Washington Post: US Weights Strikes in Mali

The Trump administration is considering military action in Mali, West Africa, targeting a group linked to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda. Anonymous sources at the Pentagon told The Washington Post that the main proponent of the strikes is National Security Council (NSC) staffer Sebastian Gorka.

However, there is disagreement among senior US officials over whether to launch an attack on the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) movement, an offshoot of al-Qaeda in the Sahel region. According to The Post's sources, Gorka, as director of the NSC's counterterrorism division, is the most vocal advocate for military intervention, which is expected to be similar in scale to last year's attack on the Houthis in Yemen.

In the current civil war, JNIM is fighting alongside northern Malian separatists in the Forces for the Liberation of the Azawad (FLA), a self-proclaimed Tuareg state on the Mali-Algeria border. Opposing them is a military junta whose army, known as FAMa, is backed by the former private military company Wagner, now renamed Afrika Korps.

The separatists have already achieved several military successes, killing the defense minister in late April and attacking cities such as Anéfis in the north and Gao in central Mali in June. The Washington Post noted that if US strikes take place, this would be the eighth country bombed by the US under a president who promised to end all wars.

(Washington Post, sab)