French forces are still leading an effort to hunt down several hundred jihadis in northern Mali and to find arms and ammunition stashed up there. It would help their effort if open fighting between government factions and between southerners and northerners didn't break out.
The Mali government needs the Tuaregs of the north to hate the jihadis more than they hate the more numerous southern Malians. And the Mali government needs their army--which revolted because it felt the government didn't wage war against Tuareg separatists with enough seriousness--to like calm more than control in Malian governance. Neither result seems likely at this point:
[Ethnic] and racial violence continues throughout the north, especially in the major cities. Black Africans living in the north, usually in the cities, are eager for revenge against Arabs (the most violent Islamic terrorists were Arab) and Tuaregs (the lighter skinned tribesmen of the north who have been regularly rebelling against the rule of the black African majority) and French troops have not been able to stop revenge attacks.
The UN wants to expand the Mali peacekeeping force from 7,000 to 11,000. While most of these peacekeepers will be in the north, some are also needed in the south, where the Mali Army still refuses to halt its interference in the government.
I figured that 3,000 French troops could route the jihadis. And they did. I also assume that if the Tuaregs of the north aren't kept friendly after the jihadis made the Mali government look better by comparison, that the Tuaregs will flip back to seeing the jihadis as a necessary evil to fight the southerners.
Some type of autonomy for the north needs to be negotiated or the foreign troops that the Mali government absolutely needs to stay in control will get tired of the expense and casualties, and go home. Then the Mali troops will be no more capable of holding the north than they were a year ago when they lost control the first time.
Then al Qaeda will have a sanctuary again. We need some smart diplomacy here.
