The Benefits and Costs of Taking on Al Qaeda in Mali

Eric M. Tope, Security Observer 25/3/13

Despite. Despite various setbacks, al Qaeda continues to expand its
global presence and establish new sanctuaries such as the one it
currently enjoys in Mali. The nation's drift toward state failure
following a military coup in March 2012 facilitated the takeover of
northern Mali by al Qaeda's West African affiliate; Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), along with militant groups Ansar al Din and the
Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). Northern Mali's
240,000 square miles of sparsely populated desert is now the largest
territory held by al Qaeda and its allies.[i] At the request of the
interim Malian government, France commenced a military intervention on
January 13, 2013 amidst a southward offensive by the militants aimed at
overtaking the country.[ii] With the assistance of African forces,
France has since reversed the rebel's advance and now plans to withdraw
troops next month.[iii] While these developments are encouraging,
military operations in the northern region are ongoing, and declarations
of success in irregular warfare campaigns often prove to be premature.

Based on the local and global damage al Qaeda has inflicted from its
previous bases, France's decision to intervene was not imprudent.
However, if a swift resolution is elusive, sustained military
operations must be conducted in a manner that will not be
counterproductive. Previous over-reactions to jihadist operations and
excessively blunt applications of force have proven ineffective and
downright self-defeating in certain instances.[iv] Therefore a balance
needs to be struck that will further impede the militants' operational
capacity without replicating the missteps of previous engagements.

Whatever France's genuine motives may be, the forceful disruption of
Mali's jihadist network is a welcome development for a couple of
reasons. While terrorist attacks are often carried out by individuals or
small cells, remote sanctuaries still play an important role in the
operations. The most sophisticated plots and attacks tend to originate
from aspiring jihadists that have managed to make contact with al Qaeda
instructors in one of their various retreats. As renowned al Qaeda
expert Peter Bergen notes, "Effective jihadist terrorists are generally
the graduates of training camps or war zones, rather than passive
consumers of jihadist propaganda on the web."[v] A cursory review of
the most infamous cases corroborates Bergen's observation. The
perpetrators and conspirators involved in 9-11, the failed shoe bombing,
the 2005 London transit bombing, the 2006 transatlantic flight bomb
plot, the 2009 Christmas Day bombing attempt and the 2010 Times Square
bomb plot, all directly received instruction from al Qaeda trainers in
one of their sanctuaries.[vi] With that in mind, allowing al Qaeda and
their associates to operate unencumbered in Mali seems less than optimal.

An additional concern arises from the fact that al Qaeda thrives amidst
sectarian conflict and foments it when it suits their interests'. The
presence of civil warfare creates a situation in which foreign jihadists
are embraced by the faction most proximate to them ideologically. In
Afghanistan for instance, the fundamentalist Taliban viewed the
foreigners as allies in their ongoing war against the Northern Alliance
and were willing to harbor them.[vii] Jihadists find internal conflicts
so favorable that they often arouse or exacerbate them, as they did in
Iraq when al Qaeda operatives targeted Shiites in order to incite a
civil war. Subsequent bloodshed further solidified the alliance between
al Qaeda and Iraq's Sunni tribes who sought protection from Shiite
reprisals.[viii] The resultant human cost was staggering as thousands of
civilians became caught up in a self-sustaining cycle of sectarian
violence. While not as fractionalized as Iraq, Mali contains ethnic
divisions that jihadists may seek to exploit, which would further
destabilize the region and get a lot of people killed in the process.
Considering the domestic and international violence that could
potentially originate from northern Mali, the French-led intervention
may very well be worthwhile.

Despite the practical benefits of unsettling the Islamist refuge in West
Africa, several factors should endow the French and any future
participants with a degree of caution. Mali is a land-locked nation
nearly twice the size of Texas which shares very porous borders with
seven countries. Sixty-four percent of Malians reside in rural areas,
and the northern portion of the country consists of rugged hills where
rebels have constructed defensible networks of tunnels and trenches.[ix]
All of the preceding variables are likely to significantly obstruct
large-scale counterinsurgency or counterterrorism operations, and a
realistic assessment of what can and cannot be accomplished in such an
environment is warranted.

Operational conditions aside, any extensive deployment could still play
into the Islamists' hands. It should be reasonably obvious by now that
the insertion of western or "infidel" militaries in Muslim nations is a
potent rallying cry for a defensive jihad and corroborates al Qaeda's
narrative of victimization by the West. Moreover, any unnecessary use of
force has the potential to radicalize Mali's traditionally moderate
Muslims. America's heavy handed tactics in the early years of Iraq, for
example, helped drive the Sunni population into the arms of the nascent
insurgency.[x] Numerous other well-intentioned but poorly-executed
counterterrorism offensives have also exacerbated the very problem they
were intended to solve. This appears to be precisely what al Qaeda has
desired and endeavored to provoke on several occasions. In 2004 Osama
bin Laden mocked the ease with which he believed al Qaeda could bait the
U.S. into self-defeating interventions explaining that, "All we have to
do is send two mujahidin to the furthest point East to raise a cloth on
which is written al Qaeda, in order to make the generals race there to
cause America to suffer human, economic and, political losses without
achieving for it anything."[xi] Al Qaeda personnel similarly anticipate
that they will ensnare the French in Mali. Insurgent leader Oumar Ould
Hamaha recently celebrated that France "has fallen into a trap which is
much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia."[xii] Hamaha's
assessment may ultimately be correct. If military operations are not
carefully calibrated, French forces may find themselves in an
inhospitable environment pursuing a counterproductive campaign amidst a
hostile population.

To recapitulate, rolling back Islamic extremism in Mali is wrought with
potential benefits as well as difficulties. Given the lethality of
operations that have emanated from jihadist sanctuaries in the past, the
attention being afforded to Mali is merited. That being said,
operational conditions in Mali present a host of obstacles to any
military venture, and missteps that alienate the local citizenry will be
promptly exploited by any astute practitioners of asymmetric warfare,
which al Qaeda has proven to be. Therefore, any further military action
undertaken by France and its allies must be done in a calculated manner
that strives to degrade the militant's functionality while avoiding the
type of large-scale, open-ended and indiscriminate campaigns that play
into the enemy's hands.

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