As French forces prepared at the airport in Bamako, Mali, a hostage taking at gas facility in neighboring Algeria highlighted the risk of intervention. Lindsey Hilsum Channel Four Europe reports.
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Americans among hostages seized in 'terrorist attack' at Algeria gas plant
France launches 'tough' ground offensive against Mali's Islamist rebels
French soldiers from the 2nd Navy Infantry Regiment shortly after deplaning at an air base near Bamako, Mali, on Monday.
France will send about 1,000 troops and armored vehicles to Mali over the next few days with the support of U.S military and intelligence operations, upping the ante in its effort to turn back Islamic militants threatening to topple the north African nation’s government, U.S. national security officials told NBC News on Monday.
French mechanized forces will join approximately 500 French troops already on the ground in the country, battling fighters from at least three Islamic militant groups, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels in Mali have promised to drag France into an Afghanistan-style war. They've launched a counteroffensive after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds. There are reports the Islamists have seized control of Diabaly a town 250 miles north of the capital Bamako. Jonathan Miller Channel Four Europe reports.
The military escalation follows intense bombardment over the weekend by French aircraft of Islamic militant positions in the country's north, where they effectively created an al-Qaida refuge late last year.
The French force will be aided by U.S. military and intelligence operations, the officials said. The U.S. will provide both transport and refueling capability for the operation as well as intelligence, including drones, the officials added. The U.S. Africa command, headquartered in Djibouti in East Africa, is coordinating the U.S. operation, said the officials.
The U.S. has been providing intelligence-gathering assistance — primarily spy satellites — to the French in their assault on Islamist extremists, which began with a series of aerial attacks that began on Friday and continued through Monday. But French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the Associated Press that the rebels fought back on Monday, overrunning the garrison town of Diabaly, about 100 miles north of Segou, the administrative capital of central Mali.
French Mirage F1 CR fighter jets sit on the tarmac at a French air base near Bamako, Mali. France has been using the aircraft to pound hardline Islamist groups controlling northern Mali.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other U.S. officials told the AP early Monday that they would not rule out having American aircraft land in the West African nation as part of future efforts to lend airlift and logistical support.
Separately, U.S. officials in Washington told NBC News that, while there are no current plans for the U.S. to provide direct combat support — American combat forces on the ground or aerial combat support from manned aircraft or unmanned drones — a small number of U.S. advisers could be tasked to work directly with French combat forces in non-combat roles.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him to Europe, Panetta said that while AQIM, and other affiliate groups in Mali may not pose an immediate threat to the United States, "ultimately that remains their objective."
For that reason, Panetta said, "We have to take steps now so that AQIM does not get that kind of traction."
The U.S. officials say France's big fear is that if they don't eliminate AQIM and other allied Islamic militant groups in Mali, it will become a terrorist safe haven, as Afghanistan and Yemen have been at various times over the past 20 years. Mali is a lot closer to Europe than either of those countries. Moreover, there are 200,000 Malians living in France, most of them in and around Paris. AQIM and other groups could, it is feared, recruit supporters from within that community to launch terrorist attacks in France. France is not alone either, say the U.S. officials. Britain, Portugal and Spain fear AQIM attacks from Islamic militants in the Sahel region of North Africa as well.
"The ease with which individuals can move from North Africa to Europe makes such attacks a real possibility and are clearly the principal motivation for French action," said Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and now a consultant to NBC News.
How did it begin?
After U.S. and NATO forces helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, neighboring Mali imploded. First rebels in the north revolted, then the military carried out a coup against the government in Bamako. Amid the chaos, Islamic militants defeated breakaway rebels in northern Mali and last week began to advance on Bamako. That’s when the military-led government asked France to intervene.
On Monday the French continued bombing raids across Mali's north in an effort to root out fighters who seized control of a large chunk of the region starting nine months ago. French fighter jets bombed the airport, training camps, warehouses and other facilities used by the al-Qaida linked rebels.
"In some ways, this has been a long time coming," said Leiter. "The U.S. and France have been very focused on AQIM since at least … 2006. … Also, in 2007, its major attack on Algerian troops caused significant alarm in Washington and Paris, spurring significant investment in intelligence collection, cooperation and increased military and diplomatic efforts."
The AQIM, a Sunni extremist group, was previously headquartered in Algeria, where Islamic militants clashed with the government in a bloody war during the 1990s. The Algerians responded aggressively and pushed AQIM south to the border area with Mali.
Since 2008, the Obama administration has partnered with the French, whose deep roots in the region go back more than a century when the area was part of French West Africa.
"The French had capacity that was hard to come by in D.C.," added Leiter. "This path produced some useful gains, but the French were often caught up with their elections and the like."
Why French are taking on Mali extremists
In recent years, AQIM became "very much focused" on low-level kidnappings of Europeans in Africa, bringing in tens of millions of dollars in ransoms and giving it the ability to move quickly into the power vacuum in Mali.
AQIM is one of several Islamic extremist groups that have set up shop in northern and western Africa. U.S. officials point to recent cooperation between AQIM and Boko Haram, an al-Qaida operation in northern Nigeria, as another troubling development that pushed U.S.-French cooperation.
Roger Cressey, who worked as deputy director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council in both the Clinton administrations, said U.S. policy makers also are concerned that AQIM could form alliances with other groups.
