France did not topple the current regimes. If you want to dig deeper into the situation the region has been unstable for a long long time and when France came back in 2013 there were no French soldiers and they were asked to intervene so if you want to make parallels should we start applying the same to Saudi influence (or iran or usa) if there are no boots on the ground. If this is the game of course France a nuclear power is exercising influence and largely economic and currency.
Most of the issues we speak of today are inherited from the colonial era!
You speak of france coming back in 2013 while in truth france never left to come back.. if speaking solely military then yes france for some good reasons is forced to intervene every now and then at least once every decade to maintain its influence!
So ya france is indeed exercising its colonial influence over country making sure to exploit it all!
After all this is how france makes its living from exploiting weaker countries!
Again wrong as i am relaying the opinion of many friends from Mali and not mine.
Oh and sorry if it hurts your feeling calling Qaeda affiliated (by their own admission) groups terrorists...
where are your posts about the missing boys and girls from schools kidnapped to become soldiers or be sold and married off? that is happening in Sahel and that is who the fight is against there...
What makes you think you are the only one with friends from Mali even though my opinion is mostly from what I believe and from what I know about Mali and the region and my interest in the Tuareg people in general and their life style and culture which I respect very much and love!
And I wasn't complaining about calling al qaeda terrorists.. clearly they were behind many atrocities carried out in many countries that involve killing of innocent civilians! But so is the terrorist state France actually france was and is behind the most evil and cruel crimes in our modern history specially in Africa a evil policy which they are continuing with to this day and a history of evil that is not comparable to these stateless extremist groups!
And still here you are.. want to speak about these so called terrorist "Islamists" while shedding tears for few dead french terrorist soldiers!
What you are not willing to understand that france is the one who gave ground for these extremist groups and still do by occupying the land!
Even further more.. france made sure different extremist groups gets armed and so to give themselves a legitimacy of fighting terrorists and maintaining order while order is nowhere to be found as france exploit one of the world poorest people and steal their resources!
The french constant involvement since colonial time to its current neocolonial time made the situation only worst!
the economic/financial dominance france have over the region is one of the exploitation I'm speaking of..
the franc zone is part of their inherited colonial dominance over the region.. so for the people of the region their fight is with colonial france despite all their differences and all their divisions!
France can not be part of the solution because france is the real enemy of that region and the one exploiting it by all means!
And so france will make sure the region to stay destabilized and so by giving ground to warlords, extremist religious groups, dictators etc!
But france know very well that they will be loosing their influence sooner or later despite all their interventions to maintain it!
france is now being forced to replace or "reform" their franc zone with something else.. with something more suitable with our age and times
They are simply trying to find a way to continue exploiting many african countries in a way which is not so obvious like it is today!
ye3ni the "colonial tax" some African countries still pay to Paris sounds very odd so introducing fake "reforms" is a must do for france!
So in the end it was never about some of the boys and girls you feel sorry for!
And sadly many people like yourself don't seems to feel so much sorry or equally sorry for the thousands of children being exploited in these french owned mines in Africa!