Diabaly is the first target, it seems:
French troops pressed northward in Mali toward territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, military officials said, announcing the start of a land assault that will put soldiers in direct combat "within hours." ...
Residents of Niono, a city in the center of Mali which is just south of a town that was overrun by the jihadists earlier this week, said they saw trucks of French soldiers arrive overnight. The natural target for the French infantry is Diabaly, located 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of the capital and roughly 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of Niono. French warplanes have carried out airstrikes on Diabaly since the weekend[.]
This could happen quickly. I don't imagine this is more than a few companies of marines and light armor, backed by a small air contingent. But they are good units.
The French seem to have a limited objective of knocking back the jihadis and allowing ECOWAS forces to take the lead and then resume the original plan of letting them lead a combined ECOWAS-Mali offensive north bolstered by French air power and logistics:
Hollande said France's goals are stopping terrorist aggression, securing Bamako, and allowing Mali to recover its territorial integrity. He also said France will support the African force that will soon be in Mali.
That implies taking Diabaly to secure Bamako and taking Konna to preserve the base that will allow Mali to recover their northern territories from al Qaeda.
The African force (of 3,300) will consist of: Nigeria: 900 troops; Burkina Faso: 500; Niger: 500; Senegal: 500; Togo: 500; Benin: 300; Guinea: 144; Ghana: 120; Chad: unspecified.
We'll see if Nigeria can find troops that won't embarrass Nigeria.
As I've mentioned, a force composed of so many contingents will be less effective as a fighting force than a single nation's force of the same size. It makes far more sense for these separate contingents to have garrison responsibilities following in the wake of a combat force that scatters the jihadis in a drive north. But the French won't do that, it seems.
Can France tear up al Qaeda enough to knock them back and then resume the leisurely plan to combat the jihadis sometime in the autumn? The Mali army seems worse than even I assumed in my pessimism of their effectiveness following the coup.
Or will the jihadis use their time to launch another offensive south once the French leave Mali in the hands of the ECOWAS force, rather than resume their assigned role of waiting for the fall offensive?
For such small forces in such a large theater, I still think holding the initiative is key to winning the war. But I freely admit I lack nuance.
UPDATE: Oh, and talk of a "quagmire" in a new insurgency misses the point that the jihadis are themselves a foreign invasion. Get back to me on an insurgency if the Tuaregs actively fight the French, ECOWAS, and Mali troops.
UPDATE: I hate this tone of faux deep thinking:
French ground troops in Mali advanced north today toward the tiny hamlet of Diabaly, preparing to engage Islamic rebels in a shooting war whose duration and success are still a question mark.
Good grief. Of freaking course the duration and success are a question mark! This is war. That's the nature of the beast. The jihadis want to win, too. They will try to win. And they'll even define their own concept of "winning."
This analysis too is a bit annoying:
“We’re talking about a large geographic space and it is sad to see that some people think that there are no places for these guys to hide,” he says. “It’s not a force on force fight,” he says. “This is an insurgency war. It doesn’t take a lot of Islamists to create a lot of damage. They [the Islamists] are prepared for this."
This is not an insurgency. These jihadis are irregular light infantry, to be sure, but "insurgency" implies the support of the people that the insurgents operate around. Malians aren't supporting the jihadis. Not even the Tuaregs who originally welcomed the jihadis as co-belligerents to eject the Mali government from the north.
Further, the jihadis are massing to try to take objectives rather than using hit and run tactics against the counter-insurgents. Hundreds of jihadis converged on Konna and perhaps a hundred are holding at Diabaly.
And taking the major urban centers will go a long way to making the jihadis less threatening. Mali is darned close to the intersection of No and Where. Banish the jihadis to the semi-desert countryside and they are less of a threat to Mali, the Tuaregs, the region, and Europe.
And as long as the jihadis want to mass, France should take the opportunity to kill them. The Mali-based jihadis aren't 10 feet tall. Plant them 6 feet deep.
