Quote Originally Posted by Mars_ax View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
So we're now being told that a bunch of beardy nutters with guns in North Africa is somehow an existential threat to Britain and will require a generational struggle to deal with. Or it could be that countries around Mali contain lots of oil, gas, uranium and other goodies vital for European/US economies and we've decided to send troops/special forces/drones in to keep an eye on them despite the fact that this will cause an increase in terrorist incidents. Then when the terrorist incidents happen we'll use them as an excuse to continue being there. Fantastic.
Mali's oil production isn't commercially viable, but it's neighbor Nigeria has oil, the British discovered oil in the Niger Delta in the late 1950s. Algeria, another neighboring country also has oil and it's one of the major oil and gas producing countries in Africa. So good analysis Kirkland, what it really boils down to is oil, maybe we should thank the Islamic militants and/or "terrorists" for supplying us with incidents. Let's keep that fucking oil flowing.
Libya too. Massive quantities there and we were banned from access when Gaddafi was in power. Go figure. A lot of the guys fighting in Mali used to be members of Gaddafi's army believe it or not. When we fucked Gaddafi they headed home and joined up with the Islamist groups there, and the Mali groups are headed by Algerians/Moroccans and operate all over the region. It's going to be impossible to protect all those oil/gas facilities and even more impossible to protect all that pipeline. Luckily most of these groups are crooks first and Islamists second and we'll be able to continue bribing them, otherwise we're fucked and looking at $200+ a barrel.


Also Niger supplies a big chunk of the world's uranium including all of France's. Massive quantities of natural gas in these countries too.