Terror in the Sahara

摘要

Mali is one of those African countries that few outsiders take much notice of—until a disaster threatens, especially one that may have bloody repercussions beyond its borders. Such a moment arrived earlier this year, when an ethnic insurrection in the northern half of the country, a patch of desert as big as France, was hijacked by a clutch of extreme Islamist groups, some of them tied to al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, the terrorist franchise on the Arabs' western fringe.