Has Maghreb and W. Africa Campaign Reached New Level?

A new issue of INSS Insight is posted on our site:

INSS Insight No. 397

Has the Campaign in the Maghreb and in West Africa Reached a New Level?

by Yoram Schweitzer, Olga Bogorad, and Einav Yogev, INSS

France’s military intervention in the campaign underway in Mali is connected to the recent hostage attack in southern Algeria by the Masked Battalion, a faction that split off from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. After ten months in which global jihadist elements succeeded in taking over the north of Mali and instituting sharia law, on the model of the Taliban in Afghanistan, France decided to send troops to Mali to assist the local army in obstructing the Islamists’ movement southward, on their way to the cities of Kona and Bamako, the capital. Yet despite the intervention by France and its allies, it appears that the campaign to liberate Mali from global jihadist elements is just beginning. The attempt to remove these organizations from the north of Mali is likely to lead to a bloody campaign throughout the country, and possibly beyond.

Editor, INSS Insight

Yehuda Ben Meir

INSS Insight is published through the generosity of

Sari and Israel Roizman, Philadelphia

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Reminder of the forthcoming event at INSS:

Challenges of Warfare in Densely Populated Areas

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The conference will be held in English in Hebrew, and will be broadcast on the INSS website.

On-site simultaneous translation will be available.

ENDS