Slavery In 2017 Exists In North Africa... Are Republican Party Policies Heading Us Back Towards That Institution Cherished By The Rich And Powerful?

Roland and I were wandering around south-central Mali a few years ago, taking it in, meeting the folks. Alan Grayson had recommended Bandiagara and Sangha as a couple of off-the-beaten-track places east of Mopti and north of the border with Burkina Faso. In one of those towns Roland found a goat and its kid. The mother goat was freaking out because they were separating her from the kid and it looked like she knew the kid was headed for the stew pot. Roland bought the kid and we walked around with it for a few days before giving it to the mother goat's owner-- along with some Impeach Cheney caps, t-shirts and assorted foodstuffs and ephemera to seal an agreement that they wouldn't eat the kid. They seemed like honorable people and I bet the kid is still thriving-- unless the rebels ate him. We never bought a slave to free him though.

After our adventures in Dogon country, we headed north to legendary Timbuktu. We had seen slaves before, in Mali and in southern Morocco beyond the Atlas. It's even worse in Mauritania, which we've avoided. But as we headed north into Tuareg country we realized that the dark-skinned people were slaves of the more Arab-looking Tuaregs. We were at a river crossing one day and it was a noisy, lively place with music and everyone babbling away and little children running around playing. Suddenly the place turned deadly quiet and the only thing you could hear were the birds screaming. The women and children had all disappeared in a second. The place looked like a ghost town with a few surly men selling their goods to no one. And just as suddenly a pick-up truck rolled up to the ferry landing. It was filled with Tuaregs, heavily armed, menacing-looking Tuaregs. Later in the trip, up in the deep Sahara north of Timbuktu, we got to know some Tuaregs and did some bartering with them. There were slaves in their encampment and it was very creepy but they were-- and this is weird to write-- nice to us and polite enough.

So we weren't surprised when CNN reported that there are slaves-- migrants on their way from deep Africa to Europe-- being bought and sold in Libya. I don't expect much from the Trump Regime but France is taking the matter up to the UN. President Emmanuel Macron, terming the practice "a crime against humanity," requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss this treatment of migrants in Libya.

The UN in Libya is "dismayed and sickened by the recent video" and is actively pursuing the matter with the Libyan authorities to set up transparent monitoring mechanisms that safeguard migrants against horrific human rights abuses, said Ghassan Salame, Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.

...Secretary-General António Guterres urged the international community to unite on the issue and called on all countries to adopt the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocol on human trafficking.

"I abhor these appalling acts and call upon all competent authorities to investigate these activities without delay and to bring the perpetrators to justice," Guterres said. "I have asked the relevant United Nations actors to actively pursue this matter."

Reuters reported that on Friday Pope Francis "excoriated politicians who foment fear of migrants, saying they were sowing violence and racism, and urged them to 'practise the virtue of prudence' to help them integrate. Pope Francis: "Those who, for what may be political reasons, foment fear of migrants instead of building peace are sowing violence, racial discrimination and xenophobia, which are matters of great worry for all those concerned about the safety of every human being." I hope no one accuses me of cultural appropriation for writing about it and condemning it. What's more un-PC, slavery or cultural appropriation? Who can keep up? Watch the CNN report:

More Misery In Mali

When I worked at Warner Bros, I visited our French company as often as I could and I usually would go see a band at the now infamous Bataclan Theatre. I saw some of our French bands play there-- like Les Negresses Vertes-- but once to see the Queens of the Stone Age, who were the progenitor of the Eagles of Death Metal. I wanted to see them play live because they covered a Romeo Void song I had an interest in (above).

Even when I went to Mali a few years ago there was a music component-- a trip out to Quizambougou to watch Bassekou Kouyate finish recording his second album. We were staying in Bamako, where I saw Bassekou play a live show at the French Cultural Center, and where, most recently a group of Daesh-related terrorists shot up the Radisson Blu Hotel and took over 100 guests hostage, killing 18 of them as well as a security guard.

The attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in the Malian capital Bamako, which killed 19 people, is the latest terrorist act on an African continent now stricken daily by fundamentalist horror and obscurantism.

Despite billions of dollars pledged to address this scourge, terrorism thrives in Africa due to the failure of states, the plundering of resources, and endemic corruption. Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and more recently the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have engaged in deadly and constant destabilization in the hope of extending their power.

...The recently released Global Terrorism Index confirms this increase in violence. Boko Haram is ranked the deadliest organization with 6,644 deaths in 2014, compared with 6,073 for ISIS. Even as it loses ground to the Nigerian army, Boko Haram has multiplied its attacks, primarily against markets and public gatherings. Regular attacks in Mali and Kenya suggest that Al-Qaeda and Al-Shabaab will continue contributing to this violent one-upmanship.

Opening the second Dakar International Forum on Security in Africa on Nov. 9, Senegalese President Macky Sall reiterated his call for more resources. However, addressing terrorism in Africa demands more than financial means. According to him, the framework of intervention based on U.N. peacekeeping operations, to which his country is a major contributor, needs to adapt. The urgency of the situation requires fighting rather than simply maintaining peace.

Above and beyond the State Department's warning to Americans about travel, Mali was singled out even before this latest attack as a place to stay away from, a real shame in light of what an incredibly unique and fascinating place it is for American tourists. (That Radisson Blu, didn't have tourists but business people staying there.)

The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens of the risks of travel to Mali. We especially warn against travel to the northern parts of the country and along the border with Mauritania because of ongoing military operations and threats of attacks and kidnappings targeting westerners. Mali faces significant security challenges because of the presence in northern Mali of extremists and militant factions. The potential for attacks throughout the country, including in Bamako, remains. This Travel Warning replaces the Travel Warning dated January 13, 2015.

Violent extremist and militant elements, including al- Qaeda in the Lands of Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar al-Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad (MUJAO), and al-Murabitun are present in northern Mali. While these extremist elements have been mostly dislodged from the major population centers of Gao and Timbuktu, they continue to conduct attacks targeting security forces in and around these locations.

During the past year, there has been an increase in attacks targeting the United Nations peacekeepers of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Rocket attacks targeting MINUSMA camps in various northern locations were reported. In addition, separate violent incidents involving suicide bombings, explosives, and land mines have occurred. The majority of these incidents resulted in numerous injuries and casualties.

Terrorist groups have increased their rhetoric calling for additional attacks or kidnapping attempts on westerners and others, particularly those linked to support for international military intervention.

