Islamist mujahedeen in northern Mali

The situation along the demarcation line that separates Islamist-held northern Mali from the south of the country is agonizingly confusing.  The Malian army claim to have recaptured the strategic town of Douentza, while the Islamist claim the complete opposite. According their spokesperson, the bearded Sanda ould Boumama, the combined forces of AQIM, Ansar ud-Dine and MUJAO have pushed the Malian army back at least as far as the small town of Konna, if not further. Meanwhile France has mobilised some elite troops from a base in Chad and sent them to Sevaré, the town on the main east-west highway that serves as a transport hub for the Mopti region. The idea of Islamists capturing Mopti itself, Mali’s second largest city which is now dangerously close to the frontline, would be an A-grade nightmare not only for Mali but also for France and the international community. France has spent the last few months trying to persuade the US and the UN that need for action in northern Mali is urgent, without a great deal of success. There are also reports of an aerial bombardment of Konna although whether it was carried out by France or by Ukranian mercenaries isn’t entirely clear. The latest new from AFP, no more than two minutes old, is that the Malian army has counter-attacked, and no doubt hopes to retake Konna by night fall.

Talking of mercenaries, a local man from Konna reported that most of the Islamist fighters he encountered in the town were darker-skinned Songhai or Fulani. Some also clearly belonged to other black African nationalities; Nigerian, Guinean, Senegalese, Ivorian, even Bambara and Malinké from southern Mali. In terms of the ‘lower’ ranks at least, this is no longer a clear cut conflict between ‘white’ Arabs and Touareg from the northern deserts and ‘black’ Songhai, Peul, Bambara etc from regions further south. It has become a great deal more ‘asymmetrical’ than that, with black Africans fighting both for and against the Islamists. Some of the mujahedeen at Konna were also very young, no more than in their mid-teens, if that. The International Criminal Court in the Hague is going to be busy if and when this conflict ends.  My hunch is that the men who took Konna belong to the Ansar as-Sunna brigade, MUJAO’s recently formed unit designed to mobilize the local Songhai and Peul youth. Many of these young men will be from the Gao region and given the hitherto transparent will of the large majority of the city’s population to reunite with Mali at the earliest possible opportunity, the fact that they are now attacking the very country they purport to love so dearly indicates a severe case of either mass brain-washing or of desperate mercenary activity.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council met in emergency session to “express their grave concern over the reported military movements and attacks by terrorist and extremist groups in the north of Mali, in particular their capture of the city of Konna, near Mopti,” according to a Security Council press statement.  The Council called for a rapid deployment of the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) and the immediate issuance of an agreed political road map, which includes serious negotiations with non-extremist Malians in the north and presses for the full restoration of democratic governance. It seems that the EU, UN and USA’s preferred option of a slow careful build-up to an invasion of the north by a Malian lead force of ECOWAS, AU and French Special Forces, with D Day set sometime next September and plenty of negotiation in between, has proved to be all too leisurely and fantastical.

Granted, the world and his dog knows that the Malian are in no fit state to fight a war in the north of the country. A military establishment that was riddled with corruption and incompetence even before the current crisis began has been bought to a state of catastrophic unreadiness by the army’s defeat at the hands of the MNLA and the Islamist coalition last April. It must also be remembered that the Malian army hasn’t won a military victory in the north without the use of Arab and Touareg militia since the early 1960s. The idea that the Salafist coalition currently ruling northern Mali was going to patiently wait around until next September whilst the Malian army was rebuilt with funding and expertise from the European Union was wishful thinking. The last few months have felt like a phoney war. There’s been nothing phoney about the fighting in the last few days.

Talking about the Fog of War in relation to northern Mali would be meteorologically unsound. Fog is almost unheard of in the Sahel. Better to call it the sandstorm of war, a haze that is more impenetrable and dangerous than fog. The vastly conflicting accounts of victories, defeats, advances, retreats, casualties and captives that have come spewing forth from the mouths of the spokespersons on either side of the conflict in recent days illustrate the dire opacity of this conflict and the near impossibility for a journalist to find the copper-bottomed truth about what is going on. A friend who works for Al Jazeera recently told me that in her honest opinion, the war in Northern Mali is the hardest conflict to understand in the world. Even obsessives like myself, who spend more time reading reports and analyses about the crisis or talking to people closely involved than is strictly healthy, have to admit that more often than not we are enveloped in a sandstorm of supposition and guess work.

