{"id":33865,"date":"2013-01-29T11:19:47","date_gmt":"2013-01-29T15:19:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=33865"},"modified":"2013-01-29T11:19:47","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T15:19:47","slug":"brits-sending-troops-to-mali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=33865","title":{"rendered":"Brits sending troops to Mali"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TSO sends a link to the story in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2013\/jan\/28\/british-troops-mali-mission\">Guardian<\/a> that the British are preparing hundreds of troops to lend a hand to the French in Mali as the news that rebels are being forced out of Timbuktu, leaving a smoldering ruin in their wake;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As news emerged that insurgents retreating from Timbuktu had set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, Downing Street said the prime minister told Fran\u00e7ois Hollande on Sunday night Britain was &#8220;keen&#8221; to provide further military assistance to France.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Britain is prepared to provide hundreds of troops to help the operation and is considering a few options:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Forming part of an EU military training mission in Mali. The British contribution to this would be in the &#8220;tens&#8221;, according to Downing Street.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Training troops from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) in neighbouring countries for possible operations on Mali. This is likely to be the main focus of Britain&#8217;s contribution because Ecowas members include many countries with strong links to Britain. British troops could be used to train Nigerian forces.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Providing &#8220;force protection&#8221; for the trainers. This would be armed protection but would not amount to a combat role.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But, history keeps trying to tell us that declaring troops won&#8217;t participate in a combat role, that usually assures us that there will be a combat role forced on them. Especially when the troops are dealing with al Qaeda.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure it makes the public happy when they read those words, but it also pisses the public off monumentally when the worm turns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TSO sends a link to the story in the Guardian that the British are preparing hundreds &hellip; <a title=\"Brits sending troops to Mali\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=33865\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Brits sending troops to Mali<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}