While the security situation in Bamako and southern Mali has been relatively stable, on March 7, there was an armed attack on La Terrasse, a nightclub in the Hippodrome area of Bamako, in which a French citizen, a Belgian citizen, and three Malian citizens were killed. The Government of Mali has increased security in the capital, but the potential for additional attacks targeting Westerners in the capital city and throughout the country remains. Police harassment and violent crime in Bamako persist, including several armed carjacking incidents, one of which resulted in the death of a French citizen.

...The U.S. Embassy reminds U.S. citizens of the potential for terrorist activity throughout Mali. U.S. citizens are urged to exercise caution, be alert to their surroundings, and avoid crowds, demonstrations, or any other form of public gatherings when visiting locations frequented by westerners, in and around Bamako. Periodic public demonstrations occur throughout Mali. While most demonstrations are peaceful, a few have become confrontational. U.S. citizens throughout Mali should develop a personal security plan. We recommend you vary your daily routine, and travel only on main roads to the extent this is possible. Malian security forces regularly update security safeguards, including checkpoints and other movement control measures, without prior notice.

They also warn about unsafe domestic air flights and Ebola.

Bamako doesn't have much to offer, other than a good restaurant-- if it's still open (which I doubt). But the really great things to see in Mali are accessed through Bamako via insecure roads. As much as I loved Djenne, Timbuktu, the Dogon country and experiencing the birthplace of the blues, there's nothing that would get me there at this point. In fact, today there was another terrorist attack, this one up north in Kidal, where UN peacekeepers were targeted and several were killed by mortar shells.

New Day Dawning In War-Ravaged Mali Today? I'd Wait Before Buying A Ticket To Timbuktu

A Muslim Keita dynasty ruled Mali from 1235 until the Empire collapsed with the death of Mahmud IV in 1610. As a stamp collector in my teenage days I recall a Keita ruling Mali when it first gained independence in 1960. That was Modibo Keita and I don't think he was part of the royal lineage. In fact, he was a socialist. In 1968 he was overthrown in a military coup and imprisoned, where he died 9 years later.

And that brings us to Ibrahim Boubacar Keita-- IBK-- who is about to become the new Malian president. He was Prime Minister from 1994-2000 and and President of the National Assembly of Mali from 2002 to 2007. No idea if he was related to Modo-- let alone Mahmud IV-- but he came in a strong first in the presidential elections last month, but missed an outright majority among over two dozen candidates. He won 39.79% and the second place finisher, Soumaila Cisse won 19.7%. Today is run-off day and Keita is expected to win big. Almost all the losing candidates have endorsed him.

This West African country's pivotal election is aimed at unlocking some $4 billion in aid promised by international donors after more than a year of turmoil including a coup, followed by an Islamic insurgency that swallowed up a region the size of Afghanistan and a subsequent French-led military intervention that brought thousands of foreign soldiers to Malian soil. The chaos has scattered hundreds of thousands of people-- some of whom are casting ballots from refugee camps in neighbouring countries.

Keita, who is running on a slogan of "for the honour of Mali," pulled in 39.79 per cent of first round votes, while former finance minister Soumaila "Soumi" Cisse won 19.70 per cent. It's a reversal of fortune from 2002, when the two ran for president but Cisse, not Keita, made it to the second round.

Keita's resume also includes a 2007 presidential bid as well as a wide array of government positions-- foreign minister, prime minister and speaker of the National Assembly.

"He has this reputation as somebody who is strict. He doesn't shy away from a fight," said Bruce Whitehouse, a Bamako-based Mali specialist who teaches at Lehigh University. "He's this sort of old-school politician who knows how to get things done, and knows how to build alliances. I don't think anybody sees him as any kind of visionary or innovator but he may just be sort of the man who can hold things together in some basic way."

Keita, 68, has been nicknamed Kankeletigui or "a man of his word," lending a sense of reassurance and stability to the country that has been in a state of upheaval since early 2012.

Colleagues describe Keita as a longtime statesman who values protocol and formality within government. As foreign minister, he once admonished a public servant for showing up to his office with his top shirt buttons left open. Government buildings, he said, were a place for suits and ties.

Word spread and the next day everyone showed up at the ministry in buttoned up attire.

"IBK is a proud man and someone who enforces the symbol of the state," said Mohamed Sleimane, who worked with him in the 1980s at a non-governmental organization.

Keita is seen as the candidate of choice among the junta leaders who overthrew Mali's democratically elected president in March 2012. Although they ultimately handed over power to a transitional civilian government, the coup leaders are believed to still wield considerable influence.

...Keita has won little support from Tuareg separatists in Mali's distant north, some 950 miles (1,500 kilometres) from the capital, Bamako. Rebels tried to block his campaign stop in the provincial capital of Kidal, driving pickup trucks onto the runway and later pelting his parked jet with stones.

But there are hopes that Keita will have the negotiating skills needed ahead of talks with northern rebels from the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, the name they have given to the region.

The Tuareg rebel group signed a reconciliation with a rival rebel group late Friday.

"I am supporting IBK because he has said that he will put together a national dialogue before making a decision on the crisis, while Soumaila Cisse has already declared that he will not give autonomy to northern Mali," said NMLA official Mohamed Ousmane Ag Medoune.

If Keita does win, his strong personal profile could also help solidify his mandate, said Paul Melly, an African affairs specialist at the London-based policy institute Chatham House.

"Those who have talked to him say that he does recognize that Mali requires fundamental change and he does have the personal clout to lead such a reform," he said. "But the challenges are huge; rebuilding popular trust in the political class will not be easy. Much will depend on whether he can form an effective ministerial team and deliver real improvements in the lives of Malians."

Keita's first order of business be will right up his alley: normalization, starting with relations between the central government and the Tuareg rebels in the Sahara. The Tuaregs-- who are basically brutal, primitive savages who hold slaves-- want to get as much autonomy as they can for their region. The rest of the country-- who the Tuaregs consider good candidates for slavery-- resent them and don't want to grant them any more autonomy. And then there's Seydou Keita, the country's star football player:

Alabama And Mississippi Were Forced To Give Up Slavery... But Mali's Tuaregs Weren't

I don't know... maybe it's because my distant ancestors were slaves in Egypt, but to me slavery is the most horrifying thing that can be done to another human being. And when I was in Mali I saw it close up and personal. I've been wondering why there hasn't been anything in the western press about how the Malian rebels-- the Tuaregs-- were at least in part motivated by their unwillingness to stop using other human beings as slaves. The French, Brits and the U.S. just did not want that to be part of the conversation. There was speculation that the reason was because they had hoped the turn the Tuaregs against the al Qaeda Islamists by looking the other way on the slavery thing.