Such is the case with the recent Islamist advance. I’ll give you my hunch, but it’s only a hunch. Short of trading my safe European home for a god-forsaken AQIM hostage camp in the Tegharghar mountains, I can’t do any better.  My guess is that the Iyad Ag Ghali, emir of the Touareg lead Islamist militia Ansar ud-Dine has become impatient with the Burkinabé sponsored mediation process between Mali and the two ‘Malian’ rebel factions, the nationalist MNLA and Ansar ud-Dine, which has been dragging on for a few months. The resumption of these talks that was due to take place on January 10th has now been pushed back to January 21st. Algeria has also re-entered the fray as a mediator, a role which it considered its own almost by divine right before it was taken off them by Burkina Faso at the beginning of the rebellion last February. This has no doubt taken the wind out of the Ougadougou talks and confused matters considerably. Both Ansar ud-Dine and MNLA signed an agreement to cease hostilities and pursue negotiation with Mali in Algiers on December 21st.  It’s this agreement which Ansar ud-Dine are now reneging upon.

The belligerent talk coming out of Bamako following the guarded approval given to a military intervention in the north by the UN in December undoubtedly angered Iyad Ag Ghali and his Touareg side-kicks.  You can feel this anger in the tone of the Political Platform which Ansar ud-Dine posted on their website on January 2nd.  What Iyad and his ghostwriter are saying, in grossly simplified terms is the following:  “I trusted you (Mali) at the end of the rebellion of the 1990s. You betrayed my trust by reneging on your promises and fomenting ethnic war in the north. This was gross ingratitude considering that it was ‘my’ rebellion that enabled you to overthrow your military dictatorship and bring back multi-party democracy in 1992. Now, once again, you’re double-crossing me. You persuaded us to agree to a cease-fire and to renouncing the armed struggle while you were busy importing tanks from Bulgaria and talking about war day in day out. Well if you want war, you can have it.” Iyad, a wily old jackal if ever there was, is no doubt gambling on the fact that the Malian army is too weak to offer any great resistance to his mujahedeen. He also knows that if he were to capture Mopti, the pressure this would then heap on the military junta and its political puppets in Bamako would be so immense that even if his Islamist army couldn’t hold such a large and hostile city for long, it might just afford him the time and strength to push through his demands for an autonomous Azawad modeled on the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. It’s a high stakes game but that’s nothing new. Ever since he launched the rebellion of 1990 with a handful of men and a few old Touareg swords, Iyad has proven himself to be a high-stakes player, at least in military terms.

The guessing game becomes even more enthralling when one tries to work out what’s happening within the Islamist coalition itself.  There have been significant changes in the last few months, but owing to the standstorm of war it’s been extremely hard to make any sense of them.  First the old desert fox, ‘Mr Marlboro’, Moktar Belmoktar was given his marching orders by the MUJAO command in Gao.  Was his old adversary Abou Zeid, head of AQIM in Timbuktu, just too sick and tired of him?  Was Belmocktar sick and tired of the more brutal and zany behaviour of the MUJAO chiefs in Gao?  Was he just piqued that the emirship of Al Qaida in the Sahara was handed over to Yahya Abou El Hamam rather than to him? Who knows.  After Belmoktar’s departure, there has been further splintering or atomizing of the Islamist movement, generally along ethnic lines.  A notorious drug don by the name of Sultan Ould Badi has formed a new militia called the Katiba Salah Eddine, after the famous scourge of Europe’s medieval Crusaders. Salah Eddine members are mostly Tilemsi Arabs from the villages north of Gao. Ould Badi was apparently none too pleased when the Mujahedeen Shura Council in Gao decided to go and ‘clean up’ In Khalil, a notorious border town north of Tessalit, the Sahara’s very own Ciudad Juarez, which is an entrepot for every kind of illegal merchandising making its way north or south, east or west through the desert. Ould Badi obviously balked at the idea that his carefully constructed smuggling networks might be dismantled or taken over.

