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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMali’s Tuareg Rebellion - Andy Morgan
By Andy Morgan, March 27, 2012
This interview with Andy Morgan offers a detailed and fascinating look at the background to the Tuareg conflict in Mali. Tracing the unrest back over 50 years, he looks at the outside influences of Muammar Gaddafi, local Al Qaeda groups, Algeria and Mauritania.
Could you give us the general picture of what is going on in Mali at the moment?
The Tuaregs have been fighting an insurgency against the central power in Mali since the late 1950s but in terms of open fighting, since 1963. So this is a very old story. What we are seeing is the latest chapter, but a chapter with a great many differences. The Tuaregs this time are better equipped, better trained and better led than they ever have been before and as a result they have been able to clinch a series of military victories which have given them control of the northern half of Mali bar the big cities, such as Timbuktu and Gao, which they havent attacked yet although I suspect now with all the confusion that is going on in Bamako they might take their chances in the next 48 hours and do just that.
This time people are referring to a Libyan knock-on effect, with Tuaregs returning from Libya, having fought with Gaddafi, now heavily armed and with a lot of money to spend. Is this a true picture?
The answer is both yes and no. The relationship between Gaddafi and the Tuaregs goes back to the 1970s, when Gaddafi had a romantic vision of the Tuaregs as superlative warriors. Gaddafi himself, as everyone knows, had a vision of himself as a liberator of oppressed peoples throughout the world. He took it upon himself to bring the Tuaregs into his fold and he trained them up to be soldiers. This happened particularly in the 1980s. The relationship between them at that time was always very ambiguous, as on the one hand he said that he wanted to help the Tuareg people to win back their homeland, but on the other hand he seemed to do precious little to help make that happen in concrete terms apart from giving a bunch of young Tuareg men some military training in Libya, who he then sent to fight wars in Chad and Lebanon but not back home in Mali or Niger. They have always had a complex relationship, which I like to compare to the Irish Republican movement and the USA. Libya was a source for money and support but no actual encouragement to reach their goals.
How did the Tuaregs end up working in Libya?
The reason why a lot of Tuaregs ended up in Libya is that it is a very oil-rich nation which had a lack of manpower. Not only Tuaregs, but many sub-Saharan Africans ended up working in Libya. Some of those Tuaregs were actually a part of the Libyan army. The Malian press have accused the MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) of being Libyan mercenaries but in reality they werent mercenaries but actually regular members of the Libyan army and had been for 20 years. For example the leader of the MNLA, Mohamed Ag Najm, was a colonel in the Libyan army. The story goes, and I need to check some of this but, it appears that there was a very well known Tuareg rebel/freedom fighter/bandit depending on your point of view called Ibrahim Ag Bahanga who was a real thorn in the side of the Malian authorities from 2006 onwards until he was defeated militarily in 2008 and exiled to Libya. There, he started to make connections with all these Tuareg officers in the Libyan army, many of whom were in the same clan and the same tribal group as he was. When the Libyan uprising started in Benghazi and things started to go very wrong for Gaddafi, Ibrahim Ag Bahanga and others persuaded some Tuareg officers in the Libyan army to defect, raid the Libyan army arsenals and take the weaponry back to Mali. I have also heard a rumour, which I have not been able to confirm, that they actually had a meeting with the National Transitional Council, the anti-Gaddafi rebels, to get their blessing for this project.
http://www.theglobaldispatches.com/articles/malis-tuareg-rebellion
This is posted just for information. Details have been sketchy from elsewhere.
Arctic Dave
(13,812 posts)Can we start a pool for the next one?
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)There's a lot of history here and some may be interested in it.
tabatha
(18,795 posts)Nothing posted here makes any difference.
Some people are interested in that area, and the posting was interesting history for them.
Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)One of my favorite bands is Tinariwen and through following them got a sketchy idea of the situation there. I knew things had heated up but no details.
And two of Tinariwen once fought for Gaddafi. And the leader at age 4 saw his father killed by the Mail govt in a previous uprising. Tinariwen are one of my favorites. The bass player is pretty awesome.
EDIT - a recent interview with him.
ellisonz
(27,711 posts)By Thomas Morfin | AFP 1 hr 26 mins ago
Mali's ousted leader Amadou Toumani Toure, whose whereabouts have been unknown since he was overthrown on March 22, told AFP he was safe in Bamako and not being held by the junta.
The president was chased out of power just five weeks before the end of his time in office ahead of elections on April 29 which have now been suspended by the junta and no fresh poll date fixed.
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The fate of the 63-year-old Toure has raised concern in the past six days, since renegade soldiers forced him to flee as they fired on the presidency last week in a mutiny which led to a full-blown coup.
The mutineers denounced an "incompetent" government and said they had not been equipped to deal with a Tuareg-led insurrection in the north of the west African nation.
More: AFP via Yahoo News
muriel_volestrangler
(101,320 posts)March 9th, 2012 at 12.01 am.
Agency launches £23m emergency appeal to help over 1 million of the most vulnerable
Some 13 million people are at severe risk from a food crisis which is set to escalate into a full scale humanitarian emergency in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa if urgent action is not taken, international agency Oxfam warned today.
The agency is launching a £23m emergency appeal to help reach more than 1 million vulnerable people across the affected countries with vital aid.
Across Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Senegal malnutrition rates hover between 10 and 15 percent, and in some areas rates have risen beyond the emergency threshold level of 15 percent. Over 1 million children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/pressoffice/2012/03/09/drought-could-become-a-catastrophe-for-13-million-if-action-not-taken-in-west-and-central-africa-oxfam-warns/?v=media
Thanks for the thread, tabatha.