And then, out of nowhere, USA Today, of all places, blows the whistle on Tuareg slavery this week. They trumpeted that the Tuaregs fleeing the advancing French and Mailian troops have been "taking with them some of their most important possessions-- slaves." Until now all the coverage has been about how the mean Malians have been killing the poor innocent Tuaregs they get their hands on. No context whatsoever-- NONE. That might be just fine for the NY Times but USA Today just put the paper of record to shame.

The Tuareg tribes that overran Mali's military with the help of Arab extremist groups aligned with al-Qaeda have long held slaves and many of the captives are from families that have been enslaved for generations.

"It's no way to live, without your freedom," said Mohammed Yattara, a former slave who ran away from his Tuareg masters years ago.

"You depend on them for everything. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it, or they will beat you," he said as he sat with the chief of the village of Toya and among men and women who were descendants of slaves or former slaves.

"You can marry, but if the master wants to have sex with your wife, he will. Everything that's yours is theirs," Yattara said.

Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic people of North Africa's Sahara desert whose traditional land was divided into several nations, the borders of which were drawn by European colonialist powers.

They predate the Arab tribes that moved into the region centuries ago and in Mali, a former French colony, Tuaregs lived primarily in the north part if the country.

But in March, armed Tuaregs took control of the north from the Mali government and marched south with Islamists aligned with al-Qaeda. They took over the city of Timbuktu and threatened the capital of Bamako. The Islamists imposed strict shariah, or Islamic law, on inhabitants it controlled.

Some Tuaregs took advantage of their newly won control to reclaim freed or runaway slaves, mostly black Africans.

The French military arrived in January and retook Timbuktu from the Tuaregs, who fled into the desert or refugee camps in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mauritania, some taking slaves with them. Tuaregs and Arabs who failed to escape have been summarily killed, activist groups have said.

Human Rights Watch said the Malian army and black African civilians are holding all Tuaregs and Arabs responsible for the recent months of terror and human rights abuses, whether or not they participated in the crimes.

Yattara is one of the few accessible witnesses who was willing to discuss slavery under the Tuaregs.

Like many other residents of his village, Yattara is a farmer in the rice and hay fields in the river's surrounding wetlands.

Each of Mali's dozens of ethnic groups has a traditional occupation, and Yattara is one of the Bella ("slave" in the Tuareg language), the black Africans who have inherited their slave status.

Though slavery was outlawed in 1960, Mali is one of the countries in the world where the practice of human servitude flourishes, with as many as 200,000 Bella living a life of hereditary enslavement.

Not all Tuaregs own slaves, and not all slave owners are Tuareg. There are also black Malian ethnic groups who own Bella slaves.

But in the Timbuktu region, only Tuaregs own slaves. Not only were the Tuareg seen as supporters for the Islamist rebels' harsh rule over the last ten months, but their slave-owning ways fanned racial animosity in northern Mali.

Like all other slave children, Yattara never went to school, and to this day he is unable to read and write. "But my son is in school now," he said proudly.

Yattara said he believes he is in his early 40s but is not certain of his exact age because Tuareg masters do not file birth certificates. He fled his masters as a young man and during his travels to Senegal and Ivory Coast he discovered that slave-owning was in fact illegal.

"In my father's generation, slaves weren't thinking to be free," Yattara said. "But now there are many slaves who want to be free, and they try to find a way, but they are afraid."

In the Timbuktu region, slaves work on farms or as household servants or shepherds. Deeper in the vast desert of the north, inhabited by Tuaregs and Arabs, the slaves mine salt, a back-breaking task done under the Saharan sun.

Salt is the north's main economic product and black slaves deliver the giant grayish slabs by boat or truck to the black Africans, who then take it to markets in the south.

Yattara and his companions agreed that Tuaregs were the worst slave-masters in Mali.

..."In my life I will never forget what it feels like to be a slave," Yattara said. "Whenever I see Tuaregs I will be angry."

Speaking of Mali and Syria: NYT reporters and editors can hardly show us connections between stories which they don't see themselves

Okay, so we see Algeria and Mali over there on the left of the map (which you can click on to enlarge), and Syria is at the upper right, and Afghanistan is way the heck off the map to the right, and the Soviet Union isn't on the map at all anymore, and Osama bin Laden is, um, still dead. No way they're connected, is there?

"[I]ncredibly, one [piece] offers an example of what can go wrong when a government -- Algeria -- cozies up with a bloodthirsty killer and religious fanatic, while the other tells how the US government is in the process of doing exactly the same thing in Syria."

-- Dave Lindorff, in "Links? We Don't Do No Stinkin'
Links: Cognitive Dissonance at the New York Times"

by Ken

Dave Lindorff has a terrific piece today on his ThisCan'tBeHappening.net "news collective" blog: "Links? We Don’t Do No Stinkin’ Links: Cognitive Dissonance at the New York Times," which I saw via Nation of Change. It's about two articles from Saturday's NYT which he eventually characterizes as "two disjointed and poorly written pieces that add little to the readers' understanding of these latest hotspots in the Middle East":

"Algeria Sowed Seeds of Hostage Crisis as It Nurtured Warlord" by Adam Nossiter and Neil MacFarquhar

[which] reports on how the Algerian government essentially enabled and encouraged the crisis in neighboring Mali by backing -- even hosting in Algiers -- an Islamic militant leader and local warlord, Iyad Ag Ghali, who then tried to take over Mali by force, including taking Algerians and other foreigners hostage at an oil drilling site, leading to a deadly Algerian battle and now a war in Mali that has drawn in the old colonial powers. The article talked at length about the risks of working with such militants. The risks for Algeria, that is; not the risks in general of such a practice.

"A Rebel Commander in Syria Holds the Reins of War"

[which is] a glowing paen to Abdulkader al-Saleh, aka Hajji Marea, a rebel leader in the Syrian civil war. The article paints the man whose nom de guerre is comfortingly (and incorrectly) translated as meaning "the respectable man from Marea" (it actually means "the man from Marea who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca"), is clearly aligned with a radical Muslim group, the Al Nusra Front, which the article notes, is "blacklisted" by the US as a terrorist organization.