Also in December, a certain Abdullah from Benin took control of yet another Islamist militia called the Katiba Ousmane Dan Fodio, named after a early nineteenth century Islamic preacher and jihadist who founded the Sokoto caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria. Abdullah came from the ranks of the Nigerian Islamist Boko Haram to take over the Ousmane Dan Fodio militia, which is said to comprise black Africans from Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast.  At around the same time MUJAO announced the creation of Ansar as-Sunna, a new katiba with four sub-brigades which, as stated earlier, is a vehicle for the scared and impoverished Songhoi and Fulani youth of Gao and its neighboring villages.  Finally, in the last few days, the redoubtable Omar ould Hamaha, aka Red Beard, has created his own katiba called Ansar Shari’a north of Timbuktu. This militia regroups the Berabiche Arabs of Timbuktu, Araouane and the neighbouring desert.

Are we seeing a planned and strategic reorganization of the Islamist coalition or a messy disintegration along ethnic lines that mirrors the fate of the Touareg rebel movement in the early 1990s? I suspect it is the latter. The desert has a tendency to work against unity and federation. Groups with from different ethnicities and with different interests manage to come together under a common banner for short periods of time, but then invariably revert to their natural state of independence and isolation. Any strong man with a little money and influence can set himself up as a new katiba and thus ensure his own and his family’s share of the spoils of both the war and the peace that must follow it. It’s also possible that the current atomization has to do with finance. Perhaps AQIM’s coffers are running a little bare due to lack of ransom income and reduced smuggling revenue. Without money, it would be hard for them to maintain a unified coalition in the north and persuade go-it-alone hotheads to stay together.

If we are seeing a disintegration of the movement, then this would add substance to the arguments of those who favor negotiation and a wait and see policy rather than swift military action. Perhaps there’s no need to defeat the Islamists militarily. Perhaps they’ll simply implode under the pressure of their own internal bickering. Perhaps this splintering is also the reason why Iyad has now decided to push south. No one knows the fractious tribal politics of the Sahara better than him and memories of the disintegration of the Touareg rebellion following the signing of the National Pact in 1992 no doubt still rankle deep within him. He knows that inaction leads to disintegration. If you want to unite your troops, go to war, or else provoke your enemy into attacking you. You can probably find that somewhere in the writings of von Clausewitz, the German philosopher of war to whom Iyad himself is apparently quite partial. If this is Iyad’s strategy, it’s showing early signs of success. His offensive has indeed lured French special ground forces and helicopters into the region, both of which will be deemed a heathen provocation by the Islamist constituency ofNorth and West Africa. The French presence will also no doubt boost recruitment to the Islamist cause.

However, the question of exactly how Iyad Ag Ghali has managed to bring together these disparate Islamist forces to attack Konna and push south still remains to be answered.  What deals have been done?  How does Iyad’s stated desire to see an autonomous Azawad sit with Ansar as-Sunna’s Songhoi footsoldiers desire to avoid a Touareg-dominated state in northern Mali at all costs. What’s in it for MUJAO?  They have never proclaimed the independence of Azawad, quite the opposite, and indeed only managed to rally the citizens of Gao to their side in their fight with the MNLA for the control of Gao back in June precisely because they claimed to defend the idea of a united of Mali.  And what of Algeria, Qatar or those Wahabi Saudi magnates with their petro-dollars and all the other shadowy forces who may or may not be playing a part in the current conflict. But that’s another sandstorm, even more impenetrable than the one that’s currently heading south towards Mopti.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2013

The black salafist flag that flutters in the hot desert breeze over Timbuktu symbolises the abject failure of western policy in the Sahel over the past decade or more. Many millions of dollars and euros that have been spent by the US, France and the EU to train the armies of Mali, Niger and Mauritania in counter-terrorism and to reinforce local judicial systems and police forces have, in effect, been frittered away.

The trust that western powers, especially the US and France, once placed in the toppled regime of the ex-Malian President, Amadou Toumani Touré, has been betrayed in spectacular fashion. They trusted him because they thought, or rather hoped in face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that he was a true democrat. In fact he was a really soldier at heart, a machiavellian manipulator of tribal politics and sponsor of self-serving networks of interest, corruption and even crime.

The US hoped that by training the Malian army to fight the mujahedeen of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who have been rampaging with near impunity in Mali’s northern deserts since 2008, they could empower a local solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism in the Sahel and avoid the pitfalls of doing the job themselves. Contrary to appearances, US global counter-terrorism policy has matured since the days when the Rumsfeld doctrine of direct military intervention was applied in Iraq. The Pentagon now knows that direct intervention is usually counter-productive, resurrecting as it does the red rag of American imperialism and driving hordes of young disaffected Arabs and Africans into the arms of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups.

