France appeared on Wednesday to accept that it would need to keep thousands of troops in Africa's Sahel region for an indefinite period given the ongoing instability and preponderance of Islamist militants.
The region, a politically fragile area whose remote desert spaces spanning from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east host a medley of jihadist groups, is seen as vulnerable to further attacks after strikes on soft targets in Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast earlier this year.
That's good. This has traditionally been a French sphere because of former colonies in the region that France still has relations with.
And I assume that America and Germany wouldn't be committing forces to stabilizing the region without the French being committed to the same mission.