"Key for U.S. policy makers is to provide support to the French that is consistent with our specific and limited interests in West Africa," he said. “The long- term concern has been that AQIM will interact with al-Shabab in Somalia and AQAP (al-Qaida on the Arab Peninsula) in Yemen and create a capability that threatens our interests beyond W Africa."
Although AQIM's links with al-Qaida's core in Pakistan have never been "especially operationally tight," noted Leiter, "It isn't clear that it matters much now. AQIM is basically operating independently." So far, he added, AQIM has been very limited outside the region.
Richard Engel is NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent; Robert Windrem is a Senior Investigative Producer; NBC News’ Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, Pentagon producer Courtney Kube and the Associated Press also contributed to this report.
Adama Diarra / Reuters file
Militiaman from the Ansar Dine Islamic group, who said they come from Niger and Mauritania in northeastern Mali in June.
Algeria, a key power in north Africa, has given tacit approval for African-led military intervention to stop Islamic militants in neighboring Mali, sources in Algeria and France said.
The former French colony shares a 1,200-mile border with Mali, and is wary of any outside interference and conflict spilling over its borders.
It fears military action in Mali could push al-Qaida militants back into southern Algeria as well as triggering a refugee and political crisis, especially among displaced Malian Tuaregs heading north to join tribes in Algeria.
Although Algiers would not be able to veto an operation, it would be diplomatically risky for African countries backed by Western powers to intervene in Mali without Algeria's consent, especially as the conflict could drag on for many months.
However, after weeks of diplomatic cajoling led by France, Algiers has now reluctantly agreed that foreign troops will be needed to eradicate the Islamist threat.
Algeria is Africa's biggest country and a top oil and gas exporter and has the largest military in Africa, and second-largest in the Middle East after Egypt.
It continues to rule out any direct support to the mission.
'The new Afghanistan'? West turns its attention to Mali
"At the end of the day, we won't oppose a military intervention in Mali as long as foreign troops are not stationed on our soil,'' said an Algerian source informed about discussions on Mali.
With six hostages held by the Islamists and fearful of an attack on home soil, France is eager for swift action.
"Algeria now accepts the principle of a military intervention, which wasn't the case before," a senior French diplomat said.
He said the change in position came after a high-level meeting in the Malian capital Bamako on Oct. 19 that brought regional and international players to the negotiating table.
A French defense ministry source said there was "tacit'' agreement and that Paris did not expect more from Algiers.
Algeria has repeatedly advocated a diplomatic solution in Mali since Tuareg rebels and Islamists captured two thirds of the country after an army coup in Bamako in March. The Islamist militants, some linked to al-Qaida, later hijacked the revolt.
The Bamako meeting followed a French-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution urging Mali to engage in dialogue with Tuareg Islamist rebels Ansar Dine if they cut links with radical groups, a move that satisfied Algiers' calls for dialogue.
Paris had until now considered Ansar Dine among the al Qaida-linked groups and refused to negotiate with them.
The resolution also asked African states and the United Nations for a Mali military intervention plan within 45 days.
A second Algerian official said Algiers would do its best to find a diplomatic solution, but could also potentially support Malian troops by providing weapons for a future operation.
Terrorist dens
When a coup in March removed President Amadou Toumani Toure, it revealed a deep rot in a country once seen as a model of democracy for the region. Bamako had tried to run Mali's north through alliances with a local elite involved in criminality — rather than by tackling long-standing issues — and that accelerated the collapse as a power vacuum persisted.
Al-Qaida's north African wing, led by two Algerians, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abou Zeid, has extended its influence partly through loose alliances. Its partners include Ansar Dine, a group of Tuareg-led rebels seeking to impose sharia, and the Arab-dominated MUJWA, say both local and Western officials.
Money from criminal enterprises has enabled the Islamists to outgun rival rebel groups. "(The Islamists) can afford to pay people but we cannot," said Mohamed Attaher, a senior official with MNLA, a rebel group that kicked off an uprising in January but in June was pushed out of areas it controlled by MUJWA.
The United Nations has evidence that Islamists enlisting children in Mali's north are paying their families a one-off fee of about $600 for each new young fighter, plus monthly payments of about $400, according to Ivan Simonovic, the U.N.'s Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights.
In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta voiced concern about the presence of AQIM in Mali, but stressed the need to work with countries in the region to address it.
"We need to work with the nations in the region. They all agree that we're facing the same threat there from AQIM," Panetta said, adding any future operations would have to be developed and executed "on a regional basis."
"And so our goal right now is to try to do everything we can to bring those countries together in a common effort to go after AQIM."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to talk with Algerian officials about Mali when she visits the country early next week.
Diplomats say any intervention in northern Mali is still some months away with a three-phased plan likely to consolidate the south first, followed by an operation to re-take northern cities and finally a mission to go after militants.
In anticipation, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal told lawmakers extra troops had been sent to secure Algeria's borders.
"We won't allow any threat to harm our nation," he said. "Algeria wants to avoid having terrorist dens at its frontiers."
The change in Algeria's position comes amid an improvement in ties with France 50 years after it gained its independence.
In a symbolic gesture before a state visit to Algeria in December, President Francois Hollande acknowledged for the first time last week that Algerians were massacred at a 1961 pro-independence rally in Paris. Historians say more than 200 may have been killed in the police action.
Riccardo Fabiani, North Africa analyst at Eurasia Group, said there was still a clear red line for Algeria which was that it would not intervene or commit troops.
"They are adopting a sort of benevolent neutrality. The Algerians are going to stand by and watch. I can't see collaboration at any level other than intelligence sharing."
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