SOLDIERS arriving from France stand at a military airbase near Bamako, the Malian capital, before their deployment in north of the country. France is using air and ground power in a joint offensive with Malian soldiers against hardline Islamist groups controlling northern Mali.

From Afghanistan to Mali. In one bound western troops have bypassed Yemen and Somalia and are being deployed against Islamist forces which have been sweeping across the ungoverned spaces of the Sahara.

Mali is the new frontier against Islamist groups which have made much of their links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

“We have a responsibility to go after Al Qaeda wherever they are,” Leon Panetta, the outgoing US defence secretary, said as he begins a valedictory trip to Europe. “We’re going after them in Yemen and Somalia, and we have a responsibility to make sure that Al Qaeda does not establish a base for operations in North Africa, in Mali”, he said.

The situation in Mali was of “grave concern” to the UK and it was essential to prevent the rebel-held north becoming a “springboard for extremism” in the region, Foreign Office Mark Simmonds told the British parliament in London on Monday.

Western intelligence agencies, including MI6, have been increasingly concerned about the threat posed by Islamist rebels, now armed with weapons from Libyan armouries emptied during the revolution there.

The agencies have been alarmed at the attacks by Boko Haram (the Hausa phrase means: western, non-Islamic, education is sinful) in northern Nigeria.

Just as the opium and heroin trade have helped to finance insurgents and warlords in Afghanistan, so drugs smuggled from Latin America to west Africa are adding to the toxic mix there, according to western intelligence officials.

So after deciding to pull out its troops in Afghanistan early, France is taking the lead in putting troops on the ground in its former colony in west Africa.

The British government is providing moral support and what ministers describe as “limited logistical support” in the shape of two large RAF C-17 transport aircraft (Conservative ministers, Eurosceptical or not, have never fought shy of engaging militarily with the French).

Simmonds said a “small detachment of technical personnel” had been deployed to the airport in Bamako to “operate and if necessary defend” the aircraft.

David Cameron has insisted that no British combat troops from the UK will be involved in operations in Mali. Britain’s top military commanders have no wish to join French combat troops there — a view they were expected to make quite clear at a meeting on Tuesday of the UK’s National Security Council, chaired by David Cameron.

However, that may not be the end of it. Britain and the US could yet provide surveillance and intelligence-gathering aircraft or pilotless drones. The European Union is planning to deploy a military training mission consisting of several hundred troops, including British soldiers, to Mali in the next few weeks.

This could be the pattern of future European military interventions, as has been suggested before. Britain, France, the US, all know air strikes from high-flying planes or drones is not the most effective way, militarily (or politically or ethically, given the likelihood of civilian casualties) to fight mobile forces speeding around on pickup trucks.

So the emphasis is on training local forces, in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and now Mali. They could be backed up by special forces, rather less visible than warplanes.

The big question is whether the conflict in Mali spills over the unnatural colonial boundaries dividing the many, and some mineral-rich, countries of west Africa. And whether the UK and France, with US backing, are drawn into mission creep, into military counter extremist, counter insurgency, or counter terrorist operations, which they will not be able to control.

By arrangement with the Guardian