As French soldiers pour into Mali in the fight to push back the advancing Islamist militants, questions have been raised as to the motives behind the intervention. Author William Engdahl told RT the US was using France as a scapegoat to save face.
RT: At a time when France and the rest of the Eurozone are trying to weather the economic crisis, what's Paris seeking to gain by getting involved in another conflict overseas?William Engdahl: Well, I think the intervention in Mali is another follow-up to the French role in other destabilizations that we've seen, especially in Libya last year with the toppling of the Gadhafi regime. In a sense this is French neocolonialism in action.
But, interestingly enough, I think behind the French intervention is the very strong hand of the US Pentagon which has been preparing this partitioning of Mali, which it is now looming to be, between northern Mali, where al-Qaeda and other terrorists are supposedly the cause for French military intervention, and southern Mali, which is a more agricultural region.
Because in northern Mali recently there have been huge finds of oil discovered, so that leads one to think that it's very convenient that these armed rebels spill over the border from Libya last year and just
at the same time a US-trained military captain creates a coup d'état in the Southern capital of Mali and installs a dictatorial regime against one of Africa's few democratically elected presidents.
So this whole thing bears the imprint of US Africom [US Africa Command] and an attempt to militarize the whole region and its resources. Mali is a strategic lynchpin in that. It borders Algeria which is one of the top goals of these various NATO interventions from France, the US and other sides. Mauritania, the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Burkina Faso.
All of this area is just swimming in untapped resources, whether it be gold, manganese, copper.
