News from Timbuktu is rare, but these days there is too much of it.
Religious fanatics have been destroying exquisite ancient tombs that are cultural icons of universal value. Women who used to walk freely now fear to leave their homes without veils. Schools, clinics, and banks have been looted and burned.
Militants who embrace the rigid Salafi brand of Islam are on a rampage in Timbuktu and other parts of Mali, an ancient, landlocked North African nation that was once the seat of a trading empire. They are allied with Al Qaeda.
Already they control a thinly populated region larger than Texas. It is not difficult to imagine this region becoming an incubator of terrorism and transnational crime — or to imagine that the United States will react by making Mali the newest front in its ever-expanding drone war.
This catastrophe did not “just happen.” It is the direct result of an episode that may at first seem unrelated: the US-led intervention in Libya last year. Rarely in recent times has there been a more vivid example of how such interventions can produce devastating unexpected results.
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Amateur Hour at White House and Department of State”
