The security surrounding the camp was reportedly sparse at the time of the attack. Access was relatively easy. The bomb exploded when the camp’s parade ground was packed with soldiers preparing to go on patrol. In fact, the timing was so gruesomely perfect, and the livery of the fatal pickup truck apparently so similar to the one regularly used by the units in the camp, that many have jumped to the conclusion that the suicide bomber(s) had accomplices on the inside. The claim of responsibility issued by al-Mourabitoun, the armed jihadist group affiliated to al-Qaida and lead by the slippery terrorist mastermind Mokhtar Belmokhtar, only confirms what everyone immediately suspected: this is yet another, albeit the worst, atrocity in the long war of attrition between jihadist groups and central government in northern Mali.

But by far the most significant and potentially damaging aspect of the attack, in terms of Mali’s future peace and prosperity, is the nature of the military units that were targeted. The soldiers who died weren’t Malian army regulars, or UN troops, or Special Forces belonging to French army’s Barkhane mission, all of whom have been the subject of numerous attacks in recent years. They were part of the recently formed mixed-patrol units or MOCs – Operational Mechanism of Coordination to give them their technical name – promised in the Algiers peace accords signed by most of northern Mali’s non-jihadist warring parties in June 2015.

To anyone familiar with Mali’s recent troubles, the ‘mix’ embodied by these patrols is astonishing. One third of the six hundred men stationed in the camp in Gao were from the Coordination des Mouvements de l’Azawad (CMA), the umbrella group of anti-government rebel groups in northern Mali; another third were from La Platforme, the umbrella group of pro-government militias, and the last third from FAMA, the regular Malian army. In other words, three entities that have been in an almost constant state of antagonism towards each other for the past five years, are now sharing a military camp and conducting patrols together, in theory at least.

Despite the many delays and factional bickering that have marred their implementation, the very existence of these mixed patrol is, or at least was until a week ago, rare proof that Mali’s fragile peace process is shuffling in the right direction. In fact, their existence is of even deeper importance, for without the effective implementation of mixed patrols in the north, Mali’s feasibility as a nation state within its present borders will for ever remain in question.

It’s often been said that what legitimises any government is the monopoly it holds on violence. The Malian government’s weakness is that it hasn’t monopolised violence in the north, not for decades, and especially not since the end of the civil war of 2012, far from it. Among the reasons why the government has found it so hard to monopolise violence in the north is the fact its authority, and the presence of it army, has long been considered illegitimate by some groups of northerners, especially by the Touareg of the far north eastern Adagh region, where the first rebellion against the central government broke out in 1963.

Furthermore, the Malian army has never been properly constituted or equipped to monopolise violence in the north. Most of its soldiers are southerners who have little or no experience of fighting in the harsh steppes of the desert. The climate, the landscape, the territory, the people, everything is as strange to them as the mountains of Tibet to an inhabitant of Hong Kong. Back in the days before 2012, when there were Malian army barracks in most northern towns, its recruits appeared alien to many local people by dint of their language, their appearance, their attitudes. This isolation was occasionally mollified by an influx of locally recruited soldiers, most notably as part of the UN sponsored reinsertion programmes that followed the rebellions of 1990-1 and 2006. But the levels of interaction and cooperation between northerners and southerners in the army have never high enough to guarantee its efficacy as a fighting force.

This is why the mixed patrols are so important. They have a chance of succeeding where the regular army, as currently constituted, is bound to fail. They are the seeds of a effective home-grown security policy in northern Mali. The idea itself is hardly new. It was first officially proposed in the National Pact that was signed by rebel Touareg leaders and the central government in 1992, following the great Touareg rebellion of 1990-1. It’s rationale seemed solid: if the hardened desert fighters that populate the ranks of northern Mali’s armed-groups, both pro and anti government, to whom the deserts are entirely familiar because they are home, could team up with the Malian army to bring back security and a monopoly on violence, then everyone would be a winner.

Everyone that is apart from the jihadists and the criminal traffickers. Despite the many accusations of collusion (proven in some cases) between members of the CMA and La Platforme on the one hand, and jihadists and criminals on the other, there can be no doubt that security is the number one priority for most people in northern Mali, over and above either jihad or democracy, illicit wealth or clan advancement. Lack of security has been a major blight on the lives of ordinary people for far too long and the mixed patrols are, or were, their one hope of salvation.

The problem has always been that many politicians in Bamako and many southern Malians in general have balked at the idea of equipping rebel soldiers to police the north of the country. To them, hiring enemies of the state to carry out essential state duties seems highly illogical. As a result, the mixed patrols have always been grudgingly funded and supplied. I well remember one senior Touareg official lamenting the fact that the mixed patrols that were put in place after the rebellion of 2006 were given five 4×4 all-terrain vehicles to police the whole of northern Mali, an area at least a big as mainland Britain. Some people are now claiming that the poor and underfunded defences of the Gao camp made some kind of attack inevitable. Maybe it was even deliberate. The mixed patrol project is one idea that many would like to see ending in failure.

None more so than the jihadists and mafia godfathers. It’s not surprising that al-Mourabitoun decided to deliver such a devastating blow to the mixed patrols so soon after their creation. The prospect of their enemies uniting into an effective combat force, with popular backing, is one that they fear most

But their violence mustn’t be allowed to derail this initiative. However pitiful the images from Gao of the 77 coffins draped with Malian flags that have been published on the web in recent days, the mixed patrols must be given a chance to succeed. They’re too important for the peace and prosperity of the north and for Mali’s survival as a nation. And if President Trump really believes in his own inaugural promise to eradicate Islamic terrorism from the face of the earth, he could start by persuading the international community to provide the funds and the training necessary to ensure that mixed patrols in northern Mali continue to operate and eventually succeed.

