<p>If you’re like me, then you woke up one morning, turned on the news, and found a war suddenly underway. But when did this conflict in Mali actually begin?
We know it started with French intervention but when did they intervene? And why?</p> 
<p>The media doesn’t offer many answers, but the does keep us up to date with developments. Before we knew it, we’d gone from brief breakfast bulletins about French troops in Mali to lengthy reports on the six o’clock news about hostages and terrorist situations.</P>
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<p>How did we get into this mess?</p> 
<p>If you consider the flow of events as a line of dominoes, it perhaps becomes easier to comprehend it all: Malian coup d’état, French intervention to help failing government, terrorists take hostages - including Brits, UK steps in with special forces.</p> 
<p>However, the enlightening question is not which dominoes have fallen but who actually put the dominoes there?</p>
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<p>From the arrival of French troops in Mali on 11th of January to the first editions of UK newspapers on the 21st – a period of just 10 days – the situation went from being regional politics to the Prime Minister declaring, “this is a global threat and it will require a global response.”</p> 
<p>Do not be under any illusion that this is a natural flow of events with governments responding appropriately to each situation. On the contrary, the dominoes have been strategically placed by the powers that be to ensure these events occur.</p> 
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<p>How do we know this was all planned? One thing is for sure: the government will never release the Whitehall papers which show their cunning work. However, some deductions can be made, thanks to the press. Just days before French troops landed in Mali, the UK government, alongside other European and world governments, warned their citizens to leave the country.</p> 
<p>Asking ‘why?’ about everything and anything helps lead to the answers. Why would western governments (fore)warn their citizens to abandon Mali? The worst fighting of the Malian coup d’état took place over 6 months earlier and they weren’t asked to leave then. Is it perhaps because they were about to step up the game?</p> 
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<p>On the topic of ‘why’: why would governments in the developed world want to send their troops to Mali? The answer lies in the word which begins with M and ends in Y. It is the blood of our economy, without it we die; when it’s ill, the economists give it fiscal medicine. That word is ‘money'. Our economy lies at the core of our political system. That means business, economics and politics are all interlinked.</p> War is a political discourse, yet a profitable business for many, especially for large supply and service firms, such as Halliburton and Aegis. Halliburton in the period 2003 – 2006 alone profited $17.2 billion in Iraq-war related revenue. The British company Aegis sees an ongoing supply of income through its security contracts in Iraq.
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<p>With the troops out of Iraq and the end in sight for the war in Afghanistan, it seems the profit margins of these big corporations are set to shrink rapidly. 
Have no fear – allow the politicians to step in. When David Cameron said, on the 21st of January, “This is a global threat and it will require a global response. It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months," he laid the necessary foundations to begin building a war on terror in Africa which will last yet another decade.</p>
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So, bring the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan to an end but don’t stop the war. Just move it to another location and that way profits will continue to be reaped. 





