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 British military intervention in the Sierra Leone Civil War The United Kingdom began a military intervention in Sierra Leone on 7 May 2000 under the codename Operation Palliser. Although small numbers of British personnel had been deployed previously, Palliser was the first large-scale intervention by British forces in the Sierra Leone Civil War. In early May 2000, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)—one of the main parties to the civil war—advanced on the country's capital, Freetown, prompting the British government to dispatch an "operational reconnaissance and liaison team" (ORLT) to prepare to evacuate foreign citizens. On 6 May, the RUF blocked