Malian Community In SW Phila. Not Surprised By Attack In Country's Capital City Because Of France Connection
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – The Malian community in Southwest Philadelphia is not surprised by the attack in their country's capital city because of the West African country's connection with France.
At the Nile African restaurant at 67th Street and Elmwood Avenue, owner Basalif Keita, who left Mali in 2000, says the former French colony has been battling Islamist extremists for years. But he says French forces did not finish the job rooting out those factions in 2013.
He says the French ground and air campaign only pushed Islamist fighters into the desert, not out of the country.
"French didn't clean the north of Mali. They cleaned the top but not the bottom. They stopped the Malian army to go in and finish the problem."
His friend, Salif Coulibaly, a truck driver who left Mali in 1989, says radical Islamists have been terrorizing his country for more than three years, killing innocent Malians.
"They've been killing all over. We're all Muslim. Actually, Mali is 95 percent Muslim. There is only one Koran and we all read it. Where their ideas come from, I don't know, because it's not in the Koran."
Coulibaly says they picked the high-end hotel in his hometown, Bamako, as a symbolic strike, because it serves international clientele.
