Marco Gualazzini for The New York Times
Boubacar Yattara had to flee when his unit was deserted by fellow soldiers during a battle.
DIABALY, Mali — At first, the battle went well.
Boubacar Yattara, a 25-year-old Malian soldier, fed the heavy machine gun atop an armored vehicle. His unit fired on a truck full of Islamist militants, destroying it. He radioed for reinforcements, but his commanding officer had bad news. His fellow soldiers had already fallen back, beating a hasty retreat.
So Mr. Yattara did what other soldiers had done as the fighting intensified: He stripped off his uniform, waded through an irrigation canal and melted into the town's civilian population.
"They abandoned us," Mr. Yattara said of the other soldiers, speaking from the hospital bed where he was being treated for a concussion. "We barely escaped with our lives."
In many ways, the battle for Diabaly was over before it even began, the latest in a long string of humiliating defeats for an army that the United States once hoped would be a model for fighting Islamic extremism in one of the most forbidding regions of the world. Instead, it is a weak, dysfunctional force that is as much a cause of Mali's crisis as a potential part of the solution.
Beyond fleeing in the heat of battle, hundreds of Malian soldiers, including commanders of elite units trained by the United States, defected to the rebels who swept across the desert last year, according to senior Malian military officials. Then an American-trained captain toppled the democratically elected government in a coup, creating a chaos that allowed half the country to fall into the hands of Islamist militants.
Now that same Malian Army, which the United Nations expected to be rebuilt over many months of training, has been thrust into the fight once again after a sudden militant surge this month — though it is no better prepared than it was before. Indeed, diplomats in the capital, Bamako, and at the United Nations say that if French warplanes and troops had not joined the effort, the Islamist fighters would have overrun the entire country.
"We thought the army would protect us," said Gaoussou Keita, a 57-year-old radio repairman in Diabaly, who spent nearly a week hiding from militants who occupied his hometown this month. "But they simply ran away."
Worse than that, human rights groups say, Malian soldiers have been accused of atrocities in recent weeks, including summary executions of at least 11 people suspected of being insurgents.
"These acts of reprisal combined with the extreme tension between communities constitute an explosive cocktail that makes one fear the worst," said Souhayr Belhassen, the president of the International Federation for Human Rights, in a statement.
The army has abused its own soldiers as well, a reflection of the bitter divisions that have often kept the army more focused on its critics and internal rivals than on the militants controlling the nation's north. According to Human Rights Watch, defiant soldiers have been beaten and forced at gunpoint to perform anal sex on one another.
Instilling a respect for human rights and international law was supposed to be a cornerstone of the training for Malian forces, according to the United Nations Security Council resolution that passed in December. Suddenly, the unexpected Islamist advance and the French intervention inverted those tortuously negotiated plans — forcing some Malian units to fight right away while others wait for training later.
But the army's frequent defeats and spotty human rights record have rekindled longstanding doubts about whether it can — or perhaps even should — be left to hold on to the gains French troops have made.
"Given that the Malian Army is internally divided, lacks the capacity to effectively project force, has been implicated in human rights abuses, and is very small," said a report by the Congressional Research Service this month, "it is uncertain whether Malian forces will be able to effectively follow up on French military strikes by securing and holding territory."
So far 1,600 troops from Nigeria, Togo, Niger and Benin have arrived in Mali to form part of an African-led force to drive back the militants and ultimately recapture the northern half of the country. But many more are expected, and it will take months to begin retooling Mali's ragtag army to the point that it can play any major role in the fight to chase militants from the north, analysts say.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, Neil MacFarqhuar from the United Nations, and Scott Sayare from Paris.
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