East vs. West: Russia becoming mired in more of the world’s deadliest conflicts

End Of Days News

East vs. West: Russia becoming mired in more of the world’s deadliest conflicts

February 14, 2013 – AFRICA - Russia said Wednesday it was delivering military hardware and light weapons to the governments of Syria and Mali, as it expands sales and maintains its footing in some of the world’s deadliest conflicts. The head of Russia’s arms exporter Rosoboronexport, Anatoly Isaikin, said Russian deliveries to the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad included air defence systems but not the advanced Iskander missiles sought by Damascus. “We are continuing to fulfill our obligations on contracts for the delivery of military hardware,” Isaikin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He also rejected reports that Russia was planning to supply advanced MiG29-M fighters to Damascus while confirming that it had a deal outstanding for Yak-130 trainer jets. Isaikin said Syria currently ranked “13th or 14th in terms of volume” on the list of nations receiving Russian arms supplies. Russia has been repeatedly condemned by Western and Arab nations for maintaining links to the Syrian government despite violence that UN estimates show has claimed more than 70,000 lives. Its shipment this year of repaired attack helicopters to the regime was disclosed by the media and drew a furious response from former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Isaikin also revealed that Moscow had recent military contacts with the government of Mali as it wages a French-led campaign to expel armed groups of Islamic militants from its land. He said small amounts of light weapons were already being delivered to Mali and that new sales were under discussion. “We have delivered firearms. Literally two weeks ago another consignment was sent. These are completely legal deliveries,” said Isaikin said. “We are in talks about sending more, in small quantities.” –Space Daily

 

http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/east-vs-west-russia-becoming-mired-in-more-of-the-worlds-deadliest-conflicts/

France in Mali fights the unfinished Libyan War

France to triple troops in Mali after no agreement on African force

France pledged to triple size of its 750-strong force fighting an Al Qaeda-rebel force threatening to overrun Mali after West African army chiefs failed to agree on the deployment of the 3,300 troops promised by the region at a meeting in Bamako Tuesday. The regional force was to have taken over from France. President Francois Hollande accordingly ordered the French force to be increased to 2,500. DEBKAfile: This number is a drop in the sand for contending with well-trained, highly mobile al Qaeda and rebel forces equipped with high quality weaponry in he vast desert state of Mali.

 

http://www.debka.com/newsupdatepopup/3467/

Islamists counter French airstrikes, capture Diabaly in central Mali

Al Qaeda-led insurgents Monday struck the town of Diabaly which houses a Malian army base in government-controlled central Mali in retaliation for French airstrikes Sunday which targeted rebel positions near the town. The rebels fought with reinforcements from the Mauritania. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said French bombardments had blocked the Islamist advance fromn the north to the east of Mali, but the situation in the west “remains difficult.”

 

 

http://www.debka.com/newsupdatepopup/3454/

Mali-based Islamists pledge attacks on French soil

Islamist fighters in northern Mali have pledged to strike “at the heart” of France, after a joint Malian-French offensive -- which has entered its fourth day -- began pushing back al Qaeda linked rebels controlling the region.

 

A military offensive to reclaim Mali’s north from Islamists fighters entered its fourth day on Monday, with al Qaeda linked-rebels promising attacks on French soil in retaliation to the European country’s intervention in the unstable West African country.

 

Malian and French soldiers, backed by heavy French military air support, pushed back rebel fighters from the central town of Konna over the weekend.

A dozen French fighter planes, including four Rafale jets, hit rebel targets in the cities of Goa and Kidal, deeper in the country’s rebel-held north. Residents of Goa said French air raids had struck bases and destroyed weapons depots.
Nevertheless, Malian soldiers continued to struggle against well-equipped rebels, who on Monday wrestled away control of the central town of Diabaly, according to French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. “We knew that the key spots would be towards the west… where the most important fighting is going on today,” Le Drian told French BFM television.

Also on Monday, Islamists vowed to strike back at France.

"France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France," Abou Dardar, a leader of Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), one of the Mali-based groups with ties to al Qaeda, told the AFP news agency.

Asked where attacks would take place, Dardar said: "Everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe."

Flat-bed trucks carrying humanitarian aid were on standby in the town of Sevare, some 20 kilometres from Konna, where dozens of French soldiers were dispatched to secure the airport.

“It seems to be that the French intervention has saved Mali,” Alain Mallet, a French national and 20-year resident of Sevare told FRANCE 24 on Sunday. “The Islamist groups were a few kilometres from here and everyone knew that the Malian army was completely overwhelmed.”

Mali and France launched a joint offensive on January 11 against Islamist fighters controlling Mali’s north – a vast desert region roughly the size of France. Allied Islamists and Tuareg rebels took advantage of a power vacuum in April 2012 to overrun the area.

