We need to talk about Mali

Look, I'm a bit worried about Mali right now. There's a civil war going on there, between the moderate government and a radical Islamic group known as Boko Haram. When it became clear the Islamists were gaining ground, the French, who have had their dirty paws in this region for a long time, decided to go in and kick some butt. Almost immediately there was a reaction against the hated agents of western culture, specifically the attack on the Algerian gas plant with the resulting loss of many European lives.

These people are dangerous. They are committed to smashing everything that even reminds them of the West, and that means we could be in for it right here on the home front.

Mali is a huge country; twice as big as France but with only a quarter of that country's population. Interestingly it is the 3rd largest producer of gold in the African continent, though oddly its GDP is one of the lowest in the world. Most of its people live in the south, where towns and villages throng along the two great rivers, the Niger and the Senegal. Most of the rest of the country is a desolate wasteland, though there are a few ancient oasis cities deep in the desert, notably the city of Timbuktu, its very name evocative of a place far, far away. It used to feature a number of beautiful, pre-Islamic buildings: not any more. The Islamists smashed anything non Muslim to rubble, just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan when they dynamited the great reclining Buddhas. And it is this sort of cultural vandalism I hate the most. These are crimes against humanity, crimes against the future, if you will, because they deprive future generations of these unique and irreplaceable structures. It's like causing an animal species to become extinct.

So what do we do? Do we throw our lot in with the Frenchies, and mount military strikes against the rebels? Or do we sit on our hands and wait and see?

I didn't used to like the idea of a "war on terror", but the fact remains that there is a powerful, well-funded group of people who would like to convert the whole world to Islam, and are perfectly happy to kill anyone who does not comply. Faced with that sort of intransigence, there seems little else we can do but stand up and say: You're not converting me, pal, and if you use force we shall respond in kind. This is no time for pacifism.