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scot47
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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 Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Is Mali going to be for the French what Afghanistan has become for the US (and others) ? |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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| And now in Algeria. Spin-off from what has been going on in neighbouring countries. Not good. |
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scot47
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 11:04 am Post subject: |
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The MoD in London have just announced that they are sending 40 "Advisors" to support our French allies in Mali.
Oh-oh ! |
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scot47
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| They just announced that they are sending 40 advisors and 200+operational troops. "Operational decidsion" so Commons not consulted. |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2013 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Have the French and British been sucked into another guerilla war ? |
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Qaaolchoura
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Posts: 539
Location: 21 miles from the Syrian border
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| Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 1:16 am Post subject: |
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Nice conversation you've got going there scot. 
| scot47 wrote: |
| Have the French and British been sucked into another guerilla war ? |
No, because the Salafi mujahideen who took control were pretty much all foreign conquerers. They let the well-armed but disorganized Tuaregs do all the fighting, then promptly turned and stabbed them in the back, and ruled through a reign of intimidation. (It's not for nothing that we call them terrorists.) Unlike the Taliban, the jihadists weren't even a little popular locally. The Tuareg (to say nothing of the relatively liberal and non-Tuareg, but unarmed majority of locals) then supported the French intervention to oust the mujahideen while insisting that they're going to take up arms again of the French let the Malians back in.
While it's a stupid game of brinksmanship the Tuareg are playing, as long as the French hand over to ECOWAS instead of directly to Bamako, everything should be fine. If they do let the Malians back in, the Tuareg are still unlikely to beat the French in a conventional showdown, and aren't particularly well-loved in the cities (and I doubt the French will pursue them into the desert). As I noted above, the Tuareg were better-armed than the locals, but not particularly popular, while the jihadists merely had the misplaced trust of the Tuareg, a generous canteen of crazy, and the element of surprise.
Regards,
~Q |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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The BBC has ben trundling out a range of instant "Experts", journalists with school certificate French and an atlas. WSe are being reassured that there will be no "Mission Creep" involving France or the Yookay.
No one seems to have spotted that all of this is a spin-off from the intervention in Libya.
"Es wird boese enden." |
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Qaaolchoura
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Posts: 539
Location: 21 miles from the Syrian border
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| Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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Au contraire, mon ami.
The Economist noted several times that the Tuareg rebellion was aided by fall of the Qaddafi regime, leading his Tuareg mercenaries (and a few local ones fleeing retribution) to flee south with their Libyan-supplied arms. (Well, actually, TE claimed that substantial numbers of Tuareg fought on both sides of the civil war, which I find hard to credit.)
I think several other publications did too, but since The Economist is the only non-Turkish news site I visit directly (as opposed to several others I frequently read because I'm directed thither by Google News), I didn't notice which they were.
Or are you specifically complaining only about the BBC, as opposed to British journalism in general? If so, you seem you be making a compelling argument against Ingsoc.
~Q |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 6:15 am Post subject: |
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| BBC long ago ceased to be a serious News source. |
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