Will Mali be Africa's Afghanistan?

Halachi Maiga was present last March at the fall of Gao, in northeastern Mali. He remembers the shooting, the panic, the mud-daubed cars, the ransacked offices, the attackers crying "God is great!" Today, violent rule by gunmen has left him unsure of how peace can best be restored.

"I'm for a military intervention because I want to liberate my country, region, and city," says Mr. Maiga, a schoolteacher and youth activist. "And I'm against it for the simple reason that it's war, and no one can predict how a war will go."

Mali was hit by two successive shocks to its system this year, leaving its government fragile and its future uncertain. Last winter, nearly half the country was seized by ethnic Tuareg rebels, who were later elbowed aside by Islamist militants. In a whirl of action, a military coup soon unseated the democratically elected president just weeks before elections were to be held.

Instability is still rampant in the north, where Islamists reign largely uncontested. As Mali – and the wider world – look ahead to potential armed intervention, many question what is needed to pull it back from the brink of chaos. Western countries fear it could become a semifailed state like Afghanistan, serving as a regional launchpad for armed groups.

Potential intervention, described by diplomats as increasingly likely, concerns not only Malians like Maiga, whose lives have been upended by unrest. It also worries international aid agencies that warn of more refugees, civilian deaths, human rights abuses, and the potential for reprisal attacks.

"Planning for the day after is very important," says a Western diplomat who was not permitted to speak on the record. "Even with a successful intervention, if you don't restore central government control you risk the same problems returning."

Crowded playing field

Those problems have long been rooted in corruption and underdevelopment in northern Mali, which has helped spur periodic uprisings by some local Tuareg, a traditionally nomadic people related to North Africa's Amazighs, or Berbers.

In recent decades Islamist groups have also appeared in Mali – notably Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – uncontested by authorities and funded in part by increased drug trafficking.

Last year Tuareg fighters who served Libya's Muammar Qaddafi returned home, flush with heavy weaponry. Better armed than ever before, some of them swiftly launched a rebellion under the newly formed National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).

While secularist, the MNLA entered a marriage of convenience with Islamist militant groups already present in Mali's north.

Today, nearly a year of conflict has transformed Mali into a crowded playing field, dominated by armed groups that jockey with local leaders, religious figures, and citizens organizations in a tense balance of power.

Last March, Mali's poorly equipped Army struggled to defeat these armed groups. Feeling inadequately supported by the government in their attempts to secure the north, exasperated Army officers staged a coup that toppled President Amadou Toumani Touré.

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