SEGOU, Mali -- When France opened the newest front in the war on terror last week with the swoosh of its aircraft over the desert in central Mali, the U.S. found itself in an unfamiliar position: on the sidelines.

American officials said they would support the French assault on Mali’s Islamist insurgents with intelligence, drone flights and funding. But there’s no talk of U.S. pilots joining the fray, as they did in Libya after the French initiated an aerial campaign against Moammar Gadhafi, and certainly no talk of American combat forces entering Mali.

Indeed, the French intervention in Mali in response to an urgent appeal from the Malian government marked the collapse of what had been the U.S. model for countering Islamist extremism in Africa: Letting Africa solve the problem, with some friendly behind-the-scenes help from the West. African leaders acknowledge that the hope they could take the lead in battling Islamist extremists had vanished.

"What was approved by the Security Council was African-led," said Sunny Ugoh, a spokesperson for the Economic Community of West African States – ECOWAS – the international group that includes Mali and its neighbors. "Until this happened."

Ugoh was referring to a U.N. Security Council plan that called for the organization of an ECOWAS military force to retake northern Mali from Islamists. But the plan required training, financing and logistical support that wasn’t expected to be completed until the fall, and Mali simply couldn’t wait when the Islamists suddenly moved south in what officials feared was the beginning of a campaign to capture the one-third of Mali they didn’t already control.

"The international community had to respond the way they are responding," said Ugoh.

The Obama administration is sensitive to the suggestion that it is being dragged along in Mali, rather than pulling at the front, after a grueling presidential election campaign that saw President Barack Obama repeatedly accused of overseeing a decline in America’s power abroad. It’s gone out of its way to portray itself as engaged.

"We were in full consultation with the French on Mali for a number of weeks before they decided to deploy,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, told reporters Monday. “When they were invited to deploy and before they made those decisions, we were in consultation with them. So this has been very much an allied effort to support Mali, but the division of labor has been that the French would begin the military support while we focused on trying to get ECOWAS ready and going to come in behind them."

But the "leading from behind" approach, as some call Obama’s more cautious and diplomacy-centered foreign policy, doesn’t sit well with many in Africa.

"America should be in this war. This is not a Malian war, or an African war. This is a war against global terrorism. This is an international war," said Bakary Mariko, the spokesman for Capt. Amadou Sanogo, whose coup overturning Mali’s civilian government last year means that the United States is barred by law from assisting the Malian army directly.

Sanogo’s sudden reversal last week from his opposition to foreign intervention paved the way for France’s deployment. Africa could not solve this problem alone, said Mariko.

"African countries hesitated because they knew they could not beat them (the rebels)," he said of the ECOWAS plan, which the coup leaders had opposed.