WHEN French soldiers blazed into the northern city of Gao on January 26th, they won the decisive victory of a three-week-old campaign to dislodge jihadists. But only when they paraded through the mud-built streets of the mystical town of Timbuktu two days later did the triumph feel real. Rebels in remote Kidal, their last redoubt, may still hold some sway but reportedly want to negotiate. France is keen to present the intervention as a joint effort with African forces, yet its soldiers did not wait around for Nigerians, Senegalese, Ivorians and various others to arrive. Some 2,900 French troops, accompanied by a thousand-plus Malians, carried out a swift assault on the three big towns in Mali’s vast desert reaches that had been occupied by al-Qaeda-led rebels since last April. Despite their knowledge of the terrain and experience of guerrilla war, the rebels had chosen to fight like a conventional army, taking and holding cities, travelling along roads in vehicles that presented a clear target for French jets. Now they will revert to what they do much better: surviving as guerrillas in the desert. So what next? France has promised to stay put until Mali is stable but it does not intend to lead the effort. That job will fall to the Malian army as well as to African helpers. They will be sorely tested.

Mali’s loose mix of jihadist and Tuareg rebel groups has dispersed. The lighter-skinned ones and ethnic Arabs tended to go north into the desert; the dark-skinned ones fled south to the arid farmlands.

They are less united than before. The aim of the French and their Malian allies is to separate the religious zealots, hailing mainly from Algeria and beyond, from native Malians and the less fanatical rebels. A splinter of the extremist Ansar al-Dine group may already be ready to talk. So may some of the Tuareg groups demanding autonomy if not independence. But the more defiant zealots may have the whip hand among the rebels in terms of cash and leadership. People in Diabaly, a town briefly occupied by the rebels earlier in January, said that Arabic-speaking foreigners were in command.

The diehard types are likely to carry on the fight. Though they used to concentrate on kidnapping and smuggling rather than launching terrorist attacks, some of them know how to make car-bombs and suicide vests. They may target Malian, French and other allied forces once they drop their guard in Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

Even after years of American training, the ill-disciplined Malian army on its own is no match for the rebels. Malian soldiers are alleged to have killed 16 unarmed Muslim preachers in a bus near Diabaly at the end of last year, perhaps associating them with jihadists. Many religious Muslims were outraged and may have become rebel sympathisers.

Relations between the Malian army and the Tuareg minority are sure to remain bad. After uprisings in the 1990s, Tuareg were encouraged to join the army and police under a scheme to integrate them. But many defected when Tuareg rebels overran the north last year. Malian soldiers may be committing revenge killings.

A European Union training team is expected to arrive soon to try to teach Malian forces to respect human rights, among other things. The Europeans may also help train some of the forces being sent in from various countries belonging to the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), few of which are experienced in desert warfare.

Meanwhile, Mali’s politics is still a mess. “Stabilisation requires an election,” said a Western diplomat, adding that a fair poll is as important as the army’s reconquest of the country’s northern half. After a military coup nearly a year ago, no decent government emerged. But on January 25th a council of ministers endorsed a plan that laid out a series of steps leading, with luck, to an election—and included proposals for talking to the rebels. Few people in Bamako, the capital, are confident that such worthy ideas will be put into practice soon. The hard part of putting Mali back together has barely begun.