DJENNE/BAMAKO, Mali: The US airlift of French forces to Mali to fight extremists is expected to go on for another two weeks, Pentagon officials said, as hundreds of African troops from Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso and Senegal are now joining the French-led intervention.
The fighters have controlled the vast desert stretches of northern Mali, with the weak government clinging to the south, since a military coup in the capital in March last year unleashed chaos.
The US Air Force is keeping between eight and 10 people at the airport in Mali’s capital to help with the incoming and outgoing flights, the Pentagon said late Tuesday.
The US Air Force already has flown five C-17 flights into Bamako, delivering more than 80 French troops and 124 tons of equipment, it said.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said between 700 and 800 African forces were arriving in Mali.
She said Chad has also committed between 1,000 and 2,000 soldiers depending on the need, and they are on their way to Mali.
“Chad is a country that does have a relatively robust and well trained set of forces,” she said. “They also have interests to protect in the neighborhood, and we have been working with them to get them ready.”
Nuland on Tuesday praised the Malian forces for retaking the key towns of Diabaly and Douentza with the help of the French.
Japan said yesterday it would close its Malian embassy over growing security fears amid a French-led assault against militants, which has raised concerns of a backlash against ethnic Arabs and Tuaregs.
French and Malian troops were due to sweep the outskirts of towns recently recaptured from the Al Qaeda-linked rebels for landmines they suspect the extremists left as they fled an air and ground assault by the armies.
Nearly two weeks after the UN-backed offensive was launched in Mali to dislodge the rebels, the deteriorating situation prompted Japan to shut its embassy and evacuate key staff.
“After the French military advance the already unstable situation in Mali worsened further,” foreign ministry spokesman Yutaka Yokoi told reporters in Tokyo.
The decision came a day after Japan announced that at least seven of its citizens were killed in a hostage siege in Algeria, which neighbors Mali, after an attack by militants which they said was retaliation for the French offensive.
France swept to the aid of the ill-equipped Malian army on Jan. 11, as the extremists, which seized the vast north in April 2012 made a push south towards the capital Bamako.
The former colonial power has said it could deploy upwards of 2,500 troops, which would eventually hand over control to a West African force of over 4,000 troops, which will be boosted by 2,000 men pledged by Chad.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon hailed France’s “courageous” intervention but expressed fears over the safety of humanitarian workers and UN employees on the ground.
He added the proposed African force in Mali needed “critical logistical support” to help it take over from French forces.
The fallout from the war, which experts have warned could be drawn out and complex, is causing concerns.
The UN refugee agency estimates up to a million people could have fled their homes in coming months, and rights bodies have warned of the dire situation faced by those escaping fighting.
There are also increasing reports of attacks on light-skinned Tuareg or Arabs from Malian security forces.
“Here if you wear a turban, have a beard and wear a Tuareg robe, you are threatened,” said a shop owner in Segou, a town some 270 km northeast of Bamako.
“It has become very dangerous for us since this war started.”
Afraid of being targeted, his son has shaved his beard and stopped wearing his turban, traditionally sported by Tuaregs and Arabs who make up the bulk of the armed rebel groups.
Malian army chief General Ibrahima Dahirou Dembele promised that any soldier involved in abuses would be brought to book.
“One mustn’t get confused. Every white skin is not a terrorist and among the enemy which attacked our different position were many black skins. We are among brothers, whether one is black or white.”
Meanwhile international moves to aid the operations revved up with the US military airlifting French troops and equipment from France into Mali.
“We expect the mission to last for the next several days,” an AFRICOM spokesman, Chuck Prichard, told AFP in Germany on Tuesday.
Italy, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Arab Emirates are also providing transport planes or helicopters required to help move the African and French troops around Mali’s vast expanses.
Mali’s year-long crisis began when Tuaregs returning from fighting Gaddafi’s war in Libya, battle-hardened and with a massive arsenal, took up a decades-old rebellion for independence of the north which they call Azawad.
They allied with hardline insurgents amid a political vacuum in Bamako after a March coup, and seized the key towns of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu in a matter of days.
The insurgents later broke with their Tuareg allies, and with firm control of the north, implemented brutal sharia law.
FROM: AGENCIES
US airlift of French troops to Mali to last weeks
