Mali crisis deepens as Islamists tighten grip over breakaway Azawad

take the initiative, but once those decisions are taken it would make sense to have significant support and collaboration with Europe,” French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.

France and the United States conditioned their support on a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the military campaign. Niger is already in discussion with Security Council members, and a formal presentation will be made within weeks.

Diplomats said that the Security Council was not yet ready to agree to an African Union request for intervention in Mali, and that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) first needed to show it had the troops, credible objectives, and a sound strategy to conduct a military operation in north Mali.

EU’s new strategy for the Sahel
“There is the possibility that Mali could become the next wellspring of instability and terrorist sanctuary in this part of Africa,” said Valentina Soria, a security expert at the Royal United Services Institute, an independent think tank in London. “The E.U. has a big stake in preventing this from happening.”

The New York Times reports that the EU, prompted by France, the former colonial power in the region, is worried about the toxic mix of separatism and Islamic radicalization in the region, and the vulnerability of weak governments – and many countries in the regions of weak governments – to contagion.

France was clear that it thought that other European countries, not only France, should shoulder the responsibility of addressing the deteriorating situation in the Sahel. Defense Minister Le Drian pushed for a Europe-wide strategy during talks with his Italian counterpart Giampaolo Di Paola a week and a half ago in Paris. “The best solution … is that Europeans who feel directly concerned by the evolution of the Sahel crisis and that want an overall solution, and not specifically a military one, meet and discuss the possibility of common action for a specific mission,” he told reporters after the meeting.

The EU, through its European External Action Service, or EEAS., the EU foreign policy body led by Catherine Ashton, is now in the process of fashioning a more active strategy in the Sahel, the area which includes Mali, Niger, and Mauritania.

Some of the EU initiatives are already underway:

• An advance party of European military and civilian security advisors are operating in northern Niger in a mission brought forward because of deepening concerns over the threat of terrorism from neighboring Azawad.
• The EU has also ear-marked €150 million ($187 million) to improve security across the Sahel.
• In late July or early August, the EEAS will establish a police training mission in Niger to train soldiers and police officers in fighting terrorism and organized crime.
• The EU has also increased food and medical assistance to the government of Mali, and has sent specialists to help in the distribution of the new supplies.
• The EU is now working with ECOWAS and the African Union to devise programs to shore up the civilian government in southern Mali. The purpose is to make sure that when Mali is reunified – in all likelihood, as a result of a military operation by its neighbors – the reunited country will have more effective institutions than those which existed before the country’s break-up.