Already in these capsule descriptions of Dave's, I think we can see him nudging these pieces together in ways that seem clearly not have occurred to either the NYT writers or their editors. Dave is mightily ticked off because the paper "managed to run two closely related stories making opposite points in Saturday's paper without referencing each other," either in the print edition or online.

Typically, when two articles that are clearly related run in a newspaper, they are run side-by-side, with one appearing as a kind of side-bar to the other. In this case, though, the first article, on the warlord Iyad Ag Ghali, ran on page one, jumping to page eight, while the second, on Hajji Marea, ran on page 9, separated by several other articles in the intervening columns of both pages. Even in the Times' online edition, where it is easy -- and standard procedure -- to include links to relevant other articles, there is no link between these two stories.

Dave offers as an additional criticism what I imagine he would agree is at least in part an explanation for his original one: "Nor do the reporters on either piece include any historical background or context in their reports."

Thus Times readers are left blissfully unaware of the many examples of blowback that the US has experienced from its decades of such faustian bargains. The most damaging of these, of course, was the CIA's setting up of the Al Qaeda organization during the Jimmy Carter presidency, when he and his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski came up with the brilliant idea of encouraging, funding and arming local and foreign Islamic fanatics to foment a civil war in Afghanistan with the goal of undermining the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul and "bleeding" the Soviet Union. Of course, the US-funded and armed Mujahadeen became the Taliban, and among those foreign Islamic fanatics that the CIA- trained and armed to fight the Soviets was Osama Bin Laden and his merry band.

And we know how that turned out.

Surely at least a paragraph reference to that debacle would be in order when one is writing about the latest disastrous Algerian experience with blowback, or about America's latest support for religious fundamentalist fighters in its campaign to oust Syria's current government.

Of course, once you remove this background, the connections between the Algeria-Mali and Syrian-warlord stories are a good deal less clear, and it's not all that surprising that we wind up with this pair of "disjointed and poorly written pieces that add little to the readers' understanding of these latest hotspots in the Middle East."

And yet, incredibly, one offers an example of what can go wrong when a government -- Algeria -- cozies up with a bloodthirsty killer and religious fanatic, while the other tells how the US government is in the process of doing exactly the same thing in Syria.

Hmm, there just might be a story there, don't you think? Or maybe at least a link.

#

Had Enough Of Mali? Try Guinea-Bissau

Guinea Bissau is bigger than The Gambia

That the Tuaregs of Mali (as well as Niger and Mauritania) hold hundreds of thousands of Bella and other black Africans in slavery is certainly not enough to motivate any kind of intervention from France, Britain, NATO or anyone else. Even when the Tuaregs had captured, in quick succession, Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu-- along with two-thirds of Mali-- it wasn't until international Islamist groups with a jihadist agenda and murky ties to al-Qaeda, that the West intervened. Mali has no oil but it isn't that far from oil-rich, Muslim-roiled Nigeria. Oil and Islamic jihadis... that gets the West's attention-- and fast. Slavers taking over a country-- who cares? Same with international drug barons... it might be inconvenient and yucky-- but if there's no oil or jihad involved, you're on your own.

I know people are just starting to figure out what Mali is; so I feel bad having to introduce a whole new country and its problems onto the blog. DWT, meet Guinea-Bissau. This small (slightly bigger than Maryland) West African state is tucked between Senegal and Guinea and was once part of the Empire of Mali. Portugal began colonizing it in the 1500s and kidnapping it's people to sell as slaves. Coincidentally, it used to be identified on maps as the Slave Coast. A rebellion began against fascist-led Portugal in the 1950s and they finally drove the Portuguese out in 1973. The first elections, though, weren't held until 1994 and since then every government has been violently overthrown. Not one president has finished his term. It's one of the poorest countries in the world-- on a level with Nepal, Burundi, Niger, Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Liberia and Malawi.

The country has no embassies in the U.S. or Britain and little tourism. If you want to visit, you have to stop in Lisbon and get a tourist visa there-- just like in the old colonial days! (It only takes a couple hours though... not counting the flight to Portugal.) Virtually no one will accept credit cards anywhere in the country but everyone loves Euros and dollars. International phone service is, at best, sporadic. The country is considered one of the most violent in Africa and much too dangerous for tourists and the U.S. State Department warns American citizens to not travel there. From the State Department website:

The United States established diplomatic relations with Guinea-Bissau in 1975, following its independence from Portugal. Post-independence, the country has seen a mix of coups, attempted coups, civil war, assassinations, and democratic elections. The United States strongly condemned the April 2012 attempt by elements of the military to forcibly seize power, called for maximum restraint on all sides and the restoration of legitimate civilian leadership, and continues to work with its partners in the region and beyond as it monitors developments on the ground. Now that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has returned Bissau-Guinean military factions to their barracks and a civilian government is in power, the United States is working with its partners and the Transitional Government of Guinea-Bissau to facilitate free and fair elections by Spring 2013, and to promote basic reforms on governance, justice, and economic development.

There is no U.S. Embassy in Guinea-Bissau. All official U.S. contact with Guinea-Bissau is handled by the U.S. Embassy in Senegal. Local employees staff the U.S. Office in Bissau, and U.S. diplomats from the Embassy in Dakar travel frequently to Bissau.

Given the April 12, 2012 coup, the United States was obliged to terminate foreign assistance to the Government of Guinea-Bissau consistent with the requirements of section 7008 of the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act for 2012. Previous limited non-humanitarian assistance focused primarily on the justice sector as well as demining and proper weapons storage programs.

It gets worse. If you happened to read a report by Adam Nossiter in the NY Times last November, you're probably aware that Guinea-Bissau has been taken over by an international drug syndicate and is the major hub for cocaine traffic-- 30 tons a year-- between Latin America and Europe. The country is addicted to coke and crack and it defines the term "narco-state."

When the army ousted the president here just months before his term was to expire, a thirst for power by the officer corps did not fully explain the offensive. But a sizable increase in drug trafficking in this troubled country since the military took over has raised suspicions that the president’s sudden removal was what amounted to a cocaine coup.

The military brass here has long been associated with drug trafficking, but the coup last spring means soldiers now control the drug racket and the country itself, turning Guinea-Bissau in the eyes of some international counternarcotics experts into a nation where illegal drugs are sanctioned at the top.

“They are probably the worst narco-state that’s out there on the continent,” said a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his work in the region. “They are a major problem.”

Since the April 12 coup, more small twin-engine planes than ever are making the 1,600-mile Atlantic crossing from Latin America to the edge of Africa’s western bulge, landing in Guinea-Bissau’s fields, uninhabited islands and remote estuaries. There they unload their cargos of cocaine for transshipment north, experts say.

