In the aftermath of suicide bombings in the vicinity of a military camp in Mali’s northern city of Timbuktu on Saturday, Malian armed forces and Islamic separatists exchanged heavy gunfire in the center of the northern town of Kidal on Sunday.

Mali, a former French colonial subject, was cobbled together by combining real estate from Arab-Berber dominated North-Africa and Black dominated Sub-Saharan Africa. Ethnic and religious divisions have led to outbreaks in violence and tension throughout Mali’s history.

But with the rise of Arab Spring and adherence to purer forms of Islam, violence has reached a new level of brutality as Islamic rebels become increasingly confident that their cause is right, and Allah is on their side. The rebels have gone so far as to suspend all peace talks as they anticipate the fall of the Mali government and the restoration of Caliphate, or Islamic theocratic rule all over Africa and West Asia.

The naked escalation in violence has thrown an egg in the face of France’s Socialist President Francois Hollande who claimed victory over Islamic rebels less than two weeks ago amid photo-ops with Malian leaders.

Carnage in Mali is unlikely to subside as the region is witnessing an unprecedented population explosion despite grinding poverty and squalor, a feature common to many other Muslim majority countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan. Malian fertility rate is at least 6 births/woman, compared to 1.4 births/woman for Europe and Japan, and 1.9 births/woman for United States.

Fertility Rate, births/woman

European and North American governments have done little to nothing to provide access to contraception and family planning to attain sub-replacement fertility rates in order to alleviate poverty, hunger, desperation and violence in Mali, and in a broader context, Africa.

The recent Kenya mall shootings which took the lives of dozens of innocents were the handiwork of Somali terrorists several of whom trace their residency to United States and United Kingdom.

So will the influx of radicalized elements within West Asian and African immigrant populations in Europe and North America lead to more terror attacks? The answer can almost be prophesied, as Chechen attacks in Boston demonstrated not too long ago.

[image from Youtube and Google Visualizer for World Bank data]