Despite all this disassociation, despite the looking the other way and the simplistic analysis pitting cut-throat, dynamite-wielding Islamist killers against innocents abroad, this bigger story in which Mali's plight is now entangled ultimately involves us all, more intimately and continuously than could any random threat of a terror bomb in Paris or London. A major shift in perception and in action is required. Otherwise, be it indirectly through mass migration, people trafficking, arms and drugs smuggling, epidemic disease, the pernicious poison of official corruption and abuse; or directly through resulting, premeditated ethnic and sectarian, religion-based violence, the nonchalant, unthinking condemnation of a vast swath of humanity to impoverishment, physical, material and spiritual, will inevitably return to haunt the more fortunate peoples of the west.