The fact that the army has put in place a figurehead government and that military officers continue to call the shots behind the scenes only intensifies the problem.

...Was the military coup itself a diversion for drug trafficking? Some experts point to signs that as the armed forces were seizing the presidency, taking over radio stations and arresting government officials, there was a flurry of drug activity on one of the islands of the Bijagós Archipelago, what amounted to a three-day offloading of suspicious sacks.

That surreptitious activity appears to have been simply a prelude.

“There has clearly been an increase in Guinea-Bissau in the last several months,” said Pierre Lapaque, head of the regional United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for West and Central Africa. “We are seeing more and more drugs regularly arriving in this country.”

Mr. Lapaque called the trafficking in Guinea-Bissau “a major worry” and an “open sore,” and, like others, suggested that it was no coincidence that trafficking had spiked since the coup.

Joaquin Gonzalez-Ducay, the European Union ambassador in Bissau, said: “As a country it is controlled by those who formed the coup d’état. They can do what they want to do. Now they have free rein.”

The senior D.E.A. official said, “People at the highest levels of the military are involved in the facilitation” of trafficking, and added: “In other African countries government officials are part of the problem. In Guinea-Bissau, it is the government itself that is the problem.”

United Nations officials agree. “The coup was perpetrated by people totally embedded in the drugs business,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the political environment here.

The country’s former prosecutor general, Octávio Inocêncio Alves, said, “A lot of the traffickers have direct relationships with the military.”

...Officials point to several indicators, besides the increase in plane flights, to show that Guinea-Bissau has become a major drug transit hub.

They cite photographs of a recently well-cleared stretch of road in a remote rural area near the Senegal border, complete with turning space for small planes. The clearing was created under the supervision of military authorities, officials say. They also note mysterious absences of fuel at the tiny international airport in the capital, presumed stolen by traffickers.

Four months before the coup, a plane, with the aid of uniformed soldiers, landed in a rural area in the center of the country, which is the size of Belgium, said João Biague, head of the judicial police. The landing took place not far from General Injai’s farm.

Mr. Biague heads what is nominally the country’s antidrug agency, though he made it clear that he and his staff are largely powerless to practice any form of drug interdiction despite receiving frequent tips about small planes landing from abroad. “The traffickers know we can’t do much,” he said.

The agency is so starved of funds that he does not have money to put gas in its few vehicles, Mr. Biague said. Paint is peeling on the outside of the judicial police’s two-story colonial building downtown, and mold blackens the ground-floor pilasters. It is allocated $85 a week from the country’s Justice Ministry.

“The agents we have in the field want to give up because they have nothing to eat,” Mr. Biague said.

In the last three years, there have been more than a half-dozen unsolved political assassinations here, including of the longtime president and the former army chief of staff, as well as at least two coup attempts, besides the successful coup. Nobody has been successfully prosecuted, though drugs were linked to many of them.

Last month, the justice minister of the transitional government warned opposition politicians not to speak publicly of “cases that don’t concern them,” under threat of criminal penalty.

This week, the repression appeared to tighten. General Injai threatened journalists with death if they asked questions about the assassination of the former president, and he warned that there would be many arrests as a result of the countercoup attempt.

There is remarkably little public talk of the unsolved political killings or of the country’s relations with the drug business. There have been no demonstrations; no discussion in the Parliament, shut down since July; no news conferences.

“A country that’s not capable of discussing its own problems-- it’s not a country, it’s not a state,” said Mr. Alves, the former prosecutor general.

The Obama administration, while encouraged France and then Britain, to intervene in Mali and offering material support for the endeavor, has a very different attitude towards Guinea-Bissau. After explicitly linking the country’s military to the drug trade in 2010 and freezing the U.S. assets of drug kingpins ex-chief of the navy, Rear Adm. Bubo Na Tchuto, and the air force chief of staff, Ibraima Papa Camara, the Obama administration has backed off considerably. The top U.S. diplomat at the Guinea-Bissau desk in Dakar, Russel Hanks: "You will only have an impact on this transition by engagement, not by isolation. These are the people who came in to pick up the pieces after the coup.”

And, no, neither Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham nor Kelly Ayotte brought up Guinea-Bissau in the Senate confirmation hearings for Chuck Hagel last week. Awesome tunes though:

Mali-- Is France Freeing The Slaves? I Don't Think So

This month, the army of the quasi-legitimate Malian government-- with the help of French fighters and cheers from a few African neighbors-- turned back the Islamists' drive on Mopti (the landlocked country's biggest river port, Mali's Chicago) and Bamako (the capital) and then retook the only two big towns that had been in rebel hands, the legendary Sahara trading cities of Gao and Timbuktu. I tried explaining the significance of this to a friend yesterday and he thought I was telling him about a version of speed-cum-ecstasy that club goers are using these days and asked me if I knew the difference between Blue Mollies and Black Mollies. I don't.

But I do know the difference between the Tuaregs, who started the trouble in Mali this go-round and the Islamists (some of whom are Tuaregs as well) who decided to take advantage of it to push their own, very separate agenda. The Tuareg agenda is an independent state that takes in the vast wastelands of the Sahara, centering on northern Mali but including large swathes of-- at least-- Mauritania and Niger. They call it Azawad and declared it an independent state in April after they captured Timbuktu and Gao from Mali's U.S.-trained army. The unique lifestyle they seek to preserve includes their right to hold the darker-skinned Malians in slavery. There are hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Mali, Niger and Mauritania who are Tuareg slaves. One would think that would be a big story in the coverage of a country few Americans had even heard of before this year, right?

But the West has had a reason for playing down the slavery aspect of the Mali civil war. From the very beginning they hoped to exploit the tensions between the Tuaregs and the Islamists and their two divergent agendas. So, no one wanted to play up painting the Tuaregs as slave-holding villains. The media is too stupid and lazy to report anything much more than what they're spoon-fed, especially from such a remote and physically inhospitable location as northern Mali. So, basically, there has been no coverage of slavery even from the most well-meaning news sources.

Tuesday, I noticed AP trumpeting how the Tuaregs had "liberated" Kidal, the third biggest town in northern Mali, from the Islamists. When the Tuaregs first captured Kidal it was, basically, reigniting a decades on-and-off again civil war. This time the Tuaregs are the "liberators."

