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Updated Mali map – as of March 5, 2013
See below for the updated Mali map (tracking rebel attacks, French/Chadian raids, etc.) as of March 5. (Special thanks to “Chris Scott’s Desert Travels” blog. Chris did some sleuthing to find “Ametatai...
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Mali’s mountains: an “impenetrable safe haven” for jihadists?
For much of the past three weeks, French and Chadian ground forces have ventured slowly but surely into the heart of the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains (a.k.a. Adrar des Iforas/Tigharghar mountains) of...
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Weekly News Roundup: Jihadist sanctuary in Mali, Somali arms embargo, and...
West Africa Mali: French and Chadian forces pushed deeper into the heart of enemy territory in Mali—the remote Adrar des Ifoghas mountains. Here they uncovered a considerable weapons cache (in the...
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Mali: Visualizing the Adrar des Ifoghas
In case you’re already bored with coverage of the new pope (a Jesuit!)… As a follow-up to my post last week about the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains in northeastern Mali (see here), I thought I’d share...
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Weekly News Roundup: Rumblings in Central Africa, progress on the two Sudans,...
Busy week in several areas of interest for Notes on the Periphery! A lot of interesting stuff to get plugged into… West Africa Mali: Le Monde has a very eloquent description of the Islamist fighters’...
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Weekly News Roundup: “National dialogue” in Yemen, CAR on edge, and Bosco...
West Africa Mali: France confirmed “with certainty” that key AQIM commander Abou Zeid is dead. But the jury is still out on the status of Mokhtar Belmokhtar. Speaking of AQIM, the terrorist group...
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Updated Mali map – as of March 23, 2013
Time to update the Mali map again! (Any excuse to combine geography with int’l affairs…) Some significant events in the past two weeks: -Islamists struck Timbuktu for the first time since they fled the...
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Al Qaeda’s Gamble in Mali
Mauritanian forces repulse AQIM attack (2011).By Magharebia [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia CommonsA few years from now, when the first full-length book on Al...
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Weekly News Roundup: Central African quagmire, Burmese violence, and UN steps...
A little late again with the news roundup, but you can rest easy: a sampling of this past week’s hot topics (hot, that is, if you are a Central African Republic follower) below! Central Africa Central...
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March Madness at Notes on the Periphery!: Part 2 (Sub-Saharan Africa)
We’re now two weeks into the most exciting three weeks of the year—NCAA college basketball’s final tournament. For those of you who might not know: each year, 68 college teams (annoyingly bumped up...
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Weekly News Roundup: Bashir’s good mood in Sudan, Mozambique troubles, and...
East Africa Sudan: We caught President Omar al-Bashir in an extremely generous mood this past month. In addition to agreeing to a rapprochement with South Sudan over oil and border demarcation and...
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Mali: From forgotten lands to a blogger’s dream
The usually sleepy country of Mali, a landlocked country of 15 million people which before 2012 rarely graced the headlines, has in the past 10 months become a central focus with near-daily coverage in...
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Mali: France vient à la rescousse (France to the rescue)
By the time French forces touched down in Mali on January 11, a bulwark of naysayers had already formed. The French military, while tactically adept and no stranger to West Africa, would nonetheless...
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Introducing the Mali map!
I’m proud to introduce today the official Notes on the Periphery “Mali map”! This map will serve as a tracker of sorts – charting (1) clashes with rebels, (2) significant towns recaptured by the...
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Mali update: France begins a ground adventure in the mountains
Rock outcropping in the Adrar des Ifoghas (Wikipedia) As a follow-up to my post yesterday, news reports today that French Special Forces clashed with militants deep in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains...
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Updated Mali map – as of March 5, 2013
See below for the updated Mali map (tracking rebel attacks, French/Chadian raids, etc.) as of March 5. (Special thanks to “Chris Scott’s Desert Travels” blog. Chris did some sleuthing to find “Ametatai...
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Updated Mali map – as of May 13, 2013
It’s time to update the Mali map again! A sampling of notable occurrences in the past two months: -AQIM coordinated an attack on central Timbuktu in late March. Using a suicide bombing on the city’s...
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“War” in West Africa?
Scanning the headlines, it would seem that war was all the rage this past week in West Africa. It began last Saturday in Paris, where the leaders of five West African countries—Nigeria, Niger,...
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