Operation Serval of the ground and the populations". Mathieu Guidère, a scholar of Islam and the Arab world at the University of Toulouse, said in an interview published in the newsmagazine Jeune Afrique, that without the French military intervention the state of Mali would have fallen. France's stated rationale for the operation is that to do otherwise would allow "a terrorist state at the doorstep of France and Europe." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the intervention in a phone call with French President François Hollande as "a brave step against extremist Islamic terrorism". Egypt's former President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist, criticized
British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War airport, deployment of regular ground forces for a similar operation, or re-routing the Amphibious Ready Group (ARG). COBRA concluded that it lacked sufficient information to recommend one of the three options and instructed the MoD to continue to develop them, while also recommending that an "operational reconnaissance and liaison team" (ORLT) be sent to Sierra Leone to assess the situation and advise on how the military could be useful. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, approved the ORLT, which was led by Brigadier David Richards, Chief of Joint Force Operations. Richards had previously visited Sierra Leone twice during the civil war—first