Mitt, Mali, and France
By Lauren Collins
Une petite note on last night's foreign-policy debate: Mitt Romney's mini-seminar on Mali, largely overlooked by Americans, drew notice in France. Bob Schieffer's first question to the candidates concerned American policy in the Middle East, "the new face of terrorism," and what happened in Libya: "I'd like to hear each of your thoughts on that." Romney went first. His answer: "This is obviously an area of great concern to the entire world and to America in particular, which is to see a compete change in the structure and the environment in the Middle East. With the Arab Spring came a great hope that there would be a change toward moderation … but instead we've seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events." He mentioned Syria. He mentioned Libya. He mentioned Mali—northern Mali, in particular. He concluded, "What we're seeing is a pretty dramatic reversal in the kind of hopes we had for that region."
Mali is an area of great concern to France, its former colonial ruler. Six French nationals—four employees of the French energy firm Areva, seized in northern Niger in September, 2010; two others captured in the Sahel—are being held hostage there. In recent weeks, the French President, François Hollande—fearing that the north of the country, which Al Qaeda associates took over in April, could serve as a launching pad for terrorist attacks on Europe—has been drumming up support for an African-led military intervention. "If he continues to throw oil on the fire, we will send him the pictures of dead French hostages in the coming days," Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for the Al Qaeda-affiliated group MUJWA, said, in mid-October, of Hollande. "He will not be able to count the bodies of French expatriates across West Africa and elsewhere." But Hollande has been firm in his insistence that something must be done in Mali. "Should we tone down our message on the integrity of Mali, on the fight against terrorism, because of these threats?" he said on October 13th, in Kinshasa, where he had stopped as part of an African tour. "I think it's quite the opposite." The Associated Press reported yesterday that France plans to send two surveillance drones to Mali by the end of the year.
This morning, the home page of Le Monde's Web site featured an article analyzing Romney's mention of Mali. "3:52," the headline read, referring to the debate clock. "MALI APPEARS ON MITT ROMNEY'S RADAR." It began, "Surprise: on the map of global hot spots described by Mitt Romney, Mali is apparently just after Syria and Libya. Less than four minutes into the debate, enumerating the zones of conflict in the… Middle East"—the ellipsis is theirs—"the Republican candidate declared, 'Mali has been taken over, the northern part of Mali, by Al Qaeda-type individuals.' " Despite expressing skepticism as to Romney's grasp of the geography of Mali—"this Francophone country in the Sahel, very little known in the United States"—Le Monde approved of the fact that Romney had highlighted, to "tens of millions of viewers," the region's plight. While the American press tends to portray debate prep as a wildly complicated art, the French put forward a refreshingly straightforward theory of "this discovery of Mali by Mr. Romney." (His campaign platform makes no mention of the country, in either the Africa or Middle East sections.) He had probably, Le Monde figured, read the drone story in the Associated Press.
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Lauren Collins has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008. She is the author of "When in French: Love in a Second Language."
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