Flavia Krause-Jackson
bloomberg.com
March 27, 2013
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recommended that as many as 11,200 United Nations peacekeepers and a special counterterrorist unit be deployed to Mali to take over the fight against Islamic insurgents in the land-locked African nation, relieving France.
Ban laid out the options for Mali in a 26-page report obtained by Bloomberg News, as France seeks to pull back 4,000 troops following its January intervention to rid the north of Islamist militants. About 7,000 African troops helping France should become a UN peacekeeping force, according to the report.
As a former colonial power with the most at stake in Mali, the French still are set to play an important if diminished role alongside a UN force of seven mobile infantry battalions, one reserve battalion and about 1,440 police operating in the north.
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