“There cannot be a military solution to this crisis in Mali,” said Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, on PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. “The crisis has its roots in political and also economic processes, with people in the northern part of the country feeling completely marginalized from the rest of the country.”
“So clearly what you had was an opportunity because of the intervention, the NATO intervention in Libya, unleashing weapons, both from Qadaffi’s coffers as well as from the international community, weapons flowing from Libya, across borders of Algeria, into northern Mali, to be able to actually create a crisis, and further destabilize northern Mali,” said Woods. “So I think what you have is a situation where unilateral intervention could create complications down the road, both for civilians that could be targeted in these airstrikes, as well as for further complicating a political crisis that may not be resolved militarily.”
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