It can be argued that indirect foreign military intervention has been partially successful in the case of Mauritania and Niger. Mauritania has been a willing participant in US counter-terrorism initiatives in the Sahel since 2002, including the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) that was launched in 2005 with an annual budget of $100 million. It has also been a cornerstone of the US military’s annual Operation Flintlock exercises designed to increase local military and security capacity in West Africa. France has helped to fund and train the Mauritanian army’s rapid reaction units, and has played an increasing role in advising and strengthening the Mauritanian judiciary.

As a result, Mauritania has become the most ardent and effective opponent of AQIM in region, clinching several modest military victories against the terror group, most notably the joint Mali-Mauritanian attack on the cell of the redoubtable AQIM emir Abou Zeid in the Wagadou Forest of northern Mali in June 2011.

But Mauritania’s belligerence could still cost it dear. AQIM’s virulent hatred of Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz and his regime and the close links between local jihadists and the MUJAO, an AQIM spin off that now controls the strategically important city of Gao in eastern Mali, threaten to destabilise Mauritania. A massive car-bomb attempt on President Aziz’s life in February 2011 was foiled by the army but the President might not be so lucky next time. Furthermore, the Aziz regime has recently been mired in some weighty corruption scandals of its own, and there’s evidence that its popularity at home is on the slide. Mauritania’s close cooperation with the West could backfire if local disaffection translates into more willing jihadists on the ground.

President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger has so far played a commendably level-headed and intelligent part in the crisis that has swamped the Sahel. The odds are against the world third poorest nation, beset as it is by the Libyan crisis to the north, the Malian civil war to the west and Boko Haram to the south, as well as catastrophic droughts, a massive refugee problem and the return of many thousands of migrant workers from Libya and other countries in the Maghreb.

Contrary to President Toure’s lax response in Mali, Issoufou was adamant about disarming Touareg fighters who flooded south into Ngier from the Libyan war last year. He has also made strenuous efforts to engage tribal chiefs and Touareg rebel leaders from Niger’s northern deserts in the country’s political institutions, promoting open government and freedom of expression in the process. His drive to achieve food self-sufficiency, a massively ambitious target that he’s busy promoting with the slogan Les Nigeriens Nourrissent Les Nigeriens – Nigeriens Feed Nigeriens – is both very necessary and popular at home. He has also been helped by the battle-fatigue caused by the bitter Touareg uprising of 2007-9.

Most importantly in regional terms, Issoufou is trying to turn the Malian crisis to his advantage by taking over from Mali as France’s most trusted and valued ally in the Sahel.  France needs Niger’s uranium, a fact that was strenuously underlined when President François Hollande met President Issoufou in Paris last June and urged him to make every effort to bring the massive new uranium mine at Imouraren in Niger on-stream as soon as possible. Niger and France have also been increasing their military cooperation and talking about a coordinated response to the terrorist threat.

Niger’s current state of grace is extremely fragile however. The problems of drought, refugees and returning migrants threaten to tip the country towards disaster at any moment. The Touareg in the north of the country could still make common cause with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA), the Touareg rebel movement in northern Mali, presently licking its wounds after defeat at the hands of AQIM and its allies in Gao and Timbuktu, if their fortunes were ever to improve and the prospect of an independent Touareg-led Azawad became more likely.

In the case of Mali, however, the western policy of indirect intervention has been a disaster. The reasons for this are complex but boil down to the fact that, despite a few direct confrontations in 2010 and 2011 that cost the lives of a number of soldiers, Mali has never displayed the willingness or the military capacity needed to rid its country of the scourge of AQIM. Moreover, there is substantial evidence, including a direct admission made by the loyalist Touareg officer Colonel Alhadji Ag Gamou to the French newspaper Le Figaro in July this year, that Mali allowed AQIM to set up a safe-haven in the north east of the country, so long as it didn’t commit any acts of terrorism on Malian soil.