As French and Malian soldiers held control of the fabled desert city of Timbuktu following the retreat of Islamist extremists, Tuareg fighters claimed Tuesday that they seized the strategic city of Kidal and other northern towns.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad-- the Tuareg group's name for northern Mali-- appears to have taken advantage of a French-led bombing and ground campaign to dislodge al-Qaida-linked Islamist fighters from the towns in northern Mali. Phone lines were down in Kidal, making it difficult to independently confirm the group's claim.

The Tuareg movement said on its website that it was ready to work with French troops and fight terror organizations.

However, it said it would refuse to allow Malian soldiers in Kidal, and the other towns under its control in northeastern Mali, following allegations that the troops killed civilians suspected of having links to the Islamists.

It said it "decided to retake these localities with all urgency to assure the security of the belongings, and more particularly of people, because of the grave danger their lives faced with the return of the Malian army, marching in the footsteps of the French army."

While the group known as NMLA was an important player in the early days of the Malian conflict last April, it had been ousted from power in northern Mali by the al-Qaida-linked extremists known as Ansar Dine.

The media coverage I've seen lately has tended to paint the Tuaregs as the poor, helpless victims of the brutal Malian army. I'm not condoning killing ethnic groups for any reason... but it's not inconsequential to remember that the Tuareg lifestyle is barbaric beyond anything I've ever experienced anywhere in the world and that barbarism includes holding Malians in the most brutal slavery you can possibly imagine. Now that Britain has sent troops to Mali they, along with France, have a moral responsibility for ending the Tuareg "right" to hold the Bella people in slave bondage for real and forever.

This typical media report (below) pretty much gets everything wrong, starting with the map, which mislocates Konna, Algeria and Mauritania for starters. The clueless Al Jazeera host, who may think "this all seems to be going a little bit too easy at the moment," is just pathetic and certainly Al Jazeera has no interest in talking about the Tuaregs' penchant for slavery.

The Liberation Of Timbuktu

There's been a lot of hand wringing over the French role in Mali's civil war. Some very sincere observers refuse to see beyond the Western imperialism or the anti-Muslim interpretations-- although it wasn't a Westerner who coined the nifty phrase "beasts with turbans" for the jihadis ramaging through northern Africa now. Since my trip to Mali in 2008, I've written a few dozen articles about the country on my travel blog, about the music, the tourism, the food, the culture, the politics and, of course, the civil war that has ravaged the country. Here, at DWT there have been fewer posts and most of them have been about how Western media is covering up the endemic slavery that is so much a part of this story. But I saw the slavery with my own eyes and I don't care if people want to call France imperialistic or anti-Muslim for what they're doing. Freeing slaves-- even inadvertently-- trumps the rest of the bullshit.

That said, Saturday the Malian Army, with their French allies, stormed into legendary Gao and freed it, bombed the hell out of Kidal, and yesterday they re-took even more legendary Timbuktu, which has been the goal of so many travelers to Mali for so many centuries-- and was mine less than 5 years ago. There are some troops from Chad and Niger lurking near the battle (for the optics apparently) and other Africans countries have also grudgingly sent a few handfuls of soldiers to not do anything but look like they're in solidarity with Mali's quasi-legitimate, de facto central government.

French and Malian troops were on Sunday restoring government control over the fabled Saharan trading town of Timbuktu, the latest gain in a fast-moving French-led offensive against al Qaeda-allied fighters occupying northern Mali.

The Islamist militant rebels have pulled back northwards to avoid relentless French air strikes that have destroyed their bases, vehicles and weapons, allowing French and Malian troops to advance rapidly with air support and armored vehicles.

A Malian military source told Reuters the French and Malian forces reached "the gates of Timbuktu" late on Saturday without meeting resistance from the Islamist insurgents who had held the town since last year.

The advancing troops were working on securing the town, a UNESCO World Heritage site and labyrinth of ancient mosques and monuments and mud-brick homes, ready to flush out any Islamist fighters who might still be hiding among the population.

"Timbuktu is delicate, you can't just go in like that," the source, who asked not to be named, said.

On Saturday, the French-Malian offensive recaptured Gao, which along with Timbuktu was one of three major northern towns occupied last year by Tuareg and Islamist rebels who included fighters from al Qaeda's North Africa wing AQIM.

The third town, Kidal, remains in rebel hands.

The United States and Europe are backing the U.N.-mandated Mali operation as a counterstrike against the threat of radical Islamist jihadists using the West African state's inhospitable Sahara desert as a launching pad for international attacks.

One Timbuktu resident now outside the town said a friend inside had sent him SMS messages saying he had seen government troops on the streets, but gave no more details.

Fighters from the Islamist alliance in north Mali, which groups AQIM with Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine and AQIM splinter MUJWA, had destroyed ancient shrines sacred to moderate Sufi Moslems in Timbuktu, provoking international outrage.

They had also imposed severe sharia, Islamic law, including amputations for thieves and stoning of adulterers.

Malian government control was restored in Gao on Saturday, after French special forces backed by warplanes and helicopters seized the town's airport and a key bridge. Around a dozen "terrorists" were killed in the assault, while French forces suffered no losses or injuries, France's defense ministry said.

The Islamists seemed to be pulling back further north into the trackless desert wastes and mountain fastnesses of the Sahara, from where some military experts fear they could carry on a hit-and-run guerrilla war against the government.

Not the mayor of Gao-- Roland in Djenne in 2008

Officials said the mayor of Gao, Sadou Diallo, who had taken refuge in Bamako during the Islamist occupation, had been reinstalled at the head of the local administration while French, Malian, Chadian and Nigerien troops secured the town and the surrounding area.

As the French and Malian troops push into northern Mali, African troops from a continental intervention force expected to number 7,700 are being flown into the country, despite delays due to logistical problems and the lack of airlift capacity.

The robust military action by France over the past two weeks in its former Sahel colony has left African leaders embarrassed about the continent's inability to quickly field its own force to restore the territorial integrity of an African state.

At an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, outgoing AU chairman Thomas Boni Yayi, president of Benin, criticized Africa's slow response to the Islamist insurgency in Mali, and welcomed international support for the French-led operation

. "How could it be that when faced with a danger that threatens its very foundations, Africa, although it had the means to defend itself, continued to wait," Yayi told African leaders on Sunday after handing over the AU chair to Ethiopia.

France sent warplanes and 2,500 troops to Mali, formerly French Sudan, after its government appealed to Paris for help when Islamist rebel columns early in January launched an offensive towards the southern capital Bamako. The rebels seized several towns, since recaptured by the French.

