Low-Intensity Conflict in Africa: French and American Uses of Force in Recent Days

Remember Mali?  We don't hear much about it these days, but it still suffers from the presence of armed groups of Islamist extremists in the north, and the French military is still there and using force from time to time.  The most recent example occurred just a few days ago, when the French used both air and ground assets to attack a group of Islamist extremists in an area north of Timbuktu.  Eleven suspected extremists were killed, according to Reuters. As usual, nothing was said about anyone being taken prisoner, still less what status any prisoners might have. Meanwhile, Reuters also reports that U.S. forces recently conducted an airstrike near the al-Shabaab stronghold of Barawe in southern Somalia.  The Reuters story says that the strike targeted a person linked both to al-Shabaab and to al Qaeda; Long War Journal says it was a drone strike that killed Sahal Iskudhuq--head of al-Shabaab's intelligence organization. It is interesting to compare these two operations.  While the French attack may have been tailored to reach some particularly significant extremist figure, one gets the impression that this was not the case, that the attack was instead a conventional operation to clear extremists from the area.  That is not the sort of operation the U.S. conducts in Somalia, as near as we can tell from the public record.  The attack on Iskudhuq is typical, singling out a specific individual based on a detailed assessment of the threat associated with that person.  This tailored approach follows from the administration's commitment to using lethal force outside the "hot battlefield" only in limited circumstances involving individuals assessed as posing a threat. Iskudhuq apparently satisfied this standard.  That will perhaps cause some to be worried about the capaciousness of the outside-the-battlefield standard, while soothing the concerns others may have about the standard being too narrow.  Without the relevant intelligence regarding his role and activities, however, I don't think we on the outside can safely draw any conclusions.