Is Mali ripe for radical Islamist terrorist exploitation? That is certainly the fear of many in the US and Britain, as well as in Mali itself. A group known as “al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” has been active in Algeria, and the fear is that the organization plans to expand outward toward Mali. Andrew Harding of the BBC went to Timbuktu to see for himself. The locals seem pretty sanguine, dismissive, even, though American tourism has dried up as a result of US fears.