Andy Morgan.

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Blick Bassy

Simonobisick is a character from Blick Bassy’s new novel Le Moabi Cinema. He spends his time hanging out with his mates in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon in West Africa. None of them have jobs, or much in the way of prospects. They mostly sit around drinking large amounts of beer, killing time and chatting about nothing and everything. And dreaming, copiously. They dream of wealth, of bagging a beautiful girl-friend, of playing football like Samuel Eto’o, of making a success of their lives, of standing on their own two feet, of being ‘someone’. Most of all they dream of getting a visa and escaping to Europe. But hard as they try, those dreams remain stubbornly elusive. I won’t reveal any more because it might give away too much about this engaging and insightful novel. At some point, I won’t say when, Simonobisick writes the following letter to his mother and reads it out to his friends in the local bar that is their unofficial HQ. It reads like a statement of Africa’s youthful frustration. I thought it was well worth translating into English, pending a translation of the whole novel. Blick Bassy was kind enough to give his OK, and approve the result. So here it is…Simonobisick’s letter to his mother:

SIMONOBISICK’S LETTER

“Dear mum,

I’m leaving this earth. I’m leaving this country. I’m leaving this truncated existence, this sham, this sheep-life, this dog-life. I’m leaving and I won’t be coming back. Not even as a ghost: a real one this time, not one of those false returnees, those Diaspora people, who waltz in here on a regular basis and taunt us because they’ve made it, with their sparkling watches, their fine togs, their bling, and all those other signs of success that smack you in the eyes. I’m giving up on democracy, which is just the law of most heavily armed rather than that of the 50 percent of voters plus one. I’m saying this loud and clear: no longer will I queue up at two in the morning to be seen at ten o’clock in the hope of securing a visa. I should have hit the road to tempt the devil and take my chances heading in the direction of Tangiers and Algeciras, like the clandestinos who grab their visas with their own two feet. I lacked the courage to leave my friends. But I won’t bow my head any more. I’m renouncing the beggar’s life and deciding, as a free man, to rejoin the silence. They’ll never cover me with diadems or marble. But my friends will know that I’ve been loyal, that I’ve respected the pact of true friendship. I’m leaving with a righteous anger, in the hope that they will succeed where I have failed. The West must listen to us, or hang us out to dry once and for all. It takes everything and leaves us with the crumbs. Yesterday, it took our valiant ancestors and today it takes our youth, at least those who aren’t all washed up in beer. My mother, my very dear mum, give the family and your friends a kiss for me. You raised us and believed in us; we became disenchanted and no longer believe in anything. I know you did what you could. Go together and tell my father that I know he had to flee when he could. Go and tell my uncles that it’s not back in the ancestral village that I want to be laid down to rest, but where the earth dances, and trembles.

Yours Simonobisick…who loves you, you poor mums.”

Written by Blick Bassy.  Translation by Andy Morgan.

Reproduced with kind permission from the author.

Le Moabi Cinema is published in French by Continents Noirs, an imprint of Gallimard. 

http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Continents-Noirs/Le-Moabi-Cinema

http://www.blickbassy.com/

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In many ways, it’s the perfect size of venue: not too big, or too small. A convenient balcony. Good lines of sight. A sturdy dance floor fit for moshing. Solid, utilitarian fixtures and fittings. All the systems for dealing with over-excited rock’n’roll fans in place and down pat. It reminds me of the old Town and Country Club in London. It’s an exciting place to be.

Tinariwen with Robert Plant at the Bataclan, Paris – 7th April 2007

And so it proved back in 2007 when Tinariwen played their first gig there.  Their third album Aman Iman had just come out to a loud international fanfare. The momentum around the band seemed unstoppable. There were journalists, photographers, TV people to deal with. Life was frantic. And exciting. The band’s bus was parked just outside the front doors of the venue. From mid afternoon onwards, there were fans hanging about. When Ibrahim came out to go into the venue, they mobbed him. Most of them were North African. They just wanted to do what fans generally want to do – say hi, have a hug, ask a question, snap a selfie. But it was strange for Ibrahim, and for the rest of us. We hadn’t really had to deal with these kinds of demonstrations of fan-love before. But this was the Bataclan and Tinariwen had arrived.

Because I hadn’t been with the band when they’d played at a festival in southern Morocco just a few months before, I was yet to realise the impact they were having in North Africa. It hit me for the first time there and then, outside the Bataclan. Later, during the gig, there were Berber flags waving in the audience. That was also new.  This was an altogether different, more positive, assertion of North Africa cultural pride and defiance to the one we saw last Friday night.  Robert Plant had agreed to come on and do a guest appearance.  I seem to remember that he sang ‘Win My Train Fare Home’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’ to the broiling roll of Tamashek guitars, with Yadou kicking out that famous riff on his bass.  Justin Adams was also there.  It was a night I won’t forget.

Last Friday night, once again by all accounts, the excitement was palpable.  “Eagles Of Death Metal Tonight – yet another sold out concert!” the venue proclaimed on its Facebook page.  People had come from far and wide.  It was going to be a cracker. Then the first gun shots – a different kind of death metal, unmusical, joyless, rhythm-less – cut across the broiling riffs. Men in black with goatees, of a similar age to most in the audience, had come to put and end to that feeling that anyone who’s been to an eagerly anticipated sold-out gig will know and cherish. It’s a feeling of immense good fortune, of being one of the privileged few, in the right place at the right time. Those young men stood that feeling on its head, and murdered it.

