Aaron Ellis makes a good point: the comparison between Mali and Afghanistan is flawed. But I disagree with him as to why. Afghanistan was a failed state long before al-Qaeda settled there (as a last resort). The pattern is slightly different in Mali: Islamists have further destabilised an already weak country in a strategically sensitive area.
Mali has been wracked by unrest, both ethnic and religious, for some time. The country is so poor (as a glance at the CIA World Fact Book’s approximations demonstrates) that is precarious politically; so precarious that it threatened to undermine some of its delicate neighbours along the Sahel (the massive and growing strip where desert meets savannah): Niger, Mauritania and Chad.
The European Union has viewed the Sahel as a crisis zone for more than a decade. The 10th European Development Fund (2007-2013) allocated 660million euros to the region. The EU supplemented this considerable sum by 167million euros following the coup d’etat against President Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012, which was caused, it seems, by his failure to quell the Tuareg and Islamist rebellion(s).
Is the European Union right to spend this money? The answer to this question requires a determination as to whether Mali is a European interest.
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