Around 1,900 African troops, including Chadian, have been deployed to Mali so far as part of the planned U.S.-based African intervention force, known as AFISMA.

Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Niger and Chad are providing troops while Burundi and other African nations have pledged to contribute.

While the French and Malians thrust northeast in a two-pronged offensive through Gao and Timbuktu, Chadian and local forces in neighboring Niger are preparing a flanking thrust against the Islamists coming up from the south.

Washington and European governments, while providing airlift and intelligence support to the anti-militant offensive in Mali, are not planning to send in any combat troops.

The AU is expected to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in logistical support and funding for the AFISMA force at a conference of donors for the Mali operation to be held in Addis Ababa on January 29.

The U.S. previously depended on Moroccan troops and Congolese troops to carry out its policies in Africa but political realities in both countries are so changed that neither country is capable of doing anything much for the Pentagon any longer. Although it's doubtful they would have prevented the wanton destruction by the fundamentalist Islamists of an ancient library filled with thousands of irreplaceable Islamic manuscripts on their way out of Timbuktu Saturday. They also burned down the town hall, the governor's office and shrines to over 300 Sufi saints.

The manuscripts survived for centuries in Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara hidden in wooden trunks, boxes beneath the sand and caves. The majority are written in Arabic, with some in African languages, and one in Hebrew, and cover a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.

Why Are Virtually All The News Sources Covering Up Slavery In Mali?

A few days ago I posted about Mali on my travel blog again. I've been covering their civil war on the travel blog because I spent time in the country a few years ago and have been writing about it ever since. Not many Americans had ever even heard of it-- let alone gone there-- until this year. But another old friend of mine, Rick Streicker, who worked as an attorney at Warner Bros when I was there, had also been there and left this post on my Facebook page.

The whole race/slavery angle is shockingly evident the minute you set foot in northern Mali even if you haven't read the historical accounts of enslaved black Africans forced to work in the Tuaregs' underground desert salt mines. For some reason Western travelers seem to love those romantic, swashbuckling Tuaregs-- for the same reason that (some, white) American teens swoon and blubber over Gone With the Wind?

Like Rick said, if you travel to northern Mali at all-- and leave your hotel room-- you can't miss seeing evidence of slavery-in-action with your own eyes. I've read that the Tuaregs also keep slaves in Niger and Mauretania and I'm sure it's true but in Mali I saw it. It was so eery when I ran across my first gang of armed-tp-the-teeth Tuaregs in northern Mali. We were waiting for a couple hours for the ferry to take us across the Niger on the way to Timbuktu and the settlement there is a Bella one. Until 1973's epoch drought nearly wiped out the Tuareg's camel herds, the Bella had been their slaves. In 1973, basically because the Tuareg couldn't feed them anymore, they emancipated them-- although they still use slaves ("illegally") to mine salt in the far reaches of the Sahara and there are still some "small services" that many of them still render to their former masters (like when there is a wedding or something). Anyway, this Bella settlement was all festive, lively, noisy and bustling like all the villages we visited in Mali, when a couple of pickup trucks filled with Tuaregs pulled up to the bank of the river. Suddenly things got dead silent. All of the women and children just suddenly disappeared. It reminded me of a scene from Star Wars when some alien warrior people dropped by a space cafe. Anyway, the Tuaregs were pretty armed-to-the-teeth with swords and daggers and God knows what else and they don't seem to smile much; no chatty bonjours and they certainly don't ask you for a Bic or an empty water bottle or candy. The Tuareg War ended in the mid-90's though and, until the latest outbreak, they seemed to be peaceable enough (except around Kidal) and way in the northern Sahara where Mali, Algeria and Mauritania share vast trackless wastes. In Timbuktu, they were certainly easy enough to get along with.

Now they've declared most of Mali, including Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, the independent country of Azawad, although no other country recognizes it. "They," by the way, is the MNLA, the Tuaregs of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, but it gets sticky not because of the Tuaregs and their quest for slaves but because they joined forces with a radical Islamist group, Ansar Dine, who were heavily armed after the fall of Qaddafi where many of them had been serving as mercenaries, and who are said to be somehow connected to al-Qaeda. The Western strategy is to sow dischord between the MNLA and Ansar Dine which is why they don't demonize the Tuaregs and their slave holding. In fact the MNLA is no longer working with Ansar Dine and has fought several (losing) battles with them. Ansar Dine now controls Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu and in December, the MNLA gave up the idea of an independent state and aligned themselves with the Maian government against the Islamists.

The Western media-- not just here but in France and Britain as well-- has completely ignored the whole issue of slavery in the Mali civil war. (Needless to say, so has the Arab media.) No one brings it up-- not even NPR or a dependable civil libertarian like Glenn Greenwald writing for the Guardian. I found one mention, in a publication I was unaware of, International Business Times which gave a brief outline of the slavery connection.

Early in 2012 the Tuaregs, a nomadic group native to the region, began asserting control over communities in northern Mali. On their heels came several militant Islamist groups that took over the area and are now the target of a French military intervention. Mali is also suffering from an unstable government in the capital city of Bamako, which has never recovered from a military coup that unseated the former administration in March.

But for two decades before all that, Mali was a stable democracy-- one of few in a tumultuous and under-resourced region.

Or so the story went. In fact, not all citizens enjoyed equal rights in this country of 16 million. Hundreds of thousands were-- and are-- victims of modern slavery, and the recent upheaval there has thrown a wrench into international activists’ long-running efforts to put an end to the practice.

Slavery has been a reality in West Africa for centuries. Mali formally outlawed it when it became independent from France in 1960, but the rule is toothless since slave ownership was never criminalized.

The practice of slavery long has been a cultural norm in many Malian communities. As in neighboring Mauritania, slaves and slave owners are often described in terms of “black” and “white,” since slave descendants tend to have black African roots and their masters are typically of lighter-skinned Berber ancestry. But in fact, members of both groups have varying skin tones, and ethnicities are sometimes mixed due to masters raping female slaves.

According to Temedt, a Mali-based advocacy program, about 200,000 people are currently enslaved in the country and about 600,000 more are slave descendants under some form of control even though they live separately from their masters. Temedt works with Anti-Slavery International, a London-based human rights organization, to help free victims of slavery and then assist them in the transition to independence.

“We’re mainly working with ethnic Tuaregs, who have a very strong hierarchy including nobles, warriors and slave classes,” said Anti-Slavery International’s Africa Program Coordinator Sarah Mathewson, noting that slavery exists among other Malian communities as well.

