As the U.S. prepares to add Apache helicopters in the battle against ISIS, what other military options does the U.S. have? Col. Cedric Leighton and Simon Constable discuss. Photo: Getty

THIS is the world’s most dangerous place to be right now.

It’s a region overrun by Islamic militants baying for blood — but it is not Iraq or Syria.

It’s northern Mali in West Africa.

French forces won back the territory from al-Qaeda in early 2013 with more than 4500 soldiers in the region, according to Foreign Policy.

But now that France has withdrawn most of its troops, Mali has become the deadliest place on the planet.

In the past 15 months alone, a floundering UN peacekeeping mission has suffered 31 deaths and 91 injuries.

Now the United Nations’ Mali envoy Bert Koenders is leaving after less than a year in the role to become the Netherlands’ foreign minister.

Malian foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop last week begged the UN Security Council to take urgent measures in the increasingly unstable area, the BBC reported.

He warned that the region ran “the risk of becoming the destination of hordes of terrorists”.

UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous promised that combat helicopters and drones would be sent to Mali in the coming months as it faces ambushes, rockets, mortar shells and suicide attacks.

But in the meantime, the neglected area is descending into chaos, with the spectre of Ebola also looming large in the country, which borders the epicentre of the viral epidemic, Guinea.

The UN mission’s website says Mali “has been confronted by a profound crisis with serious political, security, socio-economic, humanitarian and human rights consequences.”

It attributed the problem to years of weak infrastructure and governance, fragile social cohesion and deep-seated feelings among communities in the north of being neglected, marginalised and unfairly treated.

Mali has also faced problems with environmental degradation, climate change and economic shocks.

“These conditions were exacerbated by more recent factors of instability, including corruption, nepotism, abuse of power, internal strife and deteriorating capacity of the national army,” the UN reports.

Al-Qaeda took control of northern Mali in 2012 after a coup sparked by Tuareg rebels in the country’s vast desert.

The extremists sidelined the Tuaregs and had begun to advance on the capital, Bamako, when French and African troops intervened in January 2013.

Minusma, a 9000-strong UN peacekeeping mission, took over in July 2013, but has faced continuing insurgent attacks.

With French forces leaving the area, the UN is struggling to cope.

Will the world take notice of Mali’s predicament?