and of course they took pick axes to those historic sites. they took it over in january 2012, held it all in 2012 and in january 2013, they decided they were going to take over the whole country and advance on the rest of mali and started marching south, aiming to take over the capital city and at that point, the french government decided this was their responsibility and that they would intervene to save mali. they would send thousands of french soldiers, ground troops and air power into mali and they would take direct military action to repel those islamic groups and they pushed them back into the desert and they really