Overnight, Islamic terrorists took 170 hostages at a hotel in Mali.  Why would Islamic terrorists take hostages in Mali?  Most Americans don’t even know what continent Mali is on (Africa), or where it is in Africa (I admit, I had to look on a map).  What’s special about Mali?  Turns out, quite a bit.

Mali is former French colony, now an Islamic state.  It’s a poor—very, very poor land-locked country.  Let’s unpack all the history and current entanglements and see where it leads.

Going back into history, from the Left’s viewpoint, those Western Christian colonialists who try to spread their filthy Western values to “savages” in other places—you know, the Crusaders that President Obama keeps bringing up—they took the magical empire of Mali and incorporated it into their filthy empire.  So to them, the hostage-taking is just payback (like every other terror attack).

According to Wikipedia (it’s all I had time to Google), the Mali Empire at one time had a “flourishing of mathematics, astronomy, literature, and art.”  This was in the year 1300.  Since then, it has slid down a sort of corruption-laced malaise into abject poverty.

France seized Mali sometime in the 1880’s as part of their strategy to build an empire controlling all the caravan routes through north Africa from the Niger River to the Nile.

Contrary to the Left’s “Crusader” narrative, in the 1880’s, the French Republic was certainly not Christian (having thrown that elephant from its back in the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic periods).  Nope: France was after a pure power play, a feeding-frenzy in Africa, along with Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy, Russia and Spain.  The United States never participated in this continental rape; in the late 1800’s, we had our own problems.

Mali gained its independence in 1960, about the time the rest of Europe’s colonial domination of Africa fell apart.  In 1991, a coup led to Mali to become a “democracy,” based on Sharia law.  Yes, that’s a contradiction, but make no mistake: Mali is an Islamic state, but by French standards, a “tame” one.

The last time Islamists attempted a coup in Mali, the French military stepped in like an angry stepdad (under cover of a U.N. Security Council resolution) with their fighter jets and infantry and put things right.

This attack is a clear signal to the French.  ISIS attacks Paris, the French attack ISIS, and ISIS attacks Mali, which is largely controlled by French interests.  The guests and staff at the Radisson probably speak French (as they do in many central African nations).

So, today, the Malian military stormed the hotel and freed some of the hostages taken by terrorists, who shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they took over the Radisson Blu hotel.  (An aside: it’s likely the Malian military is also made up of Muslims.)

The message: it’s open season on the French.  And soon it will be open season on the Germans, British, and the rest of the E.U.  Islamists like Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a terrorist since the 1970’s and one of the leaders of the 2013 coup attempt in Mali, are still around, biding their time, and eager to work with ISIS, which is the terrorist haven of their dreams—the SPECTRE they’ve been waiting for all these years.  Belmokhtar fled to Libya in 2013, and now hangs out somewhere in Algeria or Chad.

This whole situation brings to mind former Libyan “maximum leader” Muammar Gaddafi’s pronouncement in 2006: “We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”

ISIS isn’t satisfied with a “few decades.”  They are a cancer on three continents, and spreading rapidly to the rest of the world, and they are making Africa their new lever to overthrow its former European masters.

Sadly, all out war will soon descend upon Europe once again.

(crossposted from sgberman.com)