The ISIS statement called what was happening that night, before their bloody intervention at the Bataclan Conference Center (sic), “a profligate prostitution party”. How familiar the ring of those words, echoing a thousand puritan, Calvinist, kill joy rants from our own history. Christianity fought these same battles many centuries ago.  They were still being fought in the 1950s. We thought they’d been won. But no, that battle is still being fought. And anyone who walks out onto any stage – in Paris, or London, or Madrid, Melbourne, Mumbai and Osaka – is now in the front line of that battle.  Music itself is on the front line.  The whole global community of musicians, promoters, managers, roadies, sound engineers, bouncers, merchandising sellers, bar workers, music PRs, music journalists – we’re all on the front line. Take courage. We’ve got to win.  The alternative is too bleak to contemplate: a life without joy, relief, togetherness.  In short, a life without music.

Andy Morgan

Bristol, 17th November 2015.

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On February 9th last, the MNLA and the Ganda Izo held a joint press conference in Ouagadougou and issued a joint statement announcing a future collaboration between the two movements. The two groups also expressed strong support for Burkina Faso’s mediation in northern Mali and denounced any attempts by Algiers to regain the position of peace-maker par excellence that it once considered its prerogative.

Anybody who knows the historic role of the Ganda Izo and its predecessor Ganda Koy in the rebellions of northern Mali will find this news fairly astonishing.  The Ganda Koy was created as a Songhoi ‘civil protection’, aka ‘vigilante’, group after the National Pact was signed between the Touareg rebellion and the Malian government in 1992.  Its public purpose was to protect Songhoi civilians from attacks by armed Touareg rebel groups. Its darker purpose was to sow fear amongst Touareg civilians and drag northern Mali into an ethnic civil war.  To put it bluntly, the Ganda Koy was created to fight the Touareg and their rebellion tooth and nail. Now it’s successor is shaking hands with the MNLA. What can this mean?

The most surprising part of Fasozine’s report of the news conference is the reference to a statement made by the Ganda Izo leader Seydou Cissé that it was mistake for the Ganda Izo not to have followed the MNLA from the start. On the face of it, this seems quite incredible. If there was ever one group in northern Mali, apart form the Malian state and its army, that was guaranteed to show implacable opposition to the Touareg revolution, it was the Ganda Izo. Now they’re expressing regret that they didn’t sign up to that revolution from day one.

The statement actually tallies with a realisation that came to me during a recent trip to Bamako, where I spoke with many Songhoi people who were still living in the capital because they feared it was too unsafe to return to their homes in the north. I got the impression that many Songhoi have long shared some of gripes that the Touareg have with the central government in Bamako. The Songhoi I met spoke to me about their frustration with government corruption in Bamako, with the lack of real decentralization and local management of northern affairs, the lack of job opportunities, the lack of any higher education in the north, cultural and linguistic discrimination by central government and a host of other issues.

Take away the demand for an independent state in the north, and you’re left with two people, the Touareg and the Songhoi who have shared the same territory for centuries, most of it  in relative peace and symbiotic harmony, at least until the early 1990s, and who agree with each other more than they disagree.

All of which leads me to believe that the MNLA squandered a golden opportunity to create a common front with the Songhoi before they launched their uprising in January 2012.  Granted, there were, and still are, a few token Songhoi in the MNLA hierarchy, most notably vice President Mohammed Djiré Maiga, himself and ex-Ganda Koy militant. But the fact remains that the movement did not give itself the time to establish strong links with Songhoi leaders and civil society before declaring war on the Malian government. Their head-strong impatience was perhaps understandable in the circumstances: the MNLA had control over more weaponry than ever before and the Malian army was re-militarizing the north. But it was ill-judged.  The MNLA’s inability to control looting and attacks on civilians by some of its fighters when they took control of the Songhoi-dominated city of Gao in late March 2012 was another massive blunder.  If they had ensured the security of the population, they might also have earned their trust and support.  As it happened, those terrifying weeks of chaos in early April 2012 drove many young Songhoi men into the waiting arms of the Islamist militia, the MUJAO, with its seductive offers of security and cash.  I get the feeling that many Songhoi intellectuals and leaders were sickened by that flirtation with Islamist extremism and violent jihad, and are now keen to clarify and broadcast their true aspirations: not sharia law or, god forbid, an independent state of Azawad dominated by Touareg clans, but rather a better deal for the north and all its peoples.

The MNLA and the Ganda Izo might disagree on the issue of independence, but it’s clear that there is much they can agree on. The Fasozine article reports that the two parties expressed convergence on a range of opinions and stances, “notably the defence of the interests of the ‘people of Azawad’, the implementation of a joint plan of action, the holding in the near future of a special congress of all the movements of Azawad with the aim of establishing a coordination between them, the agreement of the Ganda Izo to take part in such a congress, the reaffirmation by both parties of their attachment to the peace process in line with the Ouagadougou Accords and the agreement by the Ganda Izo to recognise its place in the ‘legitimate’ combat of the ‘people of Azawad’.”

Call me a hopeless dreamer, but this could possibly be the beginnings of a real trans-ethnic front in the north, one that has long been alluded to on paper, but never come to pass in reality.  Hopefully it’ll be a political rather than a military front, one that might achieve real muscle in Bamako and help bring about a better settlement for all the people of northern Mali.

Andy Morgan.

(c) 2014. All rights reserved.

