The Competence, Willingness, and Empowerment of Counterinsurgency Forces in Northern Mali in 2012-2013
Abstract
In 2012, Islamist violent non-state actors in northern Mali succeeded in fighting against the Malian army, and they got the entire north Malian territory under their control. This paper fills up a part of the gap in the existing literature and seeks to answer the question of why the Islamists were dislodged and the territory was brought back under the control of the Malian state only after a time gap of one year.
With the use of the format of a disciplined interpretive case study and the theoretical conception of an enemy-centric approach, the criteria of competence, willingness, empowerment, and the successful execution of the counterinsurgency military operation are conceptualized. Through this research framework the actions of the three counterinsurgency actors - Mali, ECOWAS/CÉDÉAO, and France - are empirically analyzed, and on the basis of variations of the values of the introduced criteria among these actors in the course of the examined time period, the above-mentioned gap is explained.
The conducted research shows that IVNSAs were eliminated and the ability of the (Malian) state to control the territory was restored only when the counterinsurgency actor (France) was able to accomplish the given criteria of competence, willingness, and empowerment simultaneously.