Building up before ground campaign

The operation to retake the north has received the official backing from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), of which Mali is a member, and has been promised logistical support from the United States and Britain.

Malian troops on the ground and around 550 French soldiers deployed so far are awaiting the arrival of a 3,300-stong multi-nation African force. French President François Hollande said French involvement would last “as long as is necessary.”

Click on map to enlarge

French army commander Colonel Paul Gèze told Malian television on Sunday that the French military contingency would reach full strength on Monday, but would primarily be deployed around the capital of Bamako to protect the 6,000-strong French expatriate community.

The Malian army was preventing journalists from travelling further north from the town of Sevare on Sunday.

According to France 24’s Mathieu Mabin, who was in the city of Sevare, residents eagerly awaited the arrival of French troops and supported a ground offensive into rebel-controlled areas. “We have not come across a single Malian who is against France’s intervention,” Mabin said.

Human Rights Watch said ten civilians, including three children, had died as a result of the French bombing campaign in Konna. The London-based rights group said the joint Malian-French offensive posed grave risks to the civilian population, and called on Islamists to release child soldiers they had recruited in Mali and Niger in recent months.

French flag flies in Bamako

President Hollande held a special ministerial meeting to discuss the situation in Mali, a former French colony, on Monday morning. Hollande, whose approval rating has tanked at home since he took office in May 2011, has been championing the cause of an international military intervention among diplomats for months.

The president on Sunday met with members of the Malian expatriate community of France at the Elysée Palace. The group said France had acted with “courage” in taking the fight to Islamists.

MALI - FRANCE Former PM Villepin warns of 'blind' Mali intervention

French flags could be seen flying from apartment windows and cars in Bamako, where Malians overwhelmingly praised France’s support and appeared to welcome the prospect of having French soldiers in their territory.

“We are proud of the French,” Moussa, a man who fled his native Timbuktu months ago, told France Inter radio. “We have been suffocating and [France] has given us a breath of oxygen. We are ready to fly Malian and French flags alongside each other.”

France's Le Drian told a press conference on Saturday that France had intervened not only because the security of Mali and West Africa were in peril, but because there was also a threat to France and Europe.

Western leaders have warned that northern Mali could become a base of operation for terrorists intent on striking European and American targets. “We have been determined to act for more than six months now,” Le Drian said.

During the press conference Le Drian also confirmed the death of French pilot Damien Boiteux, the first and, until now, only recognised French casualty in the fight to take back the country.

Malian army sources have said that dozens of rebels have been killed near the frontline, including Abdel Krim, nicknamed “Kojak”, a key leader of Ansar Dine, another Islamist group now facing French air power.

Mali's interim president, Dioncounda Traore, said that 11 Malian soldiers had died in fighting over the weekend.

On France’s request, the UN Security Council was also meeting on Monday in New York to discuss international military intervention.

http://www.france24.com/en/20130114-mali-france-intervention-terrorist-attacks

Over 100 dead in French strikes and fighting in Mali

 

