He has been praised as a war chief in Mali. Now, French President Francois Hollande has been awarded a U.N.-sponsored peace prize – barely a year into his presidency and just months after launching his first war against Islamic extremists.
The prize givers and African leaders attending Wednesday's awards ceremony, including Malian president Dioncounda Traore, say Hollande deserves UNESCO's Felix Houphouet-Boigny prize precisely because they say the Mali intervention is about long-term peace for a volatile region.
But continued violence in northern Mali, terrorist attacks in neighboring Niger and the extremists' flight to troubled Libya underline the challenges of making that work.
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