The news didn’t get much prominence. In the Star, it merited two paragraphs. But Canada has quietly extended its military support mission in Mali for another 30 days.

And after that? Well, no one seems to know.

Mali is the war no one wants to talk about. Canada’s Conservative government is adamant that our troops won’t be involved, even though some already are.

When Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced Thursday that Canada would continue its deployment of a C-17 cargo plane to help the French in Mali, he very carefully didn’t say what Ottawa plans to do with the special forces commandos it has already dispatched to the North African country.

The government says its job is to protect what it calls Canadian assets.

Certainly, Ottawa is going out of its way to emphasize nonparticipation. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister John Baird told a Commons committee bluntly that the Conservative government is wary of becoming entangled in “another Afghanistan.”

When the government directed an extra $13 million toward Mali recently, it insisted that the money be used for non-military purposes only.

Ottawa is not the only reluctant player in this war.

The French, who initially rolled into Mali last month to prevent a rebel takeover, say their 4,000 troops will be out the door as soon as a United Nations force takes over.

But will they? The Americans don’t think so. On Thursday, The New York Times reports, senior state department official Johnnie Carson told a Congressional committee that an unspecified number of French counterterrorism forces will have to stay in place for an unspecified length of time if the rebels are to be rooted out.

Like Ottawa, Washington is desperate to keep its Malian involvement low-key. War is no longer popular in the U.S. and President Barack Obama’s administration is anxious to limit its role to activities that voters don’t notice, such as refuelling, espionage and drone flights.

Meanwhile, in Mali itself the civil war has entered a new phase. The French control key northern cities such as Timbuktu. But the rebels, a mishmash of Tuareg separatists and Islamic militants (some of whom are fighting one another) have merely retreated into the desert. They are far from defeated.

Last weekend, rebel forces staged a fierce counterattack on the town of Gao before being driven back. The inevitable suicide bombings have already begun.

So too the inevitable misery. An estimated 377,000 Malians have been displaced by the war so far. The United Nations has warned that reprisal killings by the Malian army against lighter-skinned Arabs and Tuaregs risk driving the country into what one official has called a cycle of catastrophic violence.

The Malian army itself is split. Last week, a gun battle broke out between feuding military factions in the capital, Bamako. One person was reported killed.

Here at home, a recent Harris-Decima poll indicates that the vast majority oppose sending Canadian troops into Mali, even in a noncombat role. This may explain why Ottawa is so adamant about minimizing its involvement.

It also may help explain why the opposition parties remain strangely muted. During last week’s Commons debate on Mali, the House was virtually empty. Neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor official opposition leader Tom Mulcair spoke, an indication, presumably, that neither had anything to say.

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But can Canada avoid being drawn in further? European nations, including Britain, are dispatching military trainers to Mali. The U.S. and France want UN peacekeepers to eventually replace French troops.

The theory is that these peacekeepers will be African only. But will they? And even if they are, who will pay the bills? For reluctant Canada, this story is not yet over.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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