Inch by inch, Canada and the West are being drawn into an African war we don’t understand.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists Canadian troops are not involved in any meaningful way in Mali’s civil war. But they are.

We now have an unspecified number of special-forces commandos in Mali — in addition to one C-17 cargo plane and the 35 military personnel that go with it.

As usual, Canadians had to find out about the commando deployment from someone other than our own government.

The Star’s report Tuesday came from anonymous sources in the Defence Department. The CBC had to find out from French television that Canadian special forces are also operating in Niger, which borders on Mali.

But then everything about Canada’s role in Mali is treated by Ottawa as a state secret. Canadians learned of the initial C-17 deployment only after Mali’s president tweeted the information on the internet.

When that initial, one-week deployment was extended, we were first told not by our own government but by Mali’s ambassador to Canada.

The pattern continues. On Tuesday, International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino announced that Canada will give Mali $13 million. He said it was for humanitarian aid.

But he made the announcement from Ethiopia where, at a summit hosted by the African Union, other nations had just pledged $455 million to fund a military expedition against Malian rebels.

What are our special forces doing in Mali? Some reports say they are there to protect the C-17 crews. Others say they are guarding Canada’s virtually empty embassy.

If the government follows past practice, it will never say. It claims that commando operations must be secret.

And Niger? French television said Canadian special forces are there for training. It didn’t say whether they were training others or being trained.

Canada is not the only nation being sucked inexorably into Mali. The New York Times reports that the U.S. is planning to base unmanned drones in Niger for use against Malian rebels.

The BBC reports that Britain is sending 330 troops to Mali and neighbouring states.

The French, who have 2,150 troops in place, insist their war aims will soon be achieved.

But The Associated Press quotes a senior U.S. State Department official as saying that the war in Mali is bound to last for “several years.”

Meanwhile, who exactly are we fighting in Mali? The usual government line is that the rebels are Islamic militants set on turning Mali into a terrorist base. But as reports from the ground demonstrate, the reality is far more complicated.

There are at least four different armed rebel groups operating in the country’s north. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azwad, a Tuareg separatist group, claims it holds the town of Kidal. It used to be allied with the Islamist Ansar Dine.

Now, according to AP, the separatists say they want to work with the French against some (but not all) Islamists. But they say they will still fight Mali’s army which, according to reports from Reuters, is said to be busy executing those who look Tuareg in towns liberated by the French.

Ansar Dine, meanwhile, has fractured into two groups, one of which is more pro-Tuareg than the other. Both factions distinguish themselves from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM.

And AQIM, according to Niger’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Bazoum has — until recently — been working hand in glove with Mali’s government.

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In November, Bazoum told the foreign affairs commission of France’s National Assembly that Mali’s former president, deposed last year by the army, had given AQIM free rein in the north in exchange for a share of the terror group’s lucrative kidnapping revenues.

There. I hope all of this explains why we’re militarily involved (or, as the Harper government would say, not militarily involved) in this war.

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

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