Galleh, I want to share some notes on the Tuareg and the regions of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktoo to supplement our understandings.

1. The Tuareg are descendants of the nomadic Arab and Moore evangelic herdsmen and women. PLUS their slaves.

 
2. The majority of the Tuareg are black-skinned.

3. The territory where the Tuareg predominantly live was the base of the Songhai empire, peopled by the Sonrhai. The Sonrhai are related to the people of Northern Ghana, South Sudan, and Tchad. They are black.

4. The remainder of the territory especially around Gao, Ansongo, and Meneka, are the land of a majority Peulh population of Mali. Over the years, the Tuareg and the Peulhs have been engaged in internecine conflicts over pastoral land because both ethnicities are nomadic. The Peulh and the Senufo have formed militias called the Gandakoye in order to protect themselves against the Tuareg roving bandits. These Peulh/Tuareg conflicts have been deadly at times but Mali's decentralization process has mitigated their frequency by according each of the ethnicities a modicum of autonomy in local governance.

5. There are very few Malinkes in the regions of majority Tuareg, Sonrhai, Peulh, Minianka, and Arab. The majority of Mande (Malinke) people in these regions are mainly Soninkes the majority of whom reside in the Segou region. When the Minianka ventured further south to flee from the Tuareg/Peulh conflicts, they ended up squatting in majority Malinke and Soninke lands. That in itself resulted in a minor conflict about 3 years ago. I was personally engaged in the temporal resolution of that conflict for a short-term lease of Soninke land to the Minianka for farming purposes.

 
6. French colonialism did not lump any ethnicities together. The Sonrhai, Peulh, Soninke, Senufo, Bwa/Bozo, and Minianka have been the traditional owners and inhabitants of North Mali for centuries. The Islamic colonization brought camel-borne Arabs south of the Sahara from Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt, toward the Niger. Intermarriage and slavery produced the Tuareg people from Arab-African and Moore-African interrelationships. The resultant Tuareg people resisted French colonization because they feared Christian values were going to overwhelm the Islamic values they worked so hard to establish in the region. Up until Mali's independence from France, The Tuareg have been averse to French influence and it was because of the residual influence the French left behind that they wanted to eradicate and supplant with Islamic values that the Tuareg formed themselves into roving Militias from Niger, Burkina, Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, and The Sudan. They found a steady ally in Gadhafi, the Salafists secessionists from Algeria, and the Moores of Mauritania.

I encourage you to review more on the contemporary demarche of the Tuareg here: http://thegdp.wordpress.com/rop-2/mali/

 
It is easy to conflate the Tuareg rebellion with internecine Peulh/Tuareg conflicts or Peulh/Arab conflicts. Many of Mali's first governors and administrators came from or went to school in Timbuktoo, Mopti (where most Malinke and Bambara of North Mali live) Nioro, Niono, Gao, Ansongo, Sikasso, and Segou.

Haruna.


-----Original Message-----
From: Baba Galleh Jallow <[log in to unmask]>
To: GAMBIA-L <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thu, May 10, 2012 6:15 pm
Subject: Re: [G_L] Fwd: Mali’s Struggle: Not Simply of Their Own Making


An interesting piece Bamba Laye, and one that highlights key issues in Mali's and Africa's seemingly chronic condition of perpetual chaos. However, I think it would have been a more persuasive analysis had the author mentioned, even in passing, how lumping together the tuaregs and the malinke within the same territorial boundary by French colonialism was the root of the crisis. It is the same problem in Southern Sudan and Southern Senegal. It seems to me that in the Malian case, the Tuareg north can simply not stomach the fact that they are being governed by a dark-skinned people they consider inferior to their white-skinned, supposedly Muslim/Arab selves. Also, it strikes me as remotely, if not closely patronizing to set such store on the fact that Sanogo is a U.S.-trained Army Captain. I thought I heard faint echoes of the usual paternalistic swagger, but that's probably just me being too sensitive. Thanks for sharing a good read Bamba Laye.
 
Baba
 



Date: Thu, 10 May 2012 14:24:31 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [G_L] Fwd: Mali’s Struggle: Not Simply of Their Own Making
To: [log in to unmask]


 
Mali’s Struggle: Not Simply of Their Own Making
http://www.nationofchange.org/mali-s-struggle-not-simply-their-own-making-1336657845
By Stephen Zunes

