U.S. military officials this week signed a deal to build a drone base in the North African country of Niger, amid growing concern over the rise of al Qaida–aligned militants in neighboring Mali and across the wider Sahara. For now, Obama administration officials said they only planned to fly unarmed surveillance drones from the desert base, but didn’t rule out launching missile strikes. The stepped-up U.S. involvement in the region came as a French offensive in northern Mali drove Islamist militants from many towns and cities they had occupied for months. Residents of Timbuktu cheered French and Malian government forces after they liberated the ancient desert city from the Islamists and their brutal form of sharia law. “Now we can breathe freely,” said a Malian.
Despite those victories, this battle “has only just begun,” said the Financial Times in an editorial. “Far from being defeated, the fighters have merely melted away into the hills.” Finding them will be more difficult than taking back cities, and the militants might choose to take their fight to neighboring states. U.S. drones could prove crucial in tracking down, and eliminating, the jihadists’ remote desert hideouts.
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The risks of failure in Mali are too great for the U.S. not to get involved, said Christopher Chivvis in USNews.com. Mali has already become the go-to destination for globe-trotting jihadists, and without a sustained Western intervention, it could easily “become the next Afghanistan—only much closer to Europe.” It’s in the interest not only of France but also of the U.S. and all other Western nations “to keep that from happening.”