France gains international backing, faces complicated situation on the ground

France, too, is reluctant to send ground troops beyond the 300 or so special forces already deployed to the theater.

Both the French and the European union plan to send military advisers to train a new Malian army, and the ECOWAS states are working to put together a force of 3,300 troops, but training an army and gathering troops from neighboring countries will take time.

The lack of trained ground troops is especially noticeable given France’s ambitious mission. The Times notes that beyond committing to stop the Islamists from expanding their territorial gains deep into Mali — a more challenging task in itself than French officials initially suggested — France has made it clear that it intends to help re-unify Mali. The breakaway north Mali region, now under Islamist control, is the size of France, and its reintegration with Mali is preconditioned on evicting the Islamists. This cannot be done without ground troops.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that the French military engagement would last only for a few “weeks,” but rebuilding the Mali army, and turning a multinational group of soldiers into a cohesive fighting force, will take months, not weeks.

“None of the conditions for success have been met,” Dominique de Villepin, a former French prime minister, warned on Sunday. “Stopping the jihadists advance south, retaking the north, eradicating” terrorist “bases — sont autant de guerres différentes”(these are all different wars), he wrote.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that U.S. assistance to France could include air and other logistical support, but Defense Department officials said no decisions had been made on whether to help with midflight refueling planes and air transport. American spy planes and surveillance drones are in the meantime trying to gather information and assess the situation on the ground.

Panetta explained that even though Mali was far from the United States, the Obama administration was deeply concerned about extremist Islamist groups there, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. “We’re concerned that any time Al Qaeda establishes a base of operations, while they might not have any immediate plans for attacks in the United States and in Europe, that ultimately that still remains their objective,” he said.

A French analyst, who was briefed on the situation but declined to be identified by name, told the Times that the dilemma facing French forces was now whether to maintain a UN schedule for West African and Malian troops to seek to recapture the north in the fall  — after the Mali army is rebuilt, the West African force is trained and equipped, and after seasonal rains — “which given the current dynamic seems hard to imagine,” or to “speed things up and try to clear the north in the next eight weeks” before the rainy season.