Suddenly, a crisis that only weeks ago appeared confined to a part of the world that epitomizes Western notions of exotic inaccessibility—Mali is home to the fabled city of Timbuktu—is pushing itself onto the agenda of strategists in Washington, Paris and Ottawa. Drained from more than a decade in Afghanistan and Iraq, no Western government, including Canada’s, wanted another potentially bruising war in a poverty-ravaged Muslim country. But this one may not be avoidable.
Senior writer Michael Petrou has covered conflict across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia. He is the author of 'Renegades: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War', which was shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award, and 'Is This Your First War? Travels Through the Post-9/11 Islamic World', which won it. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford.