Why?  First, because Mali hoped that the presence of AQIM in the heart of Touareg rebel country would seriously damage and divide the Touareg secessionist cause.  In that regard, their hopes have been fully answered by recent events. Secondly, AQIM managed to  orge strong alliances with certain powerful figures from the Arab communities in northern Mali, some of whom were involved in drug and weapons trafficking. The government in Bamako had an interest in keeping these powerful northern figures on their side. And thirdly, the Malian army has always been incapable of securing military victory in the north, either against Touareg rebels or Islamic terrorists. Better to leave AQIM be than risk the lives of many more ordinary Malian soldiers. Despite this, the USA and France continued to pour millions into Mali’s military and security apparatus, money that all too often evaporated like a desert mirage as soon as it was spent. You need only read the cables sent by the US Embassy in Bamako and later exposed by Wikileaks to feel the extreme frustration that Mali’s lack of resolve in its fight against AQIM provoked in the diplomatic community in Bamako and elsewhere.

Thanks to bitter experience, the US now knows that you cannot use southern armies, who are used to combat in temperate sub-Saharan zones, to fight wars out in the open deserts of the Sahara. That’s why it has been reluctant to support a regional threat to launch an ECOWAS force of 3,000 troops against the various armed groups in the north of Mali, and has made sure that this reluctance has been echoed by the UN.

The only force capable of taking on and beating AQIM in northern Mali is the Algerian army. The armies of Morocco or Chad might also prove effective, but neither country has shown any willingness to become militarily involved so far, even if it were ever possible for them to do so, which is doubtful. The belief is growing that Algeria holds most of the keys to the problem. Nevertheless, it has always considered northern Mali to be its own backyard, and has put every possible effort into keeping it free of outside interference, whether from France, America, ECOWAS or anybody else. Moreover, so far at least, Algeria has kept its substantial military might well within its own borders.

Not that Algeria is unconcerned about the chaos in Mali. On the contrary, it views the idea of an independent Touareg state on its southern borders with extreme alarm. It has a substantial Touareg population of its own, who dominate its strategically important and mineral-rich southern deserts, and it fears that a Touareg victory in Mali could provoke those desert populations into copy-cat dissent. This fear also extends to the numerous other Berber populations in Algeria, especially the economically and politically powerful Kabyles. Algeria knows that any Touareg victory will be seen as a Berber victory at home, and the Berber cause for greater political and cultural rights has been a thorn in the foot of every Algerian government since independence.

The same is true in Libya, a country riven by racism and ethnic strife that has increased tenfold since the demise of Ghadafi. Recent anti-Touareg pogroms in the southern city of Ghadames and clashes between black-skinned Tubu and armed Arab militia in Sebha demonstrate the volatile relationship of Berber and African minorities with the Arab majority. Salafist elements in the new government see an AQIM hegemony over northern Mali as preferable to a Touareg state. Moreover, most of the weapons currently blighting the peace of northern Mali come from Libyan arsenals.

Rather than sending in the troops, Algeria has played an extremely subtle hand in the current conflict. Just before the outbreak of the Touareg rebellion in January, it sent a group of military personnel to the strategically important army base in the northern Malian town of Tessalit. As the NMLA wanted to avoid an open confrontation with Algeria at all costs, this move had the effect of delaying a Touareg victory by several months. Then, whether by shady design piloted by the Algeria secret services or merely by happenstance, AQIM and its allies managed to hi-jack the Touareg rebellion and kick the idea of an independent Azawad into the long grass. This outcome suited Algeria, despite the fact that the leaders of AQIM are ex-members of the GIA and GSPC, the terrorist groups responsible for the worst of the violence during Algeria’s dark decade of the 1990s. Better in Algeria’s mind for these home-grown jihadist to be causing havoc outside Algerian borders, than to let the existence of an independent Touareg state threaten Algeria’s territorial integrity.

Both France and the USA have never managed to have much leverage on Algerian foreign policy. The only real and immediate military solution to the chaos in northern Mali is therefore frustratingly beyond their grasp. The dominant super-powers will be forced to find other ways of containing the Islamist threat in the Sahel, a threat that could turn the entire region against them and spread into Europe and beyond.

