About 2,500 French troops, supported by 12 jet fighters, have provided the sharp end of the fighting force. Now that all three regional capitals in the north are free of AQIM, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, made clear that French forces would soon leave. The long term task of securing Mali will be handed over to the country's own army and an African force provided by neighbouring states.
"Now it's up to African countries to take over," said Mr Fabius. "We decided to put the means - in men and supplies - to make the mission succeed and hit hard," he told a French newspaper. "But the French aspect was never expected to be maintained. We will leave quickly."
The promised African force of 3,300 men is steadily arriving. A convoy of troops from Togo in freshly painted armoured vehicles left Mali's capital, Bamako, heading eastwards towards the fighting.
But a swift French withdrawal could give AQIM and its allies a chance to recover before the African soldiers are fully trained and ready to take over.
Britain has promised 330 troops for an international training mission designed to bolster Mali's army and those of the troop-contributing countries. But that process will take time.
Meanwhile, AQIM could try to find refuge in the central Sahara. "The hardline jihadists, mostly Algerians, could try to take refuge in the desert, places that are less well monitored, and plan some kind of return to the battlefield," said Paul Melly, a West Africa expert at Chatham House.
In Kidal yesterday, people who had lived under AQIM's brutal imposition of Sharia welcomed the French and Malian troops as liberators. Haminy Maiga, the interim president of the Kidal regional assembly, said that France had used four transport planes to airlift troops into the town's airport, protected by helicopter gunships.
"Afterwards they took the airport and then entered the town, and there was no combat. The French are patrolling the town," he told Associated Press news agency.
But a Western security source in Bamako said the war was not over. "There's no way that they can say this thing is won", he said, predicting that insurgents would still be active in the ungoverned deserts between the towns.
"This has been the problem with the French mission from the start: it was always going to be pretty straightforward to stop the rebels coming further south, and then to take cities back from them. Truly neutering them, so they cannot just start all over again will take longer," he said.
"It is far from sure that even the French can do that, let alone the Malians."
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