plans for military intervention in Mali a definitive step closer.

Over recent months, France and the US have been upping the pace for an African-led force to go into the West African country. Now the UN has given these plans the final green light.

A force of 3,300 troops, assembled from Nigeria, Senegal, and Ghana, among others, is to join a Malian army of 5,000. UN diplomats are saying that the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) will not be deployed until well into next year, perhaps September 2013. But the French and Americans are pushing for a sooner dispatch.

The timing of this official military intervention belies the fact that French and American Special Forces have already been sent into Mali and neighbouring Sahel countries, where they are saidprojection point for the West Africa region and all its tremendous wealth in oil, gas, agriculture, fishing, and minerals.

When AFRICOM was first formed in 2007, General Carter Ham said one of its main purposes was to facilitate the unimpeded flow of resources from Africa to Western markets.

But here’s where Western best-laid plans will come severely unstuck. Northern Mali is probably one of the remotest regions on Earth. Over the centuries, invaders and Armies have disappeared in the Saharan scorching deserts trying to conquer the ancient capital of Timbuktu. It comprises an area the size of France or Texas spread over some of the most unforgiving terrain and climate that human beings can face. In that sea of desert, the population is numbered at only 1.6 million, compared with