Posted on 04/05/2013 9:57:49 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
BAMAKO/PARIS (Reuters) - France has proposed keeping a permanent force of 1,000 French troops in Mali to fight armed Islamist militants, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Friday.
Fabius, on a visit to Bamako, said France was pushing ahead with plans to reduce its 4,000-strong military presence from the end of this month but planned to keep a combat force in Mali to support a future U.N. peacekeeping mission.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called last week for the deployment of a U.N. mission of 11,200 troops and 1,440 police in Mali once major combat ends.
This would include thousands of African troops already in Mali in support of France's three-month military campaign, which has swept Islamist rebels out of the towns of northern Mali and into remote desert and mountain hideaways.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
It looks like most of our tax money goes to pay the UN to keep African troops employed in each others countries.
Shouldn’t France send more troops to the in-country ‘hoods?
Maybe. This is a good start. Eventually the French will demand at least as good protection as the Malians get, I suppose.
Let's see, 1,000 French troops in Mali, another 550 in Central African Republic plus however many they still have in Ivory Coast. To balance it out they're bringing in thousands of African "refugees." It's some type of exchange program.
(No offense to the French commander).
It might seem strange that France has so many soldiers in Mali, Central African Republic and Ivory Coast but they have lots of business interests in their former colonies. Mali has uranium and gold. CAR has diamonds. Lots of financial reasons to keep jihadists out.
You are correct. If France leaves, there is a real possibility that others might poach the business of the French trading companies.
The poachers would be Americans who now sell the Africans via purchase orders received from Paris. In the case of Chad and Burkina Faso, a French company actually serves as the import control function of the government.
Send in the foreign Legion!
Yeah. Just irks me that we are being shown up by the French.
We have no colonies in Africa.
Our African colonies are in Deeetroit and DC and Atlanta.
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