Operation Serval

And I think the export of that technology and that expertise is, for me, is the most concerning thing because it gives...

If you imagine the Operation Serval in Mali, For an insurgent in Mali to confront the French forces, they had to be pretty brave because they weren't very well equipped.

They could use IEDs.

The chances of them getting killed were super high.

And as a result of this, a separatist, secular separatist Tuareg movement, then called the, uh, MNLA, relaunched an armed insurgency campaign.

It becomes somewhat-- It enters into a uncomfortable [chuckles] a- alliance with a, I don't like the term jihadist, but for simplest, simplicity sake, we'll say jihadist, um, group whose origins are multiple, but go more to the aftermath of the Algerian Civil War, and that alliance between a secular separatist movement and a more religiously motivated extremist movement makes significant territorial gains in 2000 and advancing south on the Malian capital, and it's at this moment that the then Malian head of state, who had, uh, come to power in a coup, I believe, asks, uh, then, uh, French President François Hollande to intervene, um, which is what gives birth to this Operation, uh, Serval in 2013, which is, as I said, the more tactically limited military intervention, which then expands outward into Operation Barkhane in 2015.

Right.

So, and then just to connect it once again with the border story in Europe, in 2015, you have the quote, unquote, "migration crisis" in Europe.