For those not familiar with the situation in Mali, here is a link to an earlier post about France's presence in Mali (written by Jade Womack).
http://vtrio.blogspot.com/2013/01/so-why-is-france-in-mali-great-question.html
Also, here is a link to one of my earlier posts about the Czech Republic military and their
involvment in a large number of NATO and EU operations.
http://vtrio.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-czech-republic-and-nato-defense.html
Yesterday (wednesday, February 6th), the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic announced:
"Up to 50 soldiers from the army of the Czech Republic will take part in the training of mechanized and foot troops of the Malian army, generally of groups the size of one battalion. A condition is that the mission will last for 15 months, as planned by the European Union.”
This deployment is part of an effort lead by France to get African troops to be able to deal with the Militant Islamists themselves. The troops are supposed to arrive mid-February, while French troops are supposed to pull out sometime in March.
The EU soldiers that are going to Mali certainly have a good plan/idea, but there are two sides to what I think could happen. On one hand, we have the EU's plan of what is going to happen. The EU troops are going to go in to teach, the troops in Mali are going to learn, and then we are going to leave them to successfully take of themselves while we keep an eye on the situation. On the other hand, everything could fall apart. The militant Islamists could gain more power, Mali's troops could fail, etc. It is the EU, and not NATO, that are controlling this operation, so there is the possibility that it could become more than just a peacekeeping mission (which is what NATO would probably do). Mali is close enough to Europe that the country is geographically important, but if something happens not according to plan, it just remains to be seen how important it is. I know all of these situations are not necessarily likely, but we always have to keep them in mind. Thoughts?
http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/pm-announces-deployment-of-czech-military-instructors-to-mali
The two possible outcomes you bring up are similar to the situation in Afghanistan. I read an article today saying that the 70 EU military trainers arrived in Mali, the first group of the 500 European trainers planned to train the Malian army. To me, the numbers seem small. Can 70 - 500 military trainers really improve an entire country's army and deter Islamist rebels? Another interesting question is: are these military foreigners being trained before being deported to Mali? How long is this training? Have they studied enough about Mali to create a training program that will produce success? Sometimes, it's not about the numbers but how effective each trainer will be.
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