Timbuktu welcomes president of France to Mali

Sunday, February 3, 2013

— France’s president, Francois Hollande, paid a triumphant visit Saturday to the ancient city of Timbuktu, 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!”

But even as thousands of people gathered outside the mud and wood mosque to greet 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.

“These Islamists, they have not been defeated,” said Moustapha Ben Essagoute, a member of one of the city’s most prominent families who lined up to greet Hollande. “Hardly any of them have been killed. They have run into the desert and the mountains to hide.”

Hollande, speaking to French and Malian troops, praised the alacrity of their victories.

“You have accomplished an exceptional mission,” he said. But, he later added, “The fight is not over.”

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.

With their deep familiarityof the vast, forbidding territory between Timbuktu and the borders of Algeria and Mauritania, many worry that the Islamist groups will simply regroup and return to try again.

“If France leaves, they will come back,” Essagoute said.

The spidery network of Islamist militants in Mali numbers about 2,000 hard-core fighters, according to American intelligence officials. Themost dangerous component of that mix is al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa, known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM, the officials said.

The group 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.

The Islamists who 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.

U.S. 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.

“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, said at a defense industry symposium Wednesday.

The senior U.S. intelligence official said that the real measure of success would notbe geographical, but whether follow-up operations in the north would be able to degrade al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and other Islamist groups.

Like other U.S. 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.

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 U.N.-backed African force was in place.

Information for this article was contributed by Steven Erlanger, Eric Schmitt and Scott Sayare of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/03/2013