France Brings the Fight to al-Qaida, With Mixed Results

(July 28) -- Though France has quietly and inconsistently assisted U.S.-led efforts against al-Qaida, it's only now, after the terrorist group killed a French aid worker, that Paris has declared war on the international Sunni extremist group.

"We are at war with al-Qaida," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after the announcement of the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau. The aid worker was abducted in Niger in April and taken to Mali, where he was reportedly beheaded by members of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, a cell that seeks to overthrow the government of Algeria.

In response to the abduction, France last week launched an attack on an alleged base camp for al-Qaida forces on the border of Mauritania and Mali, killing at least six suspected terrorists. That's but a fraction of the al-Qaida insurgents and their allies that experts say inhabit the area in Northern Africa.

"An estimated 400 to 500 such fighters are thought to roam the Sahel region, a desert expanse as large as the European Union," The Associated Press reports (via Time). "Despite meager numbers, the region's al-Qaida fighters pose a clear threat. Among the more recent victims, a British captive was beheaded last year and two Spanish aid workers were taken hostage in Mauritania in November."

Ironically, France's recent attempts to up the ante against al-Qaida may actually be inflaming the country's allies to some extent. As Reuters pointed out (via The Star), the attack on the base camp "appears to have angered Mali, which was not involved, and Spain, which also has hostages held by another al-Qaida faction in the region."

And as gung-ho as the French policy shift might seem, Fillon was quick to temper the idea that France had entered into the war for punitive reasons.

"France does not practice vengeance," he said in a recent radio interview, Euronews reports.

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