Some 2,000 people took to the streets in the Mali capital yesterday/ on Thursday to protest plans for a foreign military intervention to reclaim territory seized by armed Islamist groups in the north. The march was organized to support Mali’s own army and to protest plans by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to send in a regional force. The protesters marched through the streets of central Bamako brandishing signs and banners and chanting in protest against interim president Dioncounda Traore, calling him incompetent. The protest came on the eve of a high-level international meeting in Bamako aimed at hammering out a strategy to reconquer the north.