Africa looks beyond ‘war on terror’

Abstract

The government of Mali declared in early June that it would mount a “merciless struggle” against terrorist forces operating in the country’s far northern desert. President Amadou Toumani Touré vowed that the killers of a British hostage, murdered just a few days earlier, would not escape unpunished. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a predominantly Algerian dissident group that had claimed credit for the execution, reacted a few days later by assassinating a colonel in the Malian intelligence service. Then within less than a week the Malian army launched its first major operations against AQIM bases near the northern border with Algeria, reportedly killing up to two dozen fighters. In subsequent clashes Mali lost some of its own troops.