In examining the political crises which have gripped Mali in recent months, it is important not to fall into simplistic analyses of dysfunctional or "failed" African states. Indeed, the Malian people have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to mobilize civil society and build stable democratic governance despite a history of enormous poverty, ethnic divisions, and foreign intervention.
In 1991, more than two decades prior to similar pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, Malians engaged in a massive nonviolent resistance campaign that brought down the dictatorship of Mousa Traoré. A broad mobilization of trade unionists, peasants, students, teachers, and others -- supported by griots (traditional singing storytellers) who would sing allegorical songs regarding historical freedom struggles -- created a mass movement throughout the country. Despite the absence of Facebook or the Internet, virtually no international media coverage, and the massacre of hundreds of peaceful protesters, this popular civil insurrection succeeded not only in ousting a repressive and corrupt regime, but ushered in more than two decades of democratic rule.
Despite corruption, poverty, and a weak infrastructure, Mali was widely considered to be the most stable and democratic country in West Africa. In order to educate and promote the rights and duties of its citizens, the government implemented a program called the "Decentralization Mission" in 1993 to encourage popular participation in local and regional elections. Independent radio stations and newspapers emerged and the country experienced lively and open political debate.
The events surrounding the nonviolent revolution of 1991 were regularly commemorated, with the anniversary of the March 26 massacre a national holiday. A series of monuments in the capital of Bamako also commemorate the pro-democracy struggle.
In the years since the 1991 revolution, even contentious politics was expressed largely nonviolently. There were several periods of student-led protests in the 1990s against high unemployment and other negative effects of structural adjustment programs imposed by international financial institutions, contributing to the fall of one government through a no confidence vote in parliament. The tradition of nonviolent resistance against authoritarianism came to the fore in 2001 when a proposed constitutional referendum put forward by President Alpha Oumar Konaré was called off after a series of protests by those fearing it would have threatened the country's independent judiciary and effectively make the president immune to prosecution. Additional protests against neo-liberal economic policies erupted in 2005. Hundreds peacefully demonstrated against the 2006 visit by then-French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy in protest at his tough policies against immigrants. That same year, Mali hosted the World Social Forum, a mass gathering of thousands of activists from hundreds of civil society organizations.
A number of studies have demonstrated how dictatorships overthrown through largely nonviolent civil insurrections are far more likely to evolve into stable democracies than dictatorships ousted through armed revolution or foreign intervention. Mali appeared to be a prime example of this phenomenon.
Indeed, soon after the March Revolution of 1991, the Malian government negotiated a peace agreement with armed Tuareg rebels in which they agreed to end their rebellion in return for a degree of autonomy. In March 1996, there was a massive ceremonial burning of the rebels' surrendered weapons in Bamako.
So, what led to the coup d'état and secessionist crisis?
Unlike the positive contagion from Tunisia's nonviolent insurrection, neighboring Libya's armed insurrection appears to have launched a far more negative trend. Indeed, a major reason for the African Union's opposition to the NATO-led war in Libya was out of concern for the risk of spreading instability to neighboring Africa countries.
When last year's initially nonviolent uprising in Libya against the Gaddafi regime turned to armed struggle, resulting in even greater government repression and thereby prompting NATO intervention, disparate armed groups -- including Tuareg tribesmen -- ended up liberating major stores of armaments. These vast caches of weapons were passed on to Tuaregs in Mali who, now having the means to effectively challenge the Malian government militarily, resumed their long-dormant rebellion under the leadership of National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).
Charging that the civilian government was not being tough enough against the rebels, U.S.-trained Army Captain Amadou Sanogo and other officers staged a coup on March 22 and called for U.S. intervention along the lines of Afghanistan and the "war on terror."
Sanogo's training in the United States is just one small part of a decade of U.S. training of armies in the Sahel, increasing the militarization of this impoverished region and the influence of armed forces relative to civilian leaders. Gregory Mann, writing in Foreign Policy, notes how "a decade of American investment in special forces training, co-operation between Sahalien armies and the United States and counter-terrorism programs of all sorts run by both the State Department and the Pentagon has, at best, failed to prevent a new disaster in the desert and, at worst, sowed its seeds."
Rather than responding violently to the coup, thousands of Malians in Bamako and elsewhere took to the streets demanding a return to democracy, members of the deposed civilian cabinet went on a hunger strike, and many civil servants and others refused to cooperate with the military regime. Meanwhile, both western and African countries imposed sanctions against the illegitimate government.
Most problematically, however, Tuareg rebels, taking advantage of the political divisions in the capital, consolidated their hold on the northern part of the country by capturing its remaining towns and declaring an independent state. The MNLA's victories also led various Islamist militias, including extremists allied with Al-Qaeda, to seize a number of towns and impose their rigid ideological agenda.
The combination of internal and external pressures led Sanago to agree to step down and allow for the restoration of a civilian government in early April. The deposed president, Amadou Toumani Touré, who had become increasingly unpopular and whose term was set to expire in a few months, had agreed to step aside in favor of National Assembly president Dioncounda Traoré. Despite formally handing over power on April 12, however, the junta continued to arrest opponents and still wields considerable influence. Scattered fighting between rival armed forces erupted in the capital last week. Meanwhile, extremist Islamic militias in the north, taking advantage of the country's chaos, have reportedly been destroying historic shrines and other cultural landmarks they consider idolatrous in Timbuktu and other northern cities.
The question now is whether the Malians can build upon their rich history of democratic governance and nonviolent resistance to regain their country's once admired stability and freedom or whether the recent tragic events, fomented in part by misguided western policies, will be too serious from which to easily recover. In any case, Mali serves as yet another reminder of both the power of strategic nonviolent action and the consequences of foreign powers seeking to impose military solutions to complex political problems.
This article was published at NationofChange at: http://www.nationofchange.org/mali-s-struggle-not-simply-their-own-making-1336657845. All rights are reserved. 



-- 
-Laye
==============================
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