As war in Mali
Continues to rage, Canada offers a C-17 to transport African troops.
France’s foreign minister has announced that Canada has offered to transport African troops to Mali as the war against Islamic extremists continues.
Laurent Fabius said Sunday that Russia had offered to transport French troops and supplies to Mali while Canada had offered to bring African troops to that war-torn country.
“There is transportation that will be partly by the Africans themselves, partly by the Europeans and partly by the Canadians, and the Russians have proposed to provide means of transport for the French, so it’s fairly diverse,” Fabius told radio station Europe 1.
Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Nigeria agreed last week to send soldiers in support of that military action designed to help Mali’s military fight the insurgents. A total of 5,800 African troops have been committed but only 100 or so have reached Mali.
African militaries are limited in what they can transport by air because of a lack of equipment and resources.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced last week that a Canadian Forces C-17 aircraft would provide support for the mission. Harper noted that the plane would only be available for one-week. The Canadian Forces considers that one-week commitment to run until Thursday.
“I can confirm no decision on an extension has been taken,” Jay Paxton, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Sunday.
“I can’t speculate on the content of future flights but I can confirm one C-17 aircraft for one week is the current Canadian commitment. That said, Minister MacKay said on Tuesday, at CFB Trenton, that the C-17 could transport personnel and equipment.”
Some Canadian military officers have privately suggested the C-17 commitment will be extended, noting that a one-week period is not enough time to provide much support to the war effort.
The large Canadian aircraft has transported French armoured vehicles, trucks and batteries into Mali in support of the fighting there.
The government noted that on Saturday night the C-17 completed its third flight to Mali, delivering six vehicles, a trailer and assorted crates, and that on Sunday more vehicles were transported to the capital city of Bamako.
Mali had been considered stable until earlier this year when tribesmen seeking an independent country combined forces with Islamic militants to take control of the northern half of the country.
That has prompted fears the jihadists and other terrorist groups active in a belt spanning Africa just south of the Sahara Desert will use the territory as a home base from which to launch attacks throughout the region and against Western targets.
“Their interest is global,” former diplomat Robert Fowler, who was once kidnapped by the Islamic militants, said on Global’s The West Block in an interview aired Sunday.
“If they get a huge area and if … foreign fighters, likeminded guys keep flowing into that area, they will have a base from which they can launch the kind of operations that could take them to us.”
Fowler said the government could send special forces troops into the region to help French forces already there as well as Malian soldiers trying to repel attacks by Islamist rebels who currently occupy Mali’s north.
Fowler said that if the alQaida linked group succeeded in gaining a stronghold in Mali, it could create a security and “humanitarian disaster to which we’ll have to respond.”