Nine years after Timbuktu welcomed them as liberators, French troops are withdrawing from their final outpost in Mali's far-north. No unruliness here, but also no cries of mission accomplished: the jihadist radicals that scattered when French-led forces intervened have long since morphed into a low-intensity insurgency with raids as far away as the far north of Benin.

With the Summer's chaos in Afghanistan still fresh in memories, when is the right time to end military intervention?

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