It is a humanitarian intervention  Fundamentally at its heart this is a humanitarian intervention by the French. The Islamists who took over Northern Mali have been imposing a severe, austere form of Islam demanding "No cigarettes, no CDs, no radios, no cameras, no jewelry" and beating those who disobey the rules. Men and women have to sit in separate areas in buses. With Sharia being more strictly enforced with increasing number of amputations despite opposition from the local population. [1] Much of the population of the North had already fled to the south with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees saying 200,000 have fled since January 2012. [2] Those who have, like Moussa from Timbuktu, clearly welcome the intervention, he told a French radio station “We have been suffocating and [France] has given us a breath of oxygen. We are ready to fly Malian and French flags alongside each other.” [3]  [1] Mben, Paul Hyacinthe, ‘A Trip Through Hell Daily Life in Islamist Northern Mali’, Spiegel Online, 29 October 2012,   [2] Caux, Helene, ‘IDPs struggle to survive after escaping fighting in northern Mali’, UNHCR, 12 December 2012,   [3] Bamat, Joseph, ‘Mali-based Islamists pledge attacks on French soil’, France 24, 14 January 2013,