Chapter 855 Mali Civil War

During the London Olympics, it seemed that tourists from all over the world came here...

As you can imagine, the result is that the flow of people in London is more terrifying than usual.

"Before the Olympics, the price of hotel accommodation in London had already skyrocketed, with an increase of more than 300%. Even so, it is hard to find a bed here..."

According to statistics, there are about 110,000 hotel rooms in London, but athletes from various countries who came here to participate in the Olympics alone account for one-third of these rooms - in fact, long before the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee had already booked 40% of them for official use by the Olympics.

The hotels under the Four Seasons Cavendish Hotel Group are no exception, including their two Devonshire luxury hotels in London and a Four Seasons Hotel. These three most luxurious hotels are hard to find a room.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the more than half a month of the London Olympics, the turnover of these hotels can catch up with a quarter of the usual...

There are even many hotels that have kicked out customers who have booked at a slightly lower price or checked in long ago for various reasons, just to take the opportunity to earn three or four times the usual room rate.

Of course, the hotels under the Four Seasons Cavendish Hotel Group will not allow this. After their rooms are full, they cooperate with Grainger Property Leasing Company under Cavendish Asset Management Company by providing service personnel, and the short-term rental apartments provided by the other party are also fully booked by tourists. Because of the continuous expansion plan, the Four Seasons Cavendish Hotel Group has been training reserve service personnel. This time they have drawn from these trainees and surplus service personnel from other English-speaking countries to provide sufficient service personnel for the short-term rental apartment project with Grainger Property Leasing Company.

It can be said that because of the full preparation, this London Olympics will bring satisfactory revenue to the Four Seasons Cavendish Hotel Group.

Because the profit of this Olympics is not only in the hotel industry, but also in the retail, catering, entertainment and cultural industries, which will also make a lot of money - because the tickets for the Olympics are already difficult to buy, many tourists who come to London have no chance to appear at the competition site, and even tourists who buy tickets can often only watch one or two events...

So based on the principle of "coming here", many of them went to other scenic spots in England for sightseeing. The many castles and manors owned by Grace Cultural Tourism Group are naturally the main destinations for these tourists.

Even more popular is Harrods, one of the most famous department stores in London and even in England. This "shopping mecca" owned by the Devonshire Family Foundation is also full of tourists from all over the world.

After all, most of those who can come to London at this time are rich people, so when you come to London for free, you can't miss the experience of entering Harrods, the world's top shopping mall.

According to the statistics sent by Julia Moore to Barron, Harrods' sales began to rise sharply from a week before the opening of the Olympics, especially some tourists from Asia, who provided more than one-third of Harrods' sales during this period, mainly Chinese tourists, and their purchasing power is evident.

However, at this time, Barron had already left London - after attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics and watching some of the competitions in the first two days - including the birth of the first gold medal of the London Olympics, which was won by a Chinese athlete in the women's 10-meter air rifle event - he left London and went to Colo.

…

Before Barron came to Colo, Colo's armed forces, the Colo Corps, responded to the proposal of the African Union and had sent a force of about 500 people (about a battalion) of armed personnel to participate in the African Union's peacekeeping operations in Mali.

All this started with the unrest in North Africa last year.

In the "Arab Spring" that started in Tunisia, a North African country last year, the Gaddafi regime in Libya fell.

Previously, there was a group of Tuareg mercenaries in Libya under the command of Kadazor. After Kadazor's fall, these Tuareg mercenaries fled there, some to Nigeria, and some to Mali.

The Tuareg are a semi-nomadic Islamic nation, widely distributed in Niger, Mali, Algeria and Libya.

However, the Tuareg in northern Mali have conflicts with the Malian government. Because they are marginalized by the Malian government, they have a strong sense of national identity and have been trying to establish an independent country.

Therefore, after some Tuaregs in Libya arrived in Mali, they quickly formed an alliance with the local Tuaregs and launched a large-scale Azawad national liberation movement.

On the surface, Mali has always had a relatively stable political situation since the establishment of the Third Republic in 1992, but this stability is mainly due to the balance of central and local tribal forces.

However, the emergence of the Azawad National Liberation Movement broke this balance and cast a shadow of civil war over Mali.

In this way, in January this year, the Mali Civil War officially started!

The Mali government itself, like many governments in Africa, is internally corrupt and has very weak control over the country. Therefore, when the civil war broke out, the government army was beaten to the ground by the long-awaited "Azawad National Liberation Movement" rebels and lost land one after another.

In the end, the poor performance of the government army led to the Mali coup in March this year. A group of soldiers overthrew the then president and formed a military government. This kind of thing can be said to be normal in Africa...

However, the ideal is full, but the reality is very skinny. After the military government came to power, it still did not prevent the government from collapsing.

By April, the rebels of the Azawad National Liberation Movement had occupied two-thirds of the territory of Mali and declared the establishment of the Republic of Azawad in northern Mali.

As a result, Mali has a north-south confrontation and a split in the country. It can be said that the government army is in danger.

It was at this time that a split occurred within the Azawad National Liberation Movement.

Within the Azawad National Liberation Movement, it mainly split into two forces - "Defenders of the Faith" and "Azawad Civil Movement".

The "Defenders of the Faith" organization has a deep connection with the "Al-Qaeda" organization and belongs to an Islamic extremist organization. They advocate imitating the Islamic State (ISIS) and building an extreme religious regime covering West Africa.

But the National Liberation Movement of Azawad was not so ambitious. They did not want to overthrow the Malian government, but only wanted to establish a secular nation-state recognized by the UN.

Because of their huge differences, the two groups soon started a civil war again after their common enemy, the government army, became weak.