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Touareg boy watching Camel Race, Tin Essako, Jan 2001

A few years ago, on a beautifully calm Saharan evening, I was drinking tea with an old Touareg musician in a garden near Tessalit in the far north east of Mali, a place that has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The musician’s work was gaining popularity throughout Europe and North America, so I asked him if he would ever be tempted to leave northern Mali and emigrate to the west.

“The desert is my home,” he answered. “I’ve never been attracted by the idea of emigrating. It’s here that I belong. You have to live simply in the desert. It’s the only way. And simplicity is freedom.”

Disunity has crippled the Touareg cause ever since the French colonial army defeated the mighty Kel Ahaggar at the battle of Tit in 1902. But freedom is the one idea that binds the heart of every Touareg together. Indeed, the aspiration to be free is so central to the Touareg identity, that their own word for a true Touareg of noble mind and heart is amashagh, which simply means ‘free man’.

What does this freedom consist of? At its core lie a proud autonomy and self-reliance, to which interference or coercion, especially by a foreign power, are abhorrent. With that goes the freedom to move about the vastness of that ancestral desert without hindrance. Hence the deep wounds created by the new frontiers that sliced through Touareg lands in the early 1960s. Then there’s the freedom to manage the desert’s unique environment and natural resources according to local needs and customs; the freedom to be a nomad and to be left alone to live quietly in that blessed, or cursed, state of isolation which only a great empty wilderness like the Sahara desert allows.

There are also freedoms that most humans aspire to and which the Touareg share: freedom from taxes that yield no tangible benefit; freedom from corruption and abuse of power; the freedom to preserve and promote your own language and culture; the freedom to achieve personal advancement and happiness in whatever state you happen to be part of; the freedom to worship according to personal conviction and cultural tradition; the freedom to be open and hospitable to outsiders; the freedom to seek peace and prosperity.

There’s also the desire to live a life free from fear and violence, whether perpetrated by the state, by foreigners or by your neighbours. Good relations with the other ethnic groups that share the desert space – Arab, Peul, Songhoy, Arma, Toubou and others – are essential to the Touareg concept of freedom, because without peace of mind there can be no freedom. Strange as it may seem, until June1990 and the outbreak of the second great Touareg rebellion, good relations between the Touareg and their neighbours were the norm, not the exception. You have to back many decades before that conflict to find a case of open war between Touareg and Arab, or Touareg and Songhoi in the deserts of northern Mali, or Azawad, call it what you will.

I believe that the simplest way of formulating what is often referred to as ‘The Touareg Question’ is this: To what extent can the Touareg aspiration to freedom find fulfilment in the modern world? Indeed, can it exist at all in the context of the post-colonial multi-ethnic nation state?

If an answer to that question exists, then it requires some blue-sky thinking, especially now when many of the old formulas that have been applied since independence seem so bankrupt.

Let’s start with nationhood. Personally, I don’t believe that an independent state of Azawad is a possibility; not now and not for decades, even possibly centuries. Neither the social cohesion, the economic foundation nor the global support exist for such a state to succeed. And quite apart from that, Algeria would never let it happen.

Take away the issue of independence, however, and you’ll find that the aspirations of the average Touareg are basically the same as those of the average non-Touareg citizen of Mali, Algeria or Niger. Namely: less corruption, better schools and clinics, better transport infrastructure, fairer taxes and duties, more job opportunities and, in the case of other minorities, greater cultural recognition.

In some ways, the independence issue skews the argument in an unhelpful way. The rebellion of 1990 was fought not for independence but for greater investment in the north and advancement for northern Touareg and Arabs in the state of Mali and its institutions; in other words, it was fought in order to belong to Mali in a more meaningful way rather than to become more separate. Before 1990, these aspirations were shared by most northerners, whatever their ethnicity or skin colour. It was only fear and polarization brought about by conflict that broke down this empathy of aspiration and turned tribe against tribe.

Governments in the region need to concentrate on the aspirations that unite people rather than those that separate them. But alas, creating job opportunities, developing health and education and promoting minority cultures are often harder for a weak and corrupt government to achieve than maintaining control by turning ethnic groups against each other and keeping populations in a permanent state of fear. But find jobs for the youth, build schools and clinics and show respect for local culture and the desire for independence will wane.

In Mali, even the most enlightened policies in the north have little chance of success unless there’s a concerted effort to reorganise the country’s failed governmental structure. Rather than continue to parrot the mantra of ‘Mali, un et indivisible’ and blindly adopt the French Jacobin concept of a rigidly centralised state, why not look at the länder of Germany, the parliaments of Wales and Scotland, local government in Catalonia or even, dare I say it, Quebec and the federal system in Canada. Mali needs to find a new machinery of tribal, regional and national government, in which appropriate powers of decision-making, especially those relating to taxation, security, education and investment are devolved to structures that work like independent cogs in a larger machine. No easy task, I know, but there are plenty of examples around world that can serve as stimuli for blue-sky thinking in this regard.

The cultural aspirations of the Touareg, indeed of all desert peoples, need to be met. The desire to weaken cultural differences and promote a kind of pan-Manding hegemony in Mali, a pan-Haoussa hegemony in Niger or a pan-Arab hegemony in Algeria and Libya is both backward and doomed. Reorganise the state TV companies so that TV programmes, especially news and current affairs, in local desert languages like Tamashek, Fulbe, Hassaniya and Songhoy are broadcast regularly. Allow local traditions of music and theatre equal access to the state-run airwaves. Use education to promote local language and culture.  Make every Malian, Nigerien, Algerian or Libyan feel that whatever language he or she speaks, it will never be a hindrance to their aspirations.

