Hollande's African allies bogged down by meetings

Hollande the Conqueror's desperate wait for African allies is going rather off the rails.

There have been promises aplenty from the ECOWAS consortium for well over a week. They were going to be there last weekend, then in a few days, then, maybe in a few weeks...

Thus far the actual number of troops who have made it to Mali seems to be no more than a few dozen.

The Nigerian contingent has suffered a setback. Nigeria has variously promised anywhere between 500 and 2000 troops to Operation Spurs for Hollande. Lacking the the transport to airlift themselves to Mali the Nigerian commanders ordered their troops to walk.

Unfortunately they were ambushed by Islamic radicals before they even made it out of Nigeria.

Meanwhile the leaders of the ECOWAS countries are busy having meetings. Every Western Africa country sees these meetings as a rare chance to fill their best hotels on Hollande's tab, so you can be sure they will be meeting as often as possible. This weekend it was in Abidjan.

Before Abidjan they had this meeting, at which it was decided to have another meeting in Addis Ababa next weekend. That will be the "donors meeting" at which it will be determined which Western countries will be footing what part of the bill.

Don't expect to see too many African boots on the ground in Mali until that is sorted out.

Not that anybody seriously expects the arrival of the African troops to make a difference on the ground in Mali. Their main purpose is to disguise Hollande's neocolonialist vanity project in black-face.