With France in a hurry to leave and the United States reluctant to fully engage, Mali will likely continue to be a terrorist breeding ground, U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia said Tuesday following a trip to the region.
Isakson, a Republican, said a French general told him “that they had gotten the terrorists on the run. … But I can tell you from what we heard from the Malian officials as well as knowing what al-Qaida does, they are just in the bush waiting for the French to leave and they’ll be back out.”
Isakson joined U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and U.S. Reps. Karen Bass, D-Calif., and Terri Sewell, D-Ala., on an official trip throughout Africa that included stops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa.
Mali was the hottest topic after the French military — with technical assistance from the U.S. — invaded the northern part of the country in an effort to disrupt brutal Islamist groups that had seized control from the central government.
Isakson’s comments in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution came in contrast to hopeful words from a top humanitarian official with the United Nations, who said Tuesday that northern Mali is stabilizing and has asked for more international aid to rebuild there, according to The Associated Press.
The United States has been steadily expanding its African presence as terrorist groups seek safe havens in the Saharan region. The Department of Defense announced last week that U.S. troops were deploying to Niger to set up drone monitoring operations.
But Isakson said part of the message he was bringing to African Union officials and others was that America cannot be the region’s safety blanket.
“The most important thing we wanted the African countries to understand, ‘You can’t just leave it to the American taxpayer; African countries need to be part of the solution,’ ” Isakson said.
Still, Isakson said he is concerned about a weak foreign presence, from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to scheduled across-the-board cuts to the military.
“I’m worried about the focus on our military and our security in the second term of the Obama administration,” Isakson said. “… We have to be prepared in these hot spots before it’s too late.”
The vast Congo is a particular hot spot, where Isakson quipped there are more militias than there are Boy Scout troops in America. An estimated 5 million people have been killed in the ongoing conflict.
Area governments meeting in Ethiopia hammered out a tentative peace framework for Congo, but Isakson said many details need to be filled in for the framework to be effective — in particular how to responsibly manage the violence-fueling trade in diamonds and other resources.
He did see positives during the trip, including the fact that every embassy the group visited was going through security reviews in response to the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
In addition to visiting war-torn areas, the trip had a trade component. Isakson is looking to break down South African tariffs on Georgia chicken. The dispute will be a focus when the U.S. looks to extend a trade agreement with Africa in the next couple of years.
Isakson will help shape the agreement as the top Republican on the international trade subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee. The new post was announced Tuesday, after Isakson recently made the jump from the Foreign Relations Committee to a coveted Finance seat.
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