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West African nation asking for assistance to fight Islamic militants

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OTTAWA — Canada is being urged to step up its presence in Mali, including through the provision of military assistance to help fight Islamic militants in the region and a diplomatic push to lead peace and reconciliation talks.

The calls for greater involvement follow a coup in August that has once again left the West African nation under military rule even as fighting between different armed groups — including some Islamic extremist groups — continues to spiral out of control.

They also come more than a year after Canada wrapped up its peacekeeping mission in Mali, leaving only a handful of troops and police officers to continue supporting United Nations’ efforts to bring peace and stability to the country.

French military and diplomatic officials were among those asking for more Canadian involvement in Mali during a panel discussion last week on the situation in the country hosted by the Ottawa-based Conference of Defence Associations Institute (CDAI).

France has been leading efforts to counter the growing threat of Islamic extremists in West Africa and the sub-Saharan region since a previous coup in Mali in 2012, with French forces involved in combat operations against jihadist groups. Canada has provided some support to that French mission, which is known as Operation Barkhane, notably the occasional provision of military transport aircraft to help move troops and equipment around the region.

French Brig.-Gen. Cyril Carcy, who until August commanded

khane, thanked Canada for that contribution during the CDAI conference even as he hinted at talks between Ottawa and Paris around the provision of assistance.

“I do believe that discussion is already underway to ask for additional contributions,” Carcy said in French before listing several ways in which the Canadian military can help French and local African forces fighting terrorist groups in the region.

Those include more intelligence and sensors to help locate and identify Islamic militant forces, as well as air-to-air refuelling to support French fighter jets operating in the region. “The Canadians can therefore participate without necessarily being present in Mali in the combat sense,” said Carcy, who is now the French defence attaché in Washington, D.C. The growing threat posed by Islamic extremists was underscored by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in his most recent quarterly report on Mali at the end of September.