Jihadists are kicking Russia out of Mali. The U.S. should move in.
The decline of Moscow’s ambitions in Africa presents a strategic opportunity for Washington.
My debut in The Washington Post
Vladimir Putin’s ambitions are dying in Africa. As jihadists swept through Mali late last month, they also swept aside the assurances that Moscow had dangled to governments in the Sahel for years. That collapse threatens the region but also offers Washington an opportunity to reassert the control it had foolishly relinquished.
The scale of the terror offensive came into sharp view in a single weekend as the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) — al-Qaeda’s Sahel affiliate — and nomadic Tuareg rebels seized towns and military installations across the country. On April 25 a JNIM suicide car bomber killed Defense Minister Gen. Sadio Camara at his residence in Kati. Abu Hudhayfa al-Bambari, a local jihadist commander, said that the “entire city” of Bamako, the capital, “is under lockdown.”