The doors of advancement up the ladder of state institutions, especially the army, must be fully opened to minorities like the Touareg. That might be a big ask in Mali, given the acute levels of suspicion and distrust of Touareg and Arabs that now exists in the south of the country. But such equality of opportunity is essential if Touareg and other desert minorities are to become peaceful citizens within larger multi-ethnic nations.

What about the frontiers? If we must accept that they’re not going to change or disappear, then they must be made less divisive and problematic for desert people. The late Colonel Muammar Khadafy might have been a power-hungry despot, but his dreams of creating a borderless Sahara, and issuing nomads with special ‘nomad’ passports were, in my view, visionary.

I myself dream of the day when the states of north Africa and the Sahel realise that it would be in their best interests to a create a free economic zone, based loosely on the model of the EU, that spans the entire Sahara from Lake Chad to the Atlantic. Only then will those absurdly arbitrary national borders cease to make a criminal out of an old grandmother who picks up 3 sacks of couscous in Tamanrasset, because they’re cheaper there than at home, and brings them back to Kidal or Agadez without paying the ridiculously high import duties demanded by the state.  As for drug and people smuggling, perhaps the answer to those problems lie in Europe rather than Africa.

The Sahara is a regional space and its problems require regional solutions.  In that respect, it’s the supra-national bodies that include countries from both the Maghreb and the Sahel that are key to future peace and prosperity in the region; bodies such as The Community of Sahel-Saharan States or CEN-SAD – another Khadafy invention – or the regional military committee known as CEMOC. Both are sadly quite toothless at the moment. But long-term, the importance of bodies such as these to the Touareg and other desert peoples will far outweigh that of ECOWAS or the African Union.

Meanwhile, Touareg society needs a revolution of its own. The conflict of 2012-13 has shown up the incompetence and geo-political naiveté of many Touareg leaders, especially those drawn from poorly educated and self-serving hereditary elites. Touareg society needs to become more mobile, more open to the promotion of genuine talent, more ready to learn about and engage with the rest of the world.

You’ll have noticed perhaps that I haven’t mentioned Islamist terrorism or Al Qaida once during this orgy of blue-sky thinking. That’s because neither are the cause of the Sahara’s ills but rather their symptoms. The religious tendencies of just a few ambitious Touareg leaders have managed to tarnish the image of an entire people in the eyes of the world. This is a tragedy which most Touareg I know are not prepared to easily forgive.

A young Touareg drives a 4×4 for Ansar ud-Dine, or hitches a ride as a cook, a guide or a foot soldier with a cell of jihadists or drug smugglers not out of a sense of conviction but rather a thirst for opportunity. The same thirst drove young Touareg men to find work in the French nuclear installations of In Ekker and Takormiasse in the 1960s or to travel clandestino to Libya and join Khadafy’s Islamic Regiment in the 1980s.

Touareg youth haven’t just been ‘radicalised’ by Al Qaida. They’ve been radicalised for generations by lack of opportunity and freedom. And opportunity works like an auction. The highest bidder usually wins. The nations of the Sahara need to bid high, not just in a financial sense, but in a social and political one, to keep their youth on track. That’s all there is to it.

The most prevalent state of mind I encounter when talking to Touareg friends and acquaintances is bafflement. How did it all come to this? What’s happening to our once peaceful desert home? Mali, Al Qaida, Algeria, France, America, China, they’re stronger than we are, that’s what they say. “It’s as if we’ve just woken up,” was how my musician friend from Tessalit once put it to me.

The world has to help the Touareg wake up and adapt their instinct for freedom to the realities of the modern world. It can be done. The Touareg question does have an answer. But it will require plenty of courage, investment and political skill. It’ll also need a season of deep reflection in those blues Saharan skies.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2013

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So stark and brash was the nature of this visit that many see in it a major attempt to realign power relations in North Africa and the Sahel. Morocco’s ostensible aim is to finesse the role of privileged’ partner to Mali in the region from its old rival, Algeria. With Algeria in considerable disarray at the moment, due to the ill-health of President Bouteflika and the immense uncertainty about who should succeed him, this is an opportune moment for Morocco to step up to the plate. Its ancient ties with northern Mali, especially with the various Arab communities of Timbuktu, Djenné and Arawan, no doubt confers historic legitimacy to this move in the eyes of many at home in Morocco.

The first concrete result of the visit is an agreement from Morocco to help train 500 new Malian imams. “We share the Maliki madhab (school of religious law) with Mali, so there’s a perfect cohesion between us in the matter of training imams and in that of religious practice too, which is of a moderate Sunni Islam,” Morocco’s ambassador to Mali, Hassan Naciri, told Mali’s state TV station ORTM. “For us, it’s also important to train these imams according to the principles of moderation and tolerance in Islam.”

The Maliki madhab is still the most popular rite in North and West Africa. Generally, it is considered a lot more tolerant and respectful of people’s differences than the Hanbali school that has taken hold of many parts of the Middle East and which the Salafiyya, who are making inroads into countries such as Mali and Morocco, hold dear.

Mohammed VI fears radical Salafism and Wahabism as much as any hereditary ‘traditional’ ruler in the Maghreb, maybe more. In fact, extremist groups in Morocco recently issued death threats against the king.  The creeping influence of radical Sunni beliefs throughout the Sahel, aided and abetted by the petro-dollars of the Middle East, has also been a great cause for concern to Mali’s secular political elite.  So this move could be seen as a concerted counter-attack against religious radicalism and influence of firebrand Salafi preachers in North and West Africa.

