Saturday, November 30, 2013

Thanksgiving Weekend Links

Two incidents in the world caught my attention this Thanksgiving weekend. Neither will likely have much of an effect on the overall picture of anything, but they are interesting nonetheless.

The first was in Mali. The leader of the coup that occurred in March 2012 was arrested for kidnapping. Amadou Sanogo, who was a captain at the time and later promoted to general, had staged the coup because he claimed the government wasn't doing enough to fight the insurgency/guerilla war going on in northern Mali. Ironically enough, almost immediately after the coup the Tauregs along with extremist allies rose up and captured northern Mali from government forces. This arrest doesn't surprise me at all. The new government had little choice but to keep Sanogo around or else risk alienating the army, which would have created problems of their own. Instead they promoted Sanogo and waited for a proper time in which to arrest him. After all, he committed one coup, what's to stop him from doing it again?

Interesting story for me: while doing my constant travelling the past couple of weeks I got stuck on the tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina. The guy next to me was from Mali so we actually had a pretty good conversation about current events in the country and some of Mali's modern history. He seemed pretty thrilled that he ran into someone who could talk intelligently about his country. I was thrilled just to be able to talk about something that very few people find interesting.

The second story comes out of Japan. An "improvised launch device" was found outside one of the air bases the US controls. Explosions were heard the night before but there was no damage to anything. Improvised mortars were used near the base in 2009 by the leftist group Kakurokyo so they are also most likely responsible for this attack as well. Probably nothing serious will come from this incident but it is slightly concerning.

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