Some fundamental questions will need to be asked. Can African governments be trusted to fight terror and crime, even if they are democratically elected?  What is more important, the integrity of African states or the fight against Islamic terrorism?  Is the nation-state even the best form of political organization in the Sahara?  Is it possible to win the war on terror with military might alone?  Finding answers to these questions is a challenge that becomes more and more pressing as the black flag continues to flutter over Timbuktu.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2012

First published in BBC Focus On Africa Magazine – September 2012

Super 11 de Gao. Photo by Horst Timmers

“At the first Festival of the Desert in 2000/2001 there were many musical revelations – Tinariwen’s trajectory has been well documented – but another very different group had a huge impact on me: Super Onze de Gao just played one rhythm, but what a rhythm! Devastating and unlike anything I’ve heard, the relentless beat from the two calabashes had the impact of the first time I heard the Burundi Beat, or the Musicians of Jajouka. Two distorted desert lutes circled around each other calling to mind Hendrix’s most trancey moments or Howlin’ Wolf’s band when their sound turns into a web of abstract groove. I love the way the Super 11 Album sounds, I love the rawness and distortion and the heavy calabash sound. This CD brings to the West for the first time the undiluted sound of the Takamba – Not for the faint hearted – it deserves to be heard by everyone who loves wild groove music with no limits.” – JUSTIN ADAMS.

Gao and takamba: the background

The Niger sparkles like a giant sapphire luxuriating on a bed of green velvet as it flows past the city of Gao. All around the far horizons are dry, earthy-brown and immense. Travelers coming down from the arid Sahara drink their first sight of the great river from higher ground just to the north of the city. Vivid, intense colour floods back into their monochrome world. The promise of all that endless rolling blue water revives their parched senses. Thanks and praises are intoned by cracked lips. The desert crossing is over and the ‘shore’ of black Africa, or the Sahel as the Arabs called it, has been reached.

Until a few years ago, you had to navigate the Niger on a rickety old car ferry if you wanted to reach Gao on the main road from the west. Nowadays, a gleaming new Chinese-built bridge spans the sedate waters.  The local people – mainly Songhai (pronounced ‘son-rai’ or ‘son-goy’), but also Tamashek, Bozo and Fulani – hope that this incongruously flashy piece of infrastructure is a sign of things to come. For far too long, their once proud homeland has been reduced to a quiet backwater, starved of attention, deprived of investment and stuck out on the eastern perimeter of Mali, far from the seat of power and influence in the capital Bamako.

Gao’s illustrious past owes everything to its prime location at the junction of the Niger and the Tilemsi valley, a huge superhighway of sand and rock that runs from north to south across the southern desert. Before Timbuktu stole its crown in the 16^th century, the city was the biggest caravan ‘port’ in this part of the Sahara, a proud and preeminent trading hub where gold, salt, slaves, ostrich feathers, ivory, millet and all the produce of Africa set out on its journey north to the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Coming in the opposite direction, traders and students brought Islam and the cultural wealth of the Maghreb, Egypt and beyond, turning Gao into a Mecca of culture as well as trade.

In the fifteenth century, the great Songhai ruler Sunni Ali founded an Empire that stretched from the Aïr desert in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Ali’s successor Askia Mohammed built and endowed universities and koranic schools, unifying his vast Imperium under Islam and establishing a sophisticated bureaucracy and legal system. Before the Moroccans invaded in 1591 and brought Gao’s dominance to an end, the Songhai Empire was one the largest and most sophisticated political entities that Africa had ever known.  Two and a half centuries later, the German explorer Heinrich Barth found all that glory reduced to nothing more than a sleepy town of 300 adobe dwellings, sweltering by the cool evergreen shores of the great river.

Despite its waxing waning economic fortunes, Gao has always been certain, and proud, of its musical wealth. Songhai culture has given us Ali Farka Touré, Afel Bocoum, Baba Salah, Khaira Arby and Ibrahim Hamma Dicko, as well as a rich catalogue of different rhythms, instruments and musical styles.  Among the most popular is takamba.

Takamba is music made for celebration; weddings mainly, but also birth and circumcision parties, harvest thanksgivings, festivities to mark the end of Ramadan, The Prophet’s birthday or the feast of Tabeski – as Eid is known in Mali – and many other occasions of communal joy. They say that takamba has its origins in a neighbourhood of the same name situated on the edge of the small town of Témera, up-river north of Gao, on the road to Bourem. Its driving force is the unmistakable takamba rhythm which pulses on the boom and bip before lurching at the end of every phrase, catching the uninitiated in mid-step. Try and imagine the lope of a camel combined with the flow of a vast sedate river and you’ll be getting close. This beat is locked down by one or more players of the calabash, a species of over-sized died out pumpkin gourd that sounds like an entire drum kit in the hands of skilled player, with its deep booming bass thump and rattling ‘hi-hat’ click.