(Reuters) - French aircraft pounded Islamist rebels in Mali for a second day on Saturday and neighboring West African states sped up their plans to deploy troops in an international campaign to prevent groups linked to al Qaeda expanding their power base.
France, warning that the control of northern Mali by the militants posed a security threat to Europe, intervened dramatically on Friday as heavily armed Islamist fighters swept southwards towards Mali's capital Bamako.
Under cover from French fighter planes and attack helicopters, Malian troops routed a rebel convoy and drove the Islamists out of the strategic central town of Konna, which they had seized on Thursday. A senior army officer in the capital Bamako said more than 100 rebel fighters had been killed.
A French pilot died on Friday when rebels shot down his helicopter near the town of Mopti. Hours after opening one front against al Qaeda-linked Islamists, France mounted a commando raid to try to rescue a French hostage held by al Shabaab militants in Somalia, also allied to al Qaeda, but failed to prevent the hostage being killed.
French President Francois Hollande made clear that France's aim in Mali was to support the West African troop deployment, which is also endorsed by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States.
Western countries in particular fear that Islamists could use Mali as a base for attacks on the West and expand the influence of al Qaeda-linked militants based in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.
"We've already held back the progress of our adversaries and inflicted heavy losses on them," Hollande said. "Our mission is not over yet."
A resident in the northern city of Gao, one of the Islamists' strongholds, reported scores of rebel fighters were retreating northward in pickup trucks on Saturday.
"The hospital here is overwhelmed with injured and dead," he said, asking not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
In Konna, a shopkeeper reported seeing scores of dead Islamist fighters piled in the streets, as well as the bodies of dozens of uniformed soldiers.
A senior official with Mali's presidency announced on state television that 11 Malian soldiers had been killed in the battle for Konna, with around 60 others injured.
Human Rights Watch said around 10 civilians had died in the violence, including three children who drowned trying to cross a river to safety. It said other children recruited to fight for the Islamists had been injured.
With Paris urging West African nations to send in their troops quickly, Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, chairman of the regional bloc ECOWAS, kick-started a U.N.-mandated operation to deploy some 3,300 African soldiers.
TROOPS BY MONDAY
The mission had not been expected to start until September.
"By Monday at the latest, the troops will be there or will have started to arrive," said Ali Coulibaly, Ivory Coast's African Integration Minister. "Things are accelerating ... The reconquest of the north has already begun."
The multinational force is expected to be led by Nigerian Major-General Shehu Abdulkadir and draw heavily on troops from West Africa's most populous state. Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal each announced they would send 500 soldiers.
French army chief Edouard Guillaud said France had no plan to chase the Islamists into the north with land troops, and was waiting for ECOWAS forces. France has deployed some special forces units to the central town of Mopti and sent hundreds of soldiers to Bamako in "Operation Serval" - named after an African wildcat.
Concerned about reprisals on French soil, Hollande announced he had instructed Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to tighten security in public buildings and on public transport in France.
Hollande's intervention in Mali could endanger eight French nationals being held by Islamists in the Sahara. A spokesman for one of Mali's rebel groups, Ansar Dine, said there would be repercussions.
"There are consequences, not only for French hostages, but also for all French citizens, wherever they find themselves in the Muslim world," Sanda Ould Boumama told Reuters. "The hostages are facing death."
The French Defense Ministry said its failed bid on Friday night to rescue a French intelligence officer held hostage in Somalia since 2009 was unrelated to events in Mali.
The ministry said it believed the officer had been killed by his captors along with at least one French commando. But the Harakat Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahideen insurgent group that was holding Denis Allex said he was alive and being held at a location far from the raid.
RED ALERT
The French Foreign Ministry stepped up its security alert on Mali and parts of neighboring Mauritania and Niger on Friday, extending its red alert - the highest level - to include Bamako.
France advised its 6,000 citizens in Mali to leave. Thousands more French live across West Africa, particularly in Senegal and Ivory Coast.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Friday urged an "accelerated international engagement" and said the bloc would speed up plans to deploy 200 troops to train Malian forces.
A U.S. official said the Pentagon was weighing options such as intelligence-sharing with France and logistics support. French officials suggest U.S. surveillance capacity, including unmanned drones, would prove valuable in vast northern Mali.
In Britain, a spokesman said Prime Minister David Cameron had spoken to Hollande to express support for France's intervention and to offer two C-17 transport planes to assist the mission.
He said both men discussed "the need to work with the Malian government, regional neighbors and international partners to prevent a new terrorist haven developing on Europe's doorstep and to reinvigorate the U.N.-led political process once the rebel advance has been halted".
Military analysts voiced doubt, however, about whether Friday's action was the start of a swift operation to retake northern Mali - a harsh, sparsely populated terrain the size of France - as neither equipment nor ground troops were ready.
"We're not yet at the big intervention," said Mark Schroeder, of the risk and security consultancy Stratfor.
More than two decades of peaceful elections had earned Mali a reputation as a bulwark of democracy - but that image unraveled in a matter of weeks after a military coup last March that paved the way for the Islamist rebellion.
Interim President Dioncounda Traore, under pressure for bolder action from Mali's military, declared a state of emergency on Friday. Traore cancelled a long-planned official trip to Paris on Wednesday because of the violence.
"Every Malian must henceforth consider themselves a soldier," he said on state TV.
On the streets of Bamako, some cars were driving around with French flags draped from the windows to celebrate Paris's intervention.
"It's thanks to France that Mali will emerge from this crisis," said student Mohamed Camera. "This war must end now."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/12/us-mali-rebels-idUSBRE90912Q20130112 

French-backed Malian troops drive Islamists out of Konna

In heavy fighting Saturday, Mali government forces with French air support partly regained the strategic town of Konna, gateway to the Mali capital of Bamako. The al Qaeda-led Islamist alliance which captured Konna appeared to be retreating. In Washington, a US official told Reuters the Pentagon was weighing options in the west African desert nation, including intelligence-sharing with France and logistics support. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed France had carried out air strikes against the rebels to prevent them overruning the whole of Mali.

http://www.debka.com/newsupdatepopup/3435/ 

Violent Muslims aiming for nation takeover?

 

On the same day that Open Doors USA named Mali the world’s seventh worst persecutor of Christians, there were reports that al-Qaida fighters there were launching an offensive to capture two cities.