The wider scope of Morocco’s intentions in Mali remains to be seen however. They see, if not common cause, at least a strong empathetic parallel between their struggle against the Polisario in the Western Sahara and Mali’s struggle against Touareg separatists in the north of the country. There were also many reports during the Malian civil war of 2012 of links between jihadi armed groups in northern Mali and disaffected youth in southern Morocco and the Western Sahara. The two countries no doubt see advantages in sharing know-how, intelligence and resources to fight separatism.

The issue of drug smuggling also binds the two countries together, whether they like it or not. Much of the big-time hashish trade that transits through northern Mali is connected to the Moroccan underworld, and there is some evidence of Moroccan involvement in the more lucrative cocaine trade as well.

Morocco might also see the election of a new President in Mali as an opportunity to reassert their influence in the north of the country. Many in the old nationalist Istiqlal party still harbour dreams of a ‘Greater Morocco’, whose influence, if not borders, would encompass all those lands conquered by the great 15th century Sultan Ahmed al-Mansour, which include large tracts of what is now northern Mali.  Those dreams may be fanciful, but closer and more vigorous ties with Mali will be at the very least expected to bring new business and resource-extraction opportunities.

Mohammed VI’s Bamako trip is an attempt to reassert Moroccan hegemony in the region at Algeria’s expense, to establish common cause with the new Malian President in terms of fighting separatism, drug smuggling and religious extremism, to ease pressure on the Western Sahara and generally flex the economic muscle of an increasingly confident Morocco.

Andy Morgan (c) 2013

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Now his writing on the crisis has grown into a book (originally intended as a pamphlet). Morgan details the background and context to the Salafist takeover of an area larger than the combined territories of France and the UK. He untangles the complex web of the different groups involved, and explains how the Tuareg liberationist movement MNLA was hijacked by the Islamist militia Ansar ud-Dine. His political analysis is detailed and comprehensive, tracing how the conflict had its roots in fifty years of Tuareg rebellions, as well as the legacy of events such as  the Algerian civil war of the 1990s and the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

But, as you would expect from a publication commissioned by Freemuse, the campaigning organisation dedicated to freedom of musical expression around the world, the main tune of the book is the impact of the crisis on Malian culture. Morgan’s sharp analysis is supported by plenty of first-hand evidence, including accounts of how the music ban was brutally applied under shari’a law. There are also interviews with  Bassekou Kouyate,Vieux Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate, Rokia Traore and members of  the Tuareg bands Terakaft, Tartit and Tinariwen.

His final chapter is required reading, a tour de force of both profound humanity and intellectual clarity, as he describes how even after the jihadists were expelled in early 2013, fear and paranoia still stalk northern Mali. But his ultimate message is one of cautious hope, as he sees Malian cultural life emerging from the puritanical, doctrinaire war waged upon it ”with a greater sense of defiance and honed purpose.”

Nigel Williamson

(c) Nigel Williamson / Songlines 2013

www.songlines.co.uk

The post REVIEW of ‘Music, Culture & Conflict in Mali’ – SONGLINES, September 2013 appeared first on Andy Morgan Writes.

Two aspects of the Ouagadougou Accords really leap out. The first is that one of the two Touareg signatories was Alghabass Ag Intalla, son of the traditional chief of the Ifoghas clan, Intalla Ag Attaher. The other signatory was Bilal Ag Cherif, General Secretary of the MNLA.

Alghabass ag Intalla sided with Iyad Ag Ghali and his Ansar ud-Dine militia during the occupation of northern Mali by armed Islamist groups last year, and then went on to form the Mouvement Islamique de L’Azawad (MIA). The choices he made betrayed a serious lack of judgement and a scant grasp of both geopolitics and local realpolitik. The impression given was that Alghabass, despite all his hereditary standing and influence, allowed himself to become a mere pawn in Iyad’s games of power and devilish alliance.  Furthermore, his split from Iyad and Ansar ud-Dine soon after France launched operation Serval to rid the north of the Islamist militias seemed merely opportunistic.

As heir apparent to the leadership of the Ifoghas, no doubt Alghabass faced some touch choices during the rebellion, some of which were no doubt governed by factors that outsiders will find difficult to fully understand.  Nonetheless, I have a growing feeling that Alghabass isn’t really the ideal person to lead the Ifoghas and the other Touareg clans in the Adagh out of their current predicament and into a more peaceful and productive future. When I interviewed him by phone back in January, just after he’d formed the MIA, Alghabass seemed vague and lackadaisical in his grasp of the immense challenges he and his people faced and the strategies required to overcome them.

I was also under the impression that Alghabass’ standing within his community had already been diminished considerably by his lack of good judgement. But once the son of a lord, always the son of a lord, I suppose. Alghabass is back in the hot seat, leading his people. Am I the only one to find this a tad depressing?

The other striking aspect of the accords is the fundamental principles upon which, according to Le Monde, they rest: “The two camps confirm their adherence to the national unity and territorial integrity of Mali and a respect of human rights and the secular nature of the State. They recognise the ‘necessity to promote a genuine national reconciliation as the basis of a lasting peace in Mali.’ They also commit themselves to ‘fighting against terrorism'”

Fighting against terrorism is the easy part. The MNLA have always vowed their commitment to it, although their opportunistic alliance with an Ansar ud-Dine that was funded in turn by AQIM and MUJAO in February and March of last year has lead to understandable doubts about the sincerity of their claims. Nonetheless, the assistance they’ve been giving French army during their campaign against recalcitrant mujahedeen in the Tegharghar mountains and their various clashes with barely disguised mutations of MUJAO and AQIM in places like In Khalid and Ber prove that the will to fight terrorism and extremism is there.

