It's a terrible shame what happened to Mali -- until the collapse of Libya it was a stable, if terribly poor, democratic state. The return of militant Tuaregs (

It's a terrible shame what happened to Mali -- until the collapse of Libya it was a stable, if terribly poor, democratic state. The return of militant Tuaregs (now armed with the weapons Qadhdhafi had outfitted them with as his personal militia) and the merging of al-Qai'da in the Maghreb with Algerian tribes created a fertile soil for extremist violence. Timbuktu was once a great center of learning and commerce, at the heart of a sophisticated West African empire. These neo-Kharijites have nothing but contempt for history.