Atop this sedate beat come the ngoni players. The ngoni is a three or four stringed lute.  The Songhai call it the kurbu, and the Touareg the teherdent. With generous historical license you could call it the great granddaddy of the blues guitar and you wouldn’t be too far wrong. The takamba musicians play the ngoni sitting down, with the instrument lying on the floor and one knee pressing down on its body, as if they’re taming a wayward animal. With their flowing bouboul robes and heads enveloped in a cheche or turban, the ngoni players cut a cool debonair figure as the notes flutter and fizzle out of their fingers in a bewildering bluesy stream. In the last three or four decades, the ngoni has usually been stuck through an amp and a pair of deliciously distorted speakers. Super Onze employ the vintage bullhorn variety. This gives the music a modern punch and grimy edge that could easily rival The Velvet Underground or The Jesus and Mary Chain. Sometimes the ngoni is substituted with an electric guitar thus sealing its contemporary transformation.

The final layer in the takamba sound is the praise singer, the lead vocalist who directs proceedings. Takamba is a generous music. Its role is to make people feel important and happy. The lead vocalist will praise the bride’s beauty, the bridegroom’s strength, the illustrious lineage of the bride’s mother, and the great deeds of the bridegroom’s father. He’ll tell stories about the guests or recite ancient tales of love and bravery, compliment dignitaries for their honour, their astuteness and their generosity, making sure that the power structures that underpin society are recognised and reaffirmed in joyful music. In that sense, takamba, like all praise-music, has a very political and social purpose, which it fulfills in an understated non-confrontational manner.

And then there are the dancers. Not for takamba the wild gyrations and flailing limbs of many other Malian dance styles. Takamba moves are all about dignity, restraint, undulating limbs, covert smiles and trysting eyes. The dancers generally form two orderly lines which face each other, one for the women and one for the men. Sometimes they stand, sometimes they’re seated.  The more traditional mode is the seated one, which places further restrictions on unseemly bodily movement but intensifies the subtle beauty of the dance.  Takamba dancing is a metaphor for flowing water. It’s the body’s hymn to the river, the source of all life. All passion, all excitement is subsumed in its gentle undulations. But those passions still lurk beneath, just like the currents of the great river.  That’s why some swear that takamba is the most erotic dance form in the whole of west Africa, albeit eroticism of the subtlest kind.

Both the city of Gao and the takamba style itself sit neatly and squarely on the frontier between two cultural spheres: the ‘white’ Arab / Berber culture of North Africa, and the black African culture of the Sahel and beyond. Although the Berber Kel Tamashek, or Touareg, and the black Songhai peoples have long been adversaries and have even known periods of open conflict in the past three decades, it’s common for takamba groups to feature both Songhai and Touareg musicians.  For that reason, takamba is a potent and valuable bridging style, which stretches hands out across a fundamental cultural divide, and invites them to shake and make peace.  Some even say that “take the hand” is one of the meanings of the word ’takamba’.

Super Onze de Gao

Super Onze de Gao was founded in the early 1980s by Haziz Toure, Asaalya Samake and Agita Moussa Maiga, who became the group’s first president.  All three were Songhai men from Gao.  In the venerable tradition of so many west African music ensembles, Super Onze was created in order to entertain at community celebrations, preserve traditions, propagate culture and create a kind of ‘club’ or community organization which could support the needs and nurture the talents of its members. In other words, it was more than just a ‘band’ in the European sense of the word. The founding members are still alive, but now it’s the next generation that fills the active roles in the group. That’s another advantage of their typically African orchestral structure. It doesn’t depend on any one individual or person for its survival, and can thus better cope with the passing of time.

Initially Super Onze de Gao played in their own homes, three or more times a month and especially on Fridays, the day of prayer and rest in the Muslim week. From the beginning they concentrated strictly on the takamba style, and were soon a popular feature of local weddings and festivities. In 1985 they gave their first ‘official’ non-festive concert, at an election gathering in Gao. The ex-military dictator of Mali, Moussa Traore, was returned to the presidency with an absurd 99.94% of the vote that year.