Alghabass will have a harder time proving his commitment to this principle. Until recently he belonged to an Islamist militia that was in part funded by AQIM. When I asked him about this very point recently, he was vagueness personified, claiming that you can never know where money comes from.  Nonetheless, I do believe that Alghabass is a moderate Islamist who has never wholeheartedly bought into the more hardline and Machiavellian notions of Iyad or his lieutenant Cheick Ag Aoussa.  It seems trivial to say this, but I’ve never seen a photo of Alghabass sporting the obligatory outsized beard of the committed radical Salafist. Maybe it’s his blue blood that has given him a special dispensation.

National reconciliation is also an easy principle for all parties to accept. Mali needs it like never before. The level of ethnic tension and hatred in the country as a whole and in the north in particular is likely to remain at dangerous levels for some time to come and will only be eased by some intense and applied community-building and cohesion strategies.  I would personally urge the foreign powers to throw every effort, every ounce of know-how and every penny they can muster into this process. The future viability of the Malian state depends on it.

The real sticking point in this statement of principles has to be that of adherence to the national unity and territorial integrity of Mali.  It wasn’t that long ago that Bilal ag Acherif was hammering out the “Independence or Die!” slogans. When I met Mohammed Djiré, the vice-president of the MNLA in Ouagadougou back in February, he was adamant that a return to the pre-rebellion frontiers of Mali was not an option for him or his MNLA troops. He claimed that relationships had putrefied to the extent that the old cohabitation was no longer viable. And yet, Bilal, Djiré, Alghabass et al now seem ready to sign up to Mali, un et indivisible!

My hunch that a great deal of pressure, or some handsome inducements, or both, have been applied by third parties – Burkina Faso, African Union, France? – to bring the MNLA leadership round to this position. One of those inducements could be a firm promise by Mali, supported and ‘witnessed’ by France, to implement a road map towards regional autonomy.  Despite Bilal’s slogans, it’s been clear for a while that most of the more realistic minds in the upper echelons of Touareg society have accepted that an independent Azawad will have to remain a dream for a long time yet. An independent state becomes de facto only once it has been recognised by other states and neither the international community, nor, more importantly, Algeria, will be ready to recognize an independent Azawad for the foreseeable future. Both Iyad ag Ghali and Alghabass ag Intalla have spoken about establishing an autonomous region in northern Mali along the lines of the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq.  Has Mali secretly agreed to consider this option?  Only time will tell.

It’s fairly easy to imagine the pressure might have been bought to bear on the MNLA and HCUA in Ouagadougou. France, the USA and the interim government in Bamako are all desperate to see the Presidential elections take place on July 28th, with voting in every corner of the Malian territory. They want to see the pesky coup-leader Colonel Amadou Haya Sanogo ‘confined to barracks’ and a credible democratically-elected government installed, one that the Americans can throw money and aid at without breaking its own laws.  In order to achieve this, the Kidal region, which has been effectively ruled by the MNLA with the backing of the French army since February, had to be bought back into the fold.

I can imagine that France had stern words with the MNLA.  Reject these accords and we’ll pull out, clearing the way for the Malian army and its revenge lust to sweep into Kidal with no holds barred. The skirmishes between the Malian army and the MNLA that happened a few weeks ago on the main road from Gao to Kidal, near the village of Anefis, in which the MNLA lost at least fifteen lives, were a dire warning of what might happen if the Malians and the MNLA meet in open battle in the dusty streets of Kidal.  These accords promise a gradual and controlled deployment of Malian troops to Kidal and all regions north.  Even so, a tense standoff is likely for a while.  Nonetheless, the MNLA had little choice but to accept.

Their reward is the hope of survival, at least as a political movement.  But how will these accords go down with the MNLA rank and file?  Not very well, is my guess.  Palpable apprehension of self-serving leaders selling out has existed amongst the lower ranks of the MNLA for while now. These fears are fed by the memory of Iyad Ag Ghali’s deal with the Malian government in January 1991, which splintered the rebel movement into an alphabet soup of warring militias and factions.  At best, many MNLA fighters will see these accords as a tactical move to buy time and breathing space, rather than a solid foundation on which future peace and happiness can be built.  And perhaps the leaders, in their hearts of hearts, share the same view.

It was unlikely however that these Accords would have acceptable in Bamako without an adherence on the part of the Touareg delegation to Mali, un et indivisible.  Both the interim government and popular opinion are far from ready to contemplate any hint of independence or indeed, any kind of major concession to the MNLA, whose image in the south is very similar to that of the IRA in 1970s Britain…in other words, close to that of the devil incarnate.  Nonetheless, as on the Touareg side, a certain realism has been seeping into the minds of some senior politicians in Bamako, no doubt aided by a certain ‘gentle’ pressure from France, the US, the EU etc. This developing awareness of the stark realities on the ground is prompting some of those politicians to consider a form of devolution / regional autonomy as the price that has to be paid for long term peace. Others however remain in step with the total intransigence of mass opinion. The youth wing of SADI (Solidarité Africaine pour la Démocracie et l’Independence) has denounced the accords as a heinous plot to carve up Mali, aided and abetted by France.  The Procurer-General of the Court of Appeal in Bamako, Daniel Tessougué, has declared that if the politicians sign these accords, they will have to answer to history.

