Bolstered with American intelligence assets and drones, the French can pound the jihadis in Mali's north and degrade them with little the jihadis can do to stop them.
The jihadis have responded by continuing to attack, this time taking Diabaly, which is said to be 400 kilometers north of the capital, Bamako. It seems like that would be northeast, around the corner of Mauritania, along a secondary road to the north that lies west of the main route north that goes through Mopti (and Konna futher north). Mali government forces again could not hold in the face of the jihadi attack.
From the CIA web site.
As I said, the jihadis should push south bypassing points of resistance where they can. Do that and the ill-trained Mali troops will get nervous looking over their shoulders and contemplating that their line of retreat is cut. Recall that before the jihadis helped the Tuaregs seize the north (and then pushed the Tuaregs out of the way), we tried to use air resupply to keep Mali troops in the fight when they were still trying to hold the north. So physical supplies will not overcome the psychological worry of being alone with no way out.
From Diabaly, if the jihadis could push south to Segou, they'd place themselves on the main road between Bamako and Mopti. Really, Mali troops have not shown themselves able to stop the jihadis when attacked. I imagine the troops in Bamako are better quality (Mali politicians surely want their best troops close to the capital in case the struggle for power turns violent again), but that still leaves a lot of room for the jihadis to advance before getting to the harder target of Bamako where the bulk of the French troops are deployed.
The French even say that their troop concentration (still totaling less than one of our infantry battalions in numbers) in Bamako is intended to keep the jihadis from storming the capital. Thus, with French ground power far from the front, the jihadis could exploit the shaky morale of the Mali troops to hit them hard at Konna and then at Mopti (and nearby Sevare).
With France having to beef up home defense in worry that al Qaeda's franchise in Mali will strike there, France really needs to send in enough troops to go on offense and smash up the jihadis enough for Mali troops to be able to hold garrisons without risking them cracking if under an assault by a significant jihadi force. The French will need those ECOWAS forces (especially three battalions promised by Niger, Burkina Faso and Senegal--local "power" Nigeria's inability to quickly dispatch even a single battalion should be embarrassing for them) to bolster the Mali troops in garrison roles and for limited anti-jihadi missions in the field.
But French statements that their involvement is just temporary until they can step back is folly. They'd be telling the jihadis to strike hard when the French retire to rout the Mali forces before the French can return again.
And the French would be leaving 6,000 French citizens in Mali vulnerable to kidnapping (I think 7 are already captive) and a massacre if the Mali forces collapse.
If the French are surprised that the jihadis are this strong after 9 months of being left alone in their new caliphate, how much more will the jihadis do if the jihadis are left alone until the autumn when the grand UN plan to defeat the jihadis is rolled out? Did the UN think the jihadis were this strong already? Did that freaking internationally blessed plan count on that? Time is a weapon, and it is foolish to assume your enemy can't use it better than you can.
This is France's show, at this point. They have the primary interest and the military power to defeat the jihadis and retak the cities of the north. All along I've called for them to act with our support limited to intelligence, drones, logistics, and special forces. After all, we have an interest in this fight to hit the jihadis who were involved in the Benghazi 9/11 attacks. I'm sure (although I'm guessing) that it was our intelligence that allowed the French to bomb targets in northern Mali. Better late than never and better the French than not at all given our unwillingness to strike back.
Relatively small forces are contesting a very large area. Under those circumstances, standing on defense to hold so many fixed locations will use up available forces. Both sides need to go on offense to keep the enemy reacting and unable to hit those fixed locations.
If the French think they can reason with these murderers, think again (from the Washington Post article below):
French radio Europe 1 broadcast a telephone interview with Omar Ould Hamaha, a leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, which controls part of northern Mali. In it he dared the French to “come down on the ground if they’re real men. We’ll welcome them with open arms,” he said. “France has opened the gates of hell ... it has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia.”
Jihadis are nutballs. Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia have been turned into mass graves for jihadis yet the living jihadis can still call them "traps" that Westerners and non-Moslems--have fallen into. In ground fights that the jihadis claim to be superior in, Western soldiers have sent many jihadis to early graves.
Compiled from reports here, here, here, and here.
UPDATE: While I was just reading a map to suggest Segou as a jihadi target, the French have apparently decided it is vulnerable, too:
The French embassy in Bamako sent an email ordering the immediate evacuation of all French nationals living in the Malian town of Segou.
When the Mali defenders in Mopti and point north hear that France is worried about Segou, far behind their positions, those defenders will get nervous about their fate.
UPDATE: According to this report, the jihadis cut off the road to Diabaly--as I mentioned would spark extreme worry--before taking the town. French air strikes weren't enough to stop the al Qaeda attack.
And Mali army defenders at Niono, south of Diabaly, are very worried despite a show of bravado before Diabaly fell:
Just hours before Diabaly fell, a commander at the military post in Niono, the town immediately to the south, laughed on the phone, and confidently asserted that the Islamists would never take Niono.
By afternoon, the commander, who could not be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly, sounded almost desperate. "We feel truly threatened," he said.
He said the rebels approached Diabaly from the east, infiltrating the rice-growing region of Alatona, which until recently was the site of a large, U.S.-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation project.
French aircraft bombed a rebel convoy 25 miles (40 kilometers)) from Diabaly late Sunday night, the commander said. "This morning we woke up and realized that the enemy was still there. They cut off the road to Diabaly. We are truly surprised — astonished," he said.
It was unclear what happened to the Malian troops based at the military camp in Diabaly. The commander said that since the Islamists seized the town, he had not been able to reach any of the officers at the base.
Amazingly, to some, the jihadis didn't want to play out their role as victim in the grand UN plan to roll north in the autumn of 2013.
UPDATE: The French are leading a counter-attack to retake Diabaly. That is commendable, especially since the French might have just a company of marines in that attack.
