SMART DIPLOMACY: Mali joins list of US ‘terror’ boomerangs. “There was a lack of foresight about the blowback in the Sahel from the overthrow of Colonel Muammer Gaddafi in Libya. Hundreds of Malian Tuareg fighters, drafted as mercenaries into his army, went home with heavy weaponry and joined other disaffected Tuaregs to link up with separatists and Islamists in a revolt in January last year. The government’s mishandling of that rebellion sparked the coup that led to the near-disintegration of the army and ultimately today’s crisis.”