This article is a re-publication of a piece by Andrew Lebovich on his website, al-Wasat.  It analyses the popular attitudes on the security situation in northern Mali to look at the potential risks to international security and the risks that are, at present, overstated.

Mr. Lebovich is a contributor to the popular foreign policy blog The Washington Note, and his work has appeared at ForeignPolicy.com and The Atlantic Online. He also writes a formerly weekly, and now twice-weekly brief with Foreign Policy on legal issues in the struggle against terrorism, the Legal War on Terror (LWOT).

By Andrew Lebovich, 13th June, 2012.

The title of this post is a question I’m seeing more and more, and it reflects the growing concern in Washington, Paris, and African capitals that the security situation in northern Mali is spiraling out of control. In this kind of environment, bad news tends to echo loudly and quickly. The most recent example of this is the strong reaction in the international press to an interview Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou gave to France 24 this week, in which he said that Afghans and Pakistanis were in Mali training fighters, in addition to confirming that French hostages held for nearly a year and a half by AQIM were in “good health” and still alive. This news has garnered quite a bit of attention, especially in the Francophone media, though it should be noted that RFI reported the presence Pakistani trainers in Timbuktu and in Kidal a month ago, to considerably less attention. Still, this and other signs of the degradation in the security environment in northern Mali and the growth of AQIM have spurred speculation about whether or not northern Mali was becoming a “West African Afghanistan“, a new Somalia, or a jumping-off point for terrorist attacks elsewhere.

While I think some of this concern is warranted, I think some of this language and concern may be, for the moment, a bit overwrought, as I will explain in this piece. This post is my attempt to sort through some of the current popular attitudes about the security situation in northern Mali, the very real risks to regional and international security that may be looming in the north, and the equally real constraints on militant groups attempting to impose shari’ah in northern Mali or project force beyond Mali’s already porous (or nonexistent) borders.

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