Paris AP
France appears to be halting the lightning advance of radical Islamists seen as a threat to Europe.
But the operation raises the specter of an African quagmire in a new theater of the West's "war on terror" just as France and other U.S. allies emerge from the old one in Afghanistan. And it undermines President Francois Hollande's promise to end the cozy, paternalistic ties France has long sustained with its former African colonies.