In case anyone else hasn’t been hearing about it, recently the Tuareg rebellions in Mali have risen in intensity, to the point where they established one large central movement last year, the “National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad” (or NMLA for short). Since then, they’ve been taking the country of Mali by storm, capturing it’s most populated cities, and two days ago, when they finally held more than half the country, established themselves as the new nation of Azawad.
Now, according to various news outlets, weapon drops by the United States and NATO for the Libyan rebels in the recent Libyan war have been intercepted by various groups, with the NMLA in particular. Combined with the Malian mercenaries and soldiers who were called to the conflict returning all at once, this leads me to ask a simple, yet important, question:
Did the United States and NATO inadvertently cause this revolution to occur?
Seeing as we did provide most of the assistance for the rebels in Libya during their civil war, we could hold partial responsibility for what occurred afterwards. By intervening, we extended the length of the war far beyond what it would have been without our help, and we definitely put things in the rebel’s favor; all by simply dropping weapons and other military supplies in the desert. We did not consider that these weapons would not be entirely used for the Libyan war effort, or what effect basically dropping a huge stash of weapons in an unstable area might have on the surrounding nations.
This question begets more like it. If the above is affirmative, then does this indirect action constitute an act of war? Does the Obama Administration, which supported the rebels and assisted NATO with aid to them, share any responsibility for this revolution? Has this happened anywhere else in history, if not caused by the United States, then by what other nations?
To me, it seems that, since we did supply aid to them, we could be held indirectly responsible for starting this recent revolution, if not sooner than later.