‘UK’s deployment of troops to Mali mission creep’

The British government has been accused of “mission creep” with regard to France’s war on Mali, Press TV reports.

Chris Nineham, a founding member and a national officer of the Stop the War Coalition in the United Kingdom, made the remakes in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday.

“We were told a week ago that there was coming no combat roll … a couple of transport planes and that was it …This is mission creep … This is a government that is clearly enthusiastic about a new set of wars in West Africa,” Nineham said.

“They have also learned nothing amazingly from the last few years. Afghanistan… Iraq… They were both interventions that were presented as being humanitarian… How much longer before the carnage starts?” Nineham added.

UK is set to dispatch about 330 military personnel to Mali and West Africa to help France’s war in the African country.

On January 11, France launched a war in Mali under the pretext of halting the advance of fighters who control the north of the West African country. The United States, Canada, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark have also have said they would support the French war in Mali.

Chaos broke out in Mali after President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

However, in the wake of the coup d’état, the Tuareg fighters took control of the entire northern desert region, but the Ansar Dine fighters then pushed them aside and took control of the region.