Fears are that their goal is to take over the North African nation and persecute Christian members of the population much as violent radicals in Nigeria and Somalia do against their Christian populations.

International Christian Concern’s Africa analyst William Stark says al-Qaida’s offensive is a major reason the nation went from being unranked to No. 7 on the list.
“Their goal is to take over the entire country of Mali. Open Doors USA just came out with a list of the 50 worst persecutors of Christians and Mali went from unranked to No. 7. This would be problematic for Christians in Mali. These extremists would likely persecute Christians to a similar extent as Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia,” Stark said.
The reports detail al-Qaida’s attacks on the key northern cities of Kona and Mopti. Both are crucial because they are major transportation hubs or gateways to transportation outlets.
A Malian Christian who has asked not to be identified for security reasons confirms the al-Qaida-led assault on those key cities. He says the rebels are making significant progress.
“These Islamic terrorists and extremists are at the front line of one of the regions of the south of Mali near the town of Mopti,” the Christian said.
The source also said the al-Qaida-led assault is being undertaken for a very specific religious and cultural purpose.
“They’re aiming to infiltrate the south of Mali up to the capital of Bamako in order to apply the Shariah law to all of the inhabitants of Mali,” the Christian source said.
Heritage Foundation Africa specialist Morgan Roach confirms the reports.
“While details are still emerging, there are reports that the coalition of Islamist militants, who occupy northern Mali’s three administrative regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, is making an advance southwards to Mopti, not far from where the region’s main airport is located in Sevare,” Roach said.
Roach said the government is sending reinforcements to one of the government controlled towns, but the al-Qaida offensive is alarming.
“The Malian government currently holds Mopti and reinforcements have been sent in to counter an Islamist advance. This is a game changer. The attempt by militants to expand their reach into government controlled territory is a realistic threat,” Roach said.
“After all, the main road out of Mopti connects to Bamako (the capital city),” Roach said, adding that she’s not sure how soon the al-Qaida-led assault force would make a move on that city.
Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Clare Lopez says she is watching the military developments there with “dismay” because she doesn’t believe Mali’s military can withstand the brunt of a full al-Qaida offensive.
“There seems to be little chance that Malian forces alone can halt the al-Qaida advance – and as another report says – the likelihood that outside forces can join the fight in time to keep al-Qaida from seizing more territory looks slim,” Lopez said.
A former CIA station chief who has asked not to be named for security reasons says that from a military standpoint, al-Qaida’s apparent plan is solid.
“It’s very sound military strategy. Al-Qaida already captured two-thirds of the country and the Mali military is helpless to stop them. Kona and Mopti are on the way to the capital of Bamako. Nothing except outside, like U.S. or European, military support will stop them,” the former CIA station chief said.
Al-Qaida’s strategic moves are a source of concern for the country’s Christians and human rights groups.
And Stark says if al-Qaida is successful, there will be more persecution for Mali’s Christians.
“That change in ranking is enough evidence to show that the situation for Christians in Mali is looking bleak,” Stark said.
Lopez agrees.
“As is the case wherever Islamic jihadis attack, they fight to spread Islam and impose Islamic law. Islamic doctrine provides zero protection for believers of any other faith, including Christians and Jews, who are ‘People of the Book,’ if they do not surrender and submit to a dhimmi status under Shariah,” Lopez said.
“Even if they do submit, their freedom to practice their faith openly and without fear will be crushed under Islam,” Lopez said.
“Mali’s Christians face a grim future of oppression, persecution, and slaughter as the al-Qaida jihadis seize ever more territory,” Lopez said.
The former CIA station chief gives an even more blunt prognosis.
“Their future is death. They will die or convert,” the former station chief said.
The Malian Christian says that even with the threat, Malian Christians are staying put.
“I have made some most recent investigations on the current state of Christians here in the south of Mali regarding this invasion of these extremists and found no reports at all of Christians leaving Mali as a result of what has essentially been an invasion of their country these recent times,” the Christian source said.
Mali’s leaders are not sitting idly while the invasion continues. Malian Prime Minister Diango Cissoko took a two-day trip to neighboring Mauritania to ask for military assistance.
“I asked him for an even stronger commitment on Mauritania’s part to solve all of the problems in northern Mali, which is occupied by armed Islamist groups including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb,” Cissoko said.
The former CIA station chief says that what Cissoko really wants is “outside help.”
“He’s mainly begging for NATO troops but would accept African Union or United Nations forces,” the station chief said.
The station chief adds that Mauritania’s military will probably not be much help.
“The Mauritanian military would do no better against al-Qaida than the Malian military, if they even wanted to get involved and become a target themselves,” the former station chief said.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/violent-muslims-aiming-for-nation-takeover/#PHhlh1l0uEWSJkk8.99