Will France regret intervening in Mali?

French forces have helped the West African country's government stop the advance of al-Qaeda-linked rebels. Now what?

Nice Cote d'Azur airport in France: France has heightened security after al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels in Mali launched a counter-offensive on Jan. 14.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Eric Gaillard)

French jets launched airstrikes against Islamist rebels in Mali for the fourth straight day on Monday, as part of an intervention aimed at destroying the fighting capabilities of the insurgents. Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said France's military involvement in Mali, which the West African country's government requested, would be wrapped up in "a matter of weeks." "We have no intention of staying forever," Fabius said. But rebels of the al-Qaeda-linked Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa warned that the government of French President Francois Hollande would pay dearly, and for a long time to come, for its decision to wade into the fight. "France has opened the gates of hell for all the French," said Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for the insurgents. Is France helping to squelch a budding terrorist threat, or is it merely making itself a target?

This could be a quagmire: The French intervention "appears to be halting the lightning advance of radical Islamists seen as a threat to Europe," says The Associated Press. Getting out won't be as easy as France hopes, though. In fact, this operation raises "the specter of an African quagmire in a new theater of the West's war on terror just as France and other U.S. allies emerge from the old one in Afghanistan."

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.