Ending slavery is more complicated than it seems, since it is not only masters who are wedded to the system. Often, slave themselves have no desire to escape their servitude.

“I think for many people in that situation, the idea of leaving or escaping wouldn’t even occur,” says Mathewson. “They’re given no sense of their own agency; they’re in a state of total submission. And masters often use religion to further indoctrinate people, saying it’s God’s will they should be enslaved.”

This was the flawed Democracy Now report by Al Jezeera's Mali correspondent May Ying Welsh that made me decide to speak out against the slavery coverup again.

France Commits Troops To Mali

I'm guessing most Americans scratched their heads quizzically when Mitt Romney brought Mali up during the foreign policy debate with President Obama. Mali has a storied history-- think Timbuktu-- and their gold helped fund the Renaissance and their music led directly to the blues. I spent almost a month there in 2008, mostly in Bamako, Timbuktu, Dogon country, Djenne and Mopti. More recently, the country has been devasted by a civil war and other African countries and the UN have been talking about coming to the Malians rescue... and talking and talking and talking. This week, apparently, France stopped talking-- and started rescuing.

President Francois Hollande has said France is intervening to stop al-Qaeda-linked fighters in Mali who have been moving toward the capital, Bamako.

The announcement by the leader of France, the former colonial overseer in West Africa, came on Friday after Mali's interim president Dioncounda Traore had appealed for French help in stopping the rebels' advance.

"I have agreed to Mali's demand, which means French forces have provided support to Mali this afternoon," Hollande said on Friday. "The operation will last as long as is necessary."

The Malian army is already being backed by Western military personnel in a fresh counter-offensive against Islamists, a Mali government official confrimed to the AFP news agency.

"European military, including French, are present in Mali to repel any southward advance by the Islamists," the official told AFP on Friday. "We will not reveal their number, nor where they are based, nor what equipment they have.

"They are here. We thank these countries who have understood that we are dealing with terrorists," he added.

Efforts to retake the central town of Kona were launched from Sevare, a town about 70km to the south, where the Malian army has a command base.

Kona was seized by Islamist armed groups on Thursday and about 1,200 fighters have moved to within 20km of Mopti, a strategically important town on the frontier between rebel-held and government-held territories.

Mopti hosts a key Malian military airstrip, which would be vital for any missions into the north of the country.

"We're talking about no ECOWAS intervention until September, so taking that airport would delay everything," political analyst Sylvain Touati told Al Jazeera.

"The situation has been the same for seven months. I don't know why Hollande has talked about intervention today, since [Mali] is already destabilising."

Until now, France-- like other EU countries-- had limited its plans for assistance to training and logistics support for Mali's troubled army, and had deferred to Mali and its African neighbours to resolve the crisis.

"They really needed to be propped up by another force," said Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Paris. "It doesn't seem like Mali's government has much time."

The EU will also speed up preparations to send a team to Mali to help train the country's army to fight Islamist rebels, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Friday.

Earlier, the UN Security Council had called for the "rapid deployment" of an African-led international force to Mali.

France has hundreds of troops across western Africa, with bases or sites in places such as Senegal, Ivory Coast, Chad and Gabon.

The rebels "have even tried to deal a fatal blow to the very existence of Mali", President Hollande said in an earlier speech on Friday to the French diplomatic corps. "France, like its African partners and the entire international community, cannot accept that."

France will act under authority of three recent UN Security Council resolutions that call on member states to help Mali resolve its crisis in the face of a terrorist threat, both through political and military means, French diplomats have said.

Speaking to the Associated Press news agency after the president's speech, a top French diplomat said his country has completed its deployment of two surveillance drones to the region-- to help boost reconnaissance of the rebels' movements and activities.

The official said France is now able to deploy military assets "very quickly" and insisted that Hollande's speech was "not just words... When you say that you are ready to intervene, you have to be.

France's position has been complicated because armed groups in northern Mali currently hold seven French hostages.

In an updated travel advisory, the French foreign ministry said on Friday all non-essential French citizens should leave. International aid organisations have begun evacuating staff from the narrow central belt of the country.

For months, Hollande had explicitly said France would not send ground forces into Mali, but Hollande's speech suggested that French air power would be used-- marking a shift from recent public statements from Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian that it would not be.

The Tuareg rebels are fighting, at least in part, to reassert their right to hold slaves, something we saw with our own eyes in the northern part of the country. Right now, the Western powers are hoping to turn the Tuaregs against the Islamists so they're not demonizing the Tuaregs in the media in terms of slavery, something their government's don't prioritize. The key town of Konna has been recaptured and yesterday, the NY Times was already reporting that the French are "engaged in an intense battle to beat back an aggressive militant push into the center of the country," breaking the stalemate with the Islamists who have seized most of the country.

French troops carried out airstrikes against Islamist fighters, blunting an advance by hundreds of heavily armed extremists, according to French officials and Gen. Carter F. Ham, the top American military commander in Africa. One French helicopter had apparently been downed in the fighting, he said.

The Pentagon is now weighing a broad range of options to support the French effort, including enhanced intelligence-sharing and logistics support, but it is not considering sending American troops, General Ham said.

The sudden introduction of Western troops upends months of tortured debate over how-- and when-- foreign nations should confront the Islamist seizure of northern Mali. The Obama administration and governments around world have long been alarmed that a vast territory roughly twice the size of Germany could so easily fall into the hands of extremists, calling it a safe haven where terrorists were building their ranks and seeking to extend their influence throughout the region and beyond.

Yet for months, the Islamists have appeared increasingly unshakable in their stronghold, carrying out public amputations, whippings and stonings as the weak Malian army retreated south and African nations debated how to find money and soldiers to recapture the territory.

All of that changed this week, when the Islamists suddenly charged southward with a force of 800 to 900 fighters in 50 to 200 vehicles, taking over a frontier town that had been the de facto line of government control, according to General Ham and a Western diplomat. Worried that there was little to stop the militants from storming ever further into Mali, France-- for the second time in less than two years-- intervened with guns and bombs into a former African colony rent by turmoil.

By Monday, the African regional defense group, ECOWAS, will be sending troops to help Mali retake the northern half of the country from the Tuareg rebels and jihadi extremists. The Islamists are vowing to make France "pay the price" (and a French helicopter pilot died in the battle for Konna yesterday). We'll end this report with a propaganda film released by the rebels: