This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/world/africa/france-hollande-timbuktu-mali.html

The article has changed 12 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 3 Version 4
French Leader Visits Timbuktu After His Troops Liberate City French Leader Visits Timbuktu After His Troops Liberate City
(about 3 hours later)
PARIS — President François Hollande of France arrived Saturday morning for a brief visit to the Malian city of Timbuktu, where he was greeted as a hero just days after French airstrikes and ground forces scattered the Islamists who had controlled the city for months, causing them to melt away into the rugged countryside. TIMBUKTU, Mali — France’s president, François Hollande, paid a triumphant visit to this ancient city on Saturday, receiving a rapturous welcome from thousands of people who gathered in a dusty square next to a 14th century mosque to dance, play drums and chant, “Vive la France!” The muezzin of the mosque, whose singing calls residents to pray five times a day, wore a scarf in the colors of the French flag around his neck, as he shouted, “Vive Hollande!”
French flags flew in the center of the city and a crowd reported to be in the thousands chanted, “Thank you, France” and “Long live François Hollande” as Mr. Hollande swept into town, accompanied by his ministers of defense, foreign affairs and development and flanked by the Malian president, Dioncounda Traoré. But even as thousands of people gathered outside the mud and wood mosque here to greet Mr. Hollande, hailing him as the city’s, and their country’s, savior, questions remain about what, exactly, France has accomplished aside from chasing Islamic extremists from the cities and into their desert and mountain redoubts.
But French officials and analysts fear that jubilation may shortly give way to increased ethnic tensions and violence — and it remains unclear if French or African forces will be sent to root out the Islamist fighters that have fled from Timbuktu and other northern cities, or when such operations might take place. “These Islamists, they have not been defeated,” said Moustapha Ben Essagouté, a member of one of the city’s most prominent families who lined up to greet Mr. Hollande here. “Hardly any of them have been killed. They have run into the desert and the mountains to hide.”
“It’s going to take a few more weeks,” Mr. Hollande said, according to news media reports, but he insisted that security responsibilities would soon be handed off to Malian and African forces. “It is not our role to stay,” he said. “Our African friends will be able to do the work that was ours until now.” Mr. Hollande, speaking to French and Malian troops gathered here, praised the alacrity of their victories.
France has a force of about 3,500 in the country, and about 3,000 soldiers from several African nations have flowed in since the French intervened last month. European military officers are to begin training the divided and disorganized Malian Army in the coming weeks or months, too, but it is unlikely that the African or Malian forces will be prepared to conduct operations against the militants before the rainy season, which generally lasts through August or so, meaning an offensive into the countryside might have to wait until then. “You have accomplished an exceptional mission,” he said. But, he later added, “The fight is not over.”
In the meantime, human rights groups have reported a number of abuses committed by Malian soldiers since the French military intervention began in mid-January, including accusations that soldiers conducted summary executions of civilians suspected of militant ties. Indeed, little is known about the fate of fighters who fled the cities that have been retaken in a lightning northward advance by French and Malian troops. In interviews, residents of cities abandoned by the Islamist rebels have said that the bulk of the fighters fled in the night long before the French arrived.
Since the liberation of Timbuktu and the northeastern city of Gao, there have also been widespread reports of looting and attacks against Arab and Tuareg residents, with black residents accusing them of collaboration with Islamist fighters; some of the groups under attack have reportedly fled. With their deep familiarity of the vast, forbidding territory between this city and the borders of Algeria and Mauritania, many worry that the Islamist groups will simply regroup and come back to try again.
Pressing, too, is the political question of the Tuaregs, some of whom have long called for an independent state in upper Mali. Their uprising last year set the stage for the militant Islamists who initially joined with the Tuaregs and overran the north. “If France leaves, they will come back,” Mr. Essagouté said.
French officials are pressing Mr. Traoré, the Malian president, to start negotiations quickly with Tuareg rebels, most of whom have now disavowed the Islamists. The majority of Tuaregs, the French believe, will agree to remain in a sovereign Mali with more guarantees of political autonomy, and the French hope that a deal will lead to early national elections; Mr. Traoré this week announced elections for the summer. The spidery network of Islamist militants in Mali numbers about 2,000 hard-core fighters, according to American intelligence officials. The most dangerous component of that mix is Al Qaeda’s affiliate in North Africa, known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or A.Q.I.M., the officials said.
The French Foreign Ministry has called on the Malian government to open talks with “legitimate representatives” and “non-terrorist-armed groups” in the north, especially the secular Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, known as the M.N.L.A. A.Q.I.M. is attracting heavily armed Islamists from about 10 countries across North and West Africa, making Mali the biggest magnet for jihadi fighters other than Syria, one of the senior American intelligence officials said.
Mr. Traoré has said he is open to talks with the M.N.L.A., but only so long as it forgoes its demands for independence. French officials have pressed the group to do so. The Islamists that advanced toward a pivotal frontier town on Jan. 10 — leading to worries of a possible advance to the capital and drawing France into the battle — were well armed, with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles, as well as some armored personnel carriers seized from the Malian military last year.
“Mali must enter a phase of national reconciliation," said Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defense minister, in an interview on France Inter radio last week. The groups involved in that process "must pronounce themselves against terrorism, very clearly, and against any desire for a splitting of Mali’s territory," he said. "This country needs to return to democratic legitimacy. This is not yet the case." Paris would also like the presence of up to 5,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops, officials say, to further underline the international support for an integral Mali and further dilute the French presence. American military and counterterrorism officials applauded the speed and efficiency of the French-led operation, but they voiced concerns that the militants had ceded the northern cities with little or no resistance in order to prepare for a longer, bloodier counterinsurgency.
Military considerations remain, though. In Washington, military and counterterrorism officials have applauded the speed and efficiency of the French-led operation, but they have also suggested that the militants may have ceded the northern cities with little resistance in order to prepare for a longer, bloodier counterinsurgency.
"Longer term, and the French know this, it’s going to take a while to root out all these cells and operatives," Michael Sheehan, the Pentagon’s top special operations policy official, told a defense industry symposium on Wednesday."Longer term, and the French know this, it’s going to take a while to root out all these cells and operatives," Michael Sheehan, the Pentagon’s top special operations policy official, told a defense industry symposium on Wednesday.
The Islamist fighters in Mali number between 2,000 and 3,000, officials and analysts estimate. It remains unclear how many have been killed in French airstrikes and ground operations, but a great number remain, likely occupying a network of caves and underground redoubts constructed in the mountains in the far north, near the Algerian border, analysts and officials say. The senior United States intelligence official said that the real measure of success would not be geographical, but whether follow-up operations in the north would be able to degrade Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other Islamist groups.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Munich, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

Like other American officials, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because operations in Mali are ongoing.
For now, the people of Timbuktu were grateful. They waved French and Malian flags, danced and sang to the thumping rhythms of djembe drums, which were banned under the harsh version of Shariah imposed by the Islamist group that took control of the city. Men and women danced side by side.
As the diminutive Mr. Hollande, ringed by security guards, plunged into the crowd, shaking hands and smiling, some waved banners that said “Papa François, the mysterious city welcomes you.”
“Hollande is our savior,” said Arkia Baby, a 24-year-old college student, who wore a purple batik dress of a style banned by the Islamists. “He gave us back our freedom.” That sentiment represents a strange twist in France’s often troubled history in Africa. France had a vast belt of colonies here that spanned the Sahara, from the Atlantic coast to just short of the Red Sea. After many of its colonies won independence in 1960, many remained bound to France, using a currency pegged to the Franc and then the euro, maintaining close trade, military and diplomatic ties.
France’s role has been fraught with moral peril. It pioneered brutal techniques to put down insurgencies in the Algerian war for independence, carpet-bombing villages suspected of harboring nationalist guerrillas. Perhaps the nadir of French involvement in Africa came in the early 1990s, when France staunchly supported the Hutu-dominated government of Rwanda, despite growing signs that a blood bath was in the making.
More recently, French military intervention in Ivory Coast may have heightened ethnic tensions in that country. Even though the French intervened to install the country’s democratically elected leader, because the vote was cast along ethnic lines they were seen as favoring northerners and Muslims over southern Christians.
Mr. Hollande refused to give a timetable for the withdrawal of the 3,500 French troops currently in Mali, saying only that they would remain until Mali had retaken control of all its territory and the United Nations-backed African force was in place. Mr. Hollande, who has frequently been criticized for dithering, has gotten a small bump in the polls at home after moving quickly to send the French military to the aid of a weak, transitional government in Mali that seemed in imminent danger of falling last month. The Islamists who began to roll south were equipped with weaponry taken from Libya as the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was collapsing.
While the French have moved quickly to drive the Islamists out of population centers in the north, with the loss of only one French helicopter pilot, Mr. Hollande’s aides are conscious of the risks of overstaying and becoming targets themselves.
The French strategy has been to push the Islamists back into farther northern deserts and hills, where they can be watched by drones and attacked from the air. The French expect that the Islamists will have a harder time provisioning themselves with gasoline and food, especially if Algeria, as promised, seals its border with Mali, and that they will find it harder to plan further raids and kidnappings of Westerners in the region that have helped finance their insurgency.
North Africa specialists and American intelligence officials say the militants might lay low until French forces leave, and then carry out attacks against the less able Malian and other West African forces.
“Are they going to dig in and be guerrillas or go to ground and wait?” said Michael R. Shurkin, a former United States government intelligence analyst who is now at the RAND Corporation.
French officials have also voiced concerns about charges that the regular Malian Army has been guilty of human rights abuses, including murders of Tuareg and Arab civilians they accuse of ties to the militants.
Mr. Hollande warned the French and African troops here that they must take care to avoid abuses, lest they “tarnish the mission.”
Writing in Liberation, the French columnist Vincent Giret argued that the French face an unhappy choice in Mali. If they remain on the front line they will look, “sooner or later, like white neocolonialists,” and any bad incident can turn public opinion quickly sour. But if the French Army “settles for a role supporting the Malian and African troops left on the front line, it then risks being accused of covering up abuses and score settlings.”

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Munich, Eric Schmitt from Washington, and Scott Sayare from Paris.