But as the multi-week operation wore on in Gourma district, where 400 French troops and 100 allied Malians searched for 50-odd jihadists they estimated were hiding in the shadows, the obstacles kept piling up.
When they reached the thatch-and-wood villages where they suspected jihadists were hiding. Men tended cows. Women pounded millet. Everyone smiled. And nobody told them anything. On a rare reporting trip with the French troops into central Mali, Reuters journalists saw first-hand why a five-year-old mission — initially planned as a short-term stopgap to hand over to local forces — may have many more years left to run.The 4,500 French troops deployed in this patchwork of former French colonies for ‘Operation Barkhane’ face huge logistical challenges in hostile terrain.
While Serval had brought moderate stability to northern Mali, unrest had spread to the country’s more populated center, with attacks also reaching neighboring Burkina Faso, Niger and even Ivory Coast. On the first day of one mission, in 40 degree Celsius , the French soldiers arrived in a hamlet 10km north of Ndaki town, next to a small wood where suspected jihadists had been seen fleeing earlier.
At one stage they heard reports of an armed group heading towards them. War planes were called in to scare the fighters off. One unit wanted to check a forest where weapons had been abandoned, but the troops were still stuck towing vehicles.
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