In 1986, Super Onze de Gao were invited to perform for the Songhai community at the French Cultural Centre in Niamey, the capital of neighbouring Niger, which is about a day’s journey from Gao by road. Throughout the ensuing years, the group gradually consolidated their position as the number one takamba outfit in eastern Mali. They participated three times in Mali’s famous Biennales – a government sponsored national competition to find the best music ensemble, best theatre group and best dance troupe in the nation – representing Gao in regional and national finals.

The Biennales were instigated by Moussa Traore in 1970 to instil cultural pride and community cohesion in the various regions of Mali, especially among the youth.  Traore also hoped to strengthen the patriotic glue that bound Mali’s huge variety of cultures and ethnic groups together.  Like many African leaders at the time, he was trying to build a nation from elements that hadn’t historically had very much in common. Moussa Traore has been branded a brutal dictator by history, justifiably so, but his Biennale system is one of the reasons that Mali is one of Africa’s musical powerhouses today.

Sometime during the 1990s, Issa Toure took over from his father Haziz as the main singer of Super Onze de Gao.  He is now their president.  He comes from a family of Songhai farmers, rooted in the rich alluvial mud of the Niger valley.  His son is also preparing to become a singer, and will hopefully take over the leading role in the group in due course.

Super Onze’s leading ngoni player is Yehia Mbala Samake, son of Asaalya Samake. Yehia comes from a caste of Songhai blacksmiths. The role of blacksmiths in Songhai and Touareg society is very complex and very important. They belong to an endogamous group, which means you can only be born a blacksmith, you cannot become one. Until recently they were responsible for making almost everything necessary for nomadic or sedentary existence: tents, swords, spears, camel saddles, leather bags and cushions, padlocks, cooking utensils and, most importantly, jewellery. They still make jewellery and many other artefacts. But the role of the blacksmith has never been confined to artisanal manual labour. They’re also storytellers and guardians of family histories and lineages. They’re often called upon to negotiate between two rival clans, and to arrange marriages. And it’s their duty to play music at feasts and festivities. As such, their role has many affinities with that of the Manding or Bamana griot.

Ahmed Ag Assalat, the second ngoni player, also comes from a family of blacksmiths, but in his case it’s a Touareg family. The other Touareg in the group are Aliou Saloum and Ousmane Yattara, who come from a family of wood sellers. The remaining two members of the group are dancer Fatoumata Sarre, daughter of a blacksmith and ‘Cola’ Toure, second calabash player and the son of a farmer.

In 2003, Super Onze de Gao were invited to the third edition of the now world famous Festival in the Desert, which takes place annually near the village of Essakane, by Lake Faguibine, 60 kilometres due west of Timbuktu. They were the unheralded hit of the Festival. Robert Plant became a fan overnight, as did his guitarist Justin Adams. Both harbour a life-long mission to seek out the distant African and North African ancestry of the American blues. When they heard Super Onze de Gao in the silky white dunes of Essakane, it was nothing short of a ‘Eureka’ moment. Ali Farka Toure asked Super Onze to warm up the crowd before his performance; a very wise choice.

Although Super Onze de Gao – who are also known by the alternative name Takamba Super Onze – became fêted regulars at the Festival in the Desert and were famous all over Mali, they failed to find a partner to help them launch an international career.  They did make one off trips to Washington DC for the Smithsonian institute’s lavish festival of Malian culture in 2004 and the Sfinks Festival in Belgium in 2008.  But it wasn’t until the arrival of the Dutch DJ and producer Horst Timmers, aka MPS Pilot that their dream of international recognition began to be realised.

Timmers saw Super Onze at the Festival in the Desert in 2003 and, along with so many others, was blown away. He returned to the Festival the following year, and found that the band’s impact even more powerful. In 2008 he travelled to meet Super Onze and put together a plan to launch their career outside Europe. He enrolled them into an ambitious project that melded takamba with electronica, or ‘la machine’, as the group members themselves refer to new computer-based music technology. The project is called Future Takamba and it toured around Holland and Belgium in October of that year.

Timmers also did a recording session with Super Onze de Gao ‘sans la machine’, in other words, pure and simple, live and direct, in August 2010 and the resulting CD, released by Two Speakers Records, is the best record of raw and rootsy takamba ever released. If Justin Adams is to be believed, you might just find it “devastating” and unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2011

Artist biography for Future Takamba Project

Super Onze de Gao / Future Takamba Links:

Two Speakers – Super Onze de Gao CD

Super Onze on Facebook

Super Onze on Bandcamp

Super Onze on Soundcloud