Mali, the tourism sweetheart and West African cultural melting pot, even though hailed as a stable democracy, has had an intense history witnessing a series of coups to this day. Interestingly enough, the coups have been alternating with Tuareg rebellions in the north of the country, which have been present on an on-and-off basis since the 1960s, when France ceased to be Mali’s colonial ruler. The current crisis in the Sahel is not a new phenomenon, nor was it totally unexpected, as I see it, after the buds of the Arab Spring blossomed to create an uncontrollable bullet garden at the edges of the Sahara.
To many voicing the question of why the Malian government has not succeeded, for decades now, to solve the ‘Tuareg problem’, there are many answers, yet the most important factor to take into account is that Mali’s interior is almost pure desert. As Robert Kaplan[1] wrote following the latest coup – which ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré in March 2012 on the grounds that he was failing to combat Tuareg violence – what 
Africa’s weak states lack is not democracy but governance. In Mali’s case, the droughts in the desert areas have also left space for the inhabitants, and especially the Tuareg, to continuously feel angry and neglected. The state has not exercised any authority in the vast emptiness of the Sahel in which the current rebel forces (the MNLA and the Ansar Dine) have proclaimed their new state, Azawad.
There is little economic activity in this vast wasteland to compel the government to maintain more than a light footprint there[2]. This desert area, also extending into Niger, Chad and Mauritania is dominated by various ethnic groups that go about their daily lives largely unaffected by what happens in the capital cities (Bamako, Nouakchott, Niamey, N’djamena). These capital cities are more like city-states; they own armies and try to keep some order in the far-flung, far less populated reaches, but these armies have never actually ruled this desert; rather, they have maintained a stable cease-fire with the Tuareg there (often by integrating Tuareg fighters into local military bases) [3]. Now, this situation has backfired.
To understand the conflict between Mali’s government and the Tuareg, and grasp today’s conflict, one has to look at the history as well as take the Arab Spring into account. The Tuareg consider themselves different to Malians and have, for many decades now, wished to form their own state. Armed conflicts between Tuareg rebels, not only involving Mali but Niger, and other neighbors too, have taken place with renewed fervor from the 1990s onwards, with the most recent fighting to have erupted in early 2000, 2006-2009 and, the latest one, in 2011-2012. Various peace agreements have been signed but have apparently failed to bring a lasting solution.
The latest insurgency is probably the most important one, since it has managed to create a diplomatic ripple effect for Mali and the whole region of North and West Africa. Even though the conflict may appear to have suddenly spiralled out of control, there were signals to show that it was coming. And this is exactly where the Arab Spring, and the Libyan revolution especially, comes into the game.
After Libya’s revolution against Muammar Gaddafi, many well-trained and experienced Tuareg fighters who had taken up arms in the Libyan war returned to their homeland. Upon the fighters’ return, the Malian military felt a renewed incoming threat which was not based on false grounds; gunfire was soon exchanged in January of this year at the town of Menaka. The military stood its ground, but it sensed the government was doing little to cover its rear. Anger started fermenting within military ranks from that time onwards. This culminated, in March 2012, with the CNRDR (National Committee for the Return of Democracy and Restoration), made up of soldiers in the military, taking control of the town of Kidal and, soon after, Bamako. They deposed the president and proclaimed their own rule. As a result, Mali is still ruled by this interim government, the militarily-clad CNRDR, and the situation continues to remain frail and tense. Touré’s prime minister, Cheick Modibo Diarra, was also arrested by the CNRDR and was forced to resign on December 11th, 2012.
However, ongoing changes to the situation in the capital are linked to the even more complicated developments in the north. Right after the coup in March which saw the CNRDR move into the presidential palace, the country saw a rebellion by various insurgent groups in the north under the banner of National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which seized the towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, proclaiming the area the free,
independent state of Azawad. However, another group, Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), which broke away from the MNLA union, stretched its activities southwards and stated its main goal as to impose Islamic Law in the country. To further complicate matters, there also came al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), which fought MNLA in order to take control of Menaka. All these groups retain ties to or against each other and to other organizations that are sketchy and quite vague, as is always the case with uprisings in the continent.
As these paragraphs are being written, the Ansar Dine, the MNLA and the interim government that is the CNRDR agreed to hold talks in order to avoid escalation of violence under the mediating efforts of Blaise Compaore, the president of neighboring Burkina Faso. The talks resulted as pressure by Chad and other West African countries to end this conflict became more intense, so as to prevent the crisis from overspilling into now-peaceful parts of Africa. The United Nations, moreover, is in stand-by mode, waiting to see whether it should allow the deployment of around 3,000 troops by ECOWAS (Economic Commission of West African States), should the situation not resolve itself at the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, Malians are undergoing a period where their famous ‘cousinage’[4] – their admiring ability to remain a large family – is under great threat. Although the population is almost unanimously Muslim, beliefs and religious practices differ around the country, a fact which had not created significant recesses in the past. However, religion seems to be an easy excuse; under its banner, deeper gaps are rearing their ugly head, perhaps for decades well or not-so-well hidden. Mali, a place of immense cultural richness, still retaining an exotic allure rooted in the accounts of 17th and 18th century European travelers who visited the towns built during the Mande and Gao Empires, is now a country undergoing major changes. Rapes, violent amputations and killings are starting to appear in global media. Musicians and other artists, as well as cultural treasures (such as various UNESCO Heritage Sites) have been attacked in the name of radical Islam, outbreaks which have repeatedly taken place mostly in the north, but have also started to affect the tourism industry, a very important source of income for the country, as well as the cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism of Bamako. What will happen next and if the country will succeed in pulling itself together remains to be seen, although the chances of this being a quickly passing crisis becomes slimmer and smaller a possibility.
All links accessed 16/12/2012
[1] Traub, James, “Two Cheers for Malian Democracy”, Foreign Policy, (13/04/2012), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/13/two_cheers_for_malian_democracy?page=0,1
[2] Kaplan, Robert, “Africa’s Tuareg Dilemma”, STRATFOR, (11/04/2012)
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/africas-tuareg-dilemma
[3] ibid
[4] Traub, James, “Two Cheers for Malian Democracy”, Foreign Policy, (13/04/2012), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/13/two_cheers_for_malian_democracy?page=0,1
Bibliography
Africa Know, “Who are the Tuareg?” (27/03/2012), http://www.africaknow.com/2012/03/who-are-tuareg.html
Al Jazeera, “Malian rebels and Islamic fighters merge” (27/05/2012), http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/05/201252623916484555.html
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Traub, James, “Two Cheers for Malian Democracy”, Foreign Policy, (13/04/2012), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/13/two_cheers_for_malian_democracy?page=0,1
