debor044

Mali is a Western African country in the heart of the Sahara desert. Granted independence in 1960 from France it is a leading cotton producer (amongst other raw materials) who has struggled through years of poverty, disease, famine, military dictators, and rebellions. Tuareg Rebels with the Azawad Flag A breakaway state, Azawad, proclaimed its independence from Mali on April 6, 2012 with its capital in Timbukutu. This was initiated in Northern Mali by the Tuaregs, nomad peoples of the Sahara from Libya, Algeria, and the surrounding nations, who had fought previously in Libya, and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad or MNLA. Even more recently however as of last week, the MNLA appear to have been routed by the Ansar Dine. An Islamist guerrilla movement once allied with the MNLA and the Tuaregs, Ansar Dine is believed by many Western sources to be an Al-Qaeda allied Islamist fundamentalist terrorist movement. As of JJuly 1st and 2nd 2012, the MNLA seem to be in retreat fo...

Following their defeat in Ethiopia expansionist & imperialist sentiment was very quiet while Italy recovered in the wake of unrest that rocked most of the free world in the late 1890's and 1900's. Italy would play a major role nevertheless in the inter-state conflicts that preceded the Great War in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans, leading inevitably into buildup of nationalist sentiments that stoked the fires of a great conflict in 1914-1915. Captain Piazza’s Blériot XI during the campaign in Libya 1911 The Italian desire for expansion in North Africa, a more natural region geographically speaking to conquer, or acquire diplomatically than Ethiopia would have been, led the Italians to seek war with Turkey ( and the Ottoman Empire) over control of Libya, known then by the regional states of Tripolitania, Fezzan, & Cyrenaica. The Italians used gunboat diplomacy  successfully  where the German Empire had failed in the Moroccan crisis w...