The fact that some of the most vociferous opposition voices in Bamako belong to Presidential candidates and members of their parties doesn’t bode well for the future of these Accords however. If the candidate who wins the elections at the end of July is one who chooses to base his or her political strategy on the popular mood in the streets, the Accords will not be worth the paper they’re written on and will probably suffer the same fate as the National Pact that was signed in 1992, also with a great deal of opposition in Bamako, and then promptly ignored.  If this happens, then another rebellion, in five, ten or twenty years time, is almost inevitable.

Nonetheless, for reasons already stated, Azawad must remain a dream.  It’ll be interesting to see how Algeria will react to the Ouagadougou Accords.  With their President critically ill in a Paris hospital, and the south of their country undergoing serious social upheaval, Algiers will no doubt be relieved to see peace come back to northern Mali, temporarily at least. However, the fact that these accords were signed in Ouagadougou and not Algiers or Tamanrasset, as most previous accords have been, will no doubt rankle.

Northern Mali needs peace. It needs the space to begin work on the really important challenges that lie ahead; economic development, health and education, national reconciliation and fighting crime.  If the Ouagadougou Accords provide that space, they will be hailed as a historic victory for good sense and compromise.  If they prove to have been rushed through too quickly, and fail to carry the various constituencies in Mali with them, then they’ll end up as nothing more than another failed opportunity to begin solving the fundamental problems of Mali and the Sahel region.

The post The Ouagadougou Accords – Peace in our time? appeared first on Andy Morgan Writes.

MUSIC

CULTURE

& CONFLICT

IN MALI

By Andy Morgan

AVAILABLE FROM:

FREEMUSE BOOKSTORE
iTUNES BOOKSTORE
AMAZON

“‘Andy takes you on a clear and considered journey through the complexities of modern Mali. A must read for all those interested in the culture of West Africa.” DAMON ALBARN.

“…one of the few positives to come out of the occupation of the northern two-thirds of Mali by armed jihadist groups in 2012 was the informed analysis of Andy Morgan. Now his writing on the crisis has grown into a book. His final chapter is required reading, a tour de force of both profound humanity and intellectual clarity.” NIGEL WILLIAMSON, Songlines. 5/5 Stars.

“Andy Morgan brings his skills as a journalist combined with deep insight gained as manager of Tinariwen to sieve through the shifting sands of Saharan culture in this fine book.”  IAN BIRRELL, Daily Mail & founder of Africa Express

“Does a wonderful job of not only detailing what happened during that awful period, but explaining why it did, and how it could easily happen again if things don’t change.” RICHARD MARCUS, Blogcritics.

“Essential reading for anyone who has been touched by Saharan music. It gives a clear and gripping picture of what it’s like to live through the chaos of a 21st century conflict…A really valuable piece of work.”  JUSTIN ADAMS, guitarist, UK

“Morgan’s book is an excellent examination of the contradictory forces in the “war on culture” currently led by Islamists in Mali. Music, Culture and Conflict in Mali represents an essential resource for anyone, scholar or layperson, seeking to grasp the Malian crisis, contemporary West African culture, and the impact of extremist movements on cultural production.”  ERIC J SCHMIDT, Ethnomusicology Review, USA.

“Andy Morgan has written a book about the Tuareg people that brings us up close with them in their moments of horror and disgust during the reign of the jihadists in northern Mali.” BARBARA WORLEY, Senior lecturer of Anthropology at University of Massachussetts, Boston, USA

“A wonderful, sad and powerful read! I’m emotionally spent! This goes far further than an examination of the effect on musical life in Mali. It reaches into all aspects of Malian life, history and future. Most powerful though are the personal stories. This is an important record.”  ANN MACKEIGAN, Executive Producer, CBC Music, Canada.

“The book is brilliant. Andy Morgan has solid experience, partly inside the music industry, not least as manager of Tinariwen. On top of that he’s a writer who knows his stuff backwards. It’s a treat to be introduced to the whole conflict in such a competent way and get first hand experience of what happens when the prophecy of The Doors is fulfilled.”  TORBEN HOLLEUFER, Gaffa magazine, Denmark.

“Many thanks for this magnificent work. Even though it’s in English, I’ve almost read it all, it’s so well written and accessible.”  OUSMANE DIARRA, author, Mali.

“An absolutely fantastic read and an invaluable primer on the volatile Malian situation of the last years. ” CHRIS ECKMAN, Musician and Producer (Dirt Music, Tamikrest), Slovenia.

READ THESE EXTRACTS:

“We don’t want Satan’s music!” – Scenes of musical life under Shari’a Law

Music in the red zone – The Festival in the Desert and the advance of Islamism in the north

“We have come here to teach you the true faith,” – Vandalism and destruction along the great fault line of the Sahel

Tisrawt – The epic tale of a theatre company from northern Mali

The post NEW BOOK – Music, Culture & Conflict in Mali appeared first on Andy Morgan Writes.

Festival in the Desert 2001, Tin Essako, north eastern Mali . (c) 2001 Andy Morgan

France’s MIGs and attack helicopters met little resistance when they swooped into the skies over northern Mali last Friday to halt the southwards advance of Islamist militias near Mopti, the country’s second largest city. Mercifully for the French, there was no sign of the surface to air missiles that the Salafist mujahedeen were reported to have stolen from Ghadafy’s arsenals in Libya at the end of the 2011 civil war. Nonetheless, whereas achieving air superiority in Mali was always going to be a walkover, winning a ground war and restoring peace and unity to the beleaguered West African nation presents an altogether more complex challenge.

The French government claim that they are merely softening up the territory in preparation for a military intervention lead by the Malian army and a coalition of ECOWAS forces. What they have failed to mention is that the Malian army hasn’t won a military encounter against Touareg rebels in the north of the country since the early 1960s