Mali: War Shifts as Rebels Hide in High Sahara -NYT

The French have bombed locations in the mountains and a column of Chadian troops experienced desert fighters have been dispatched from Kidal to engage the islamist fighters in the Adrar des Ifoghas. The mountain  ranges, whilst not as high as those in Aghanistan ,provide many hiding places for the terrorists and local knowldege of the ara is a must. The Tuareg have being using the area as a hideout for years, the NYT says.French special forces are likely to be searching  the area for French hostages.African troops are likely to be the ones to be deployed searching for the terrorists across the vast area from village to village and water holeto waterhole .

Troops will have to seal off areas as others move in to clear the area which will be a long drawn out process. No one knows how many terrorists are hiding in these remote areas.Pockets remain around the liberated towns of Timbuktu and Gao, said a French military spokesman.Malian troops and suspected Islamist militants were exchanging heavy gunfire on the streets of Gao today.The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) said it had carried out Sunday's attack on Malian troops as well as both the suicide bombings, AFP news agency reports.Hit and runattacks and suicide bombers are likely to be frequent occurencies. Improvised Explosive Devices-IEDs and  limited attacks  similar to the Taliban strategy against French and Malian forces are likely to be used.

The Malian army remains divided and in poor shape the NYT notes.On Friday, there were clashes between rival factions of the Malian Army in Bamako, with gunfire heard echoing from a barracks of paratroopers hostile to the element that supported a military coup in March.Whilst 2,000  African troops have now arrived in Mali a western official in Bamako told the NYT that there was a diffrence between them fighting alongside the French forces and then having to cope on their own when the French withdraw.The concern over revenge attacks between different
communities are well founded by recent killingsof Tuareg reported by human rights organistions.“Realistically, probably the best you can get is containment and disruption so that Al Qaeda is no longer able to control territory,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, said in a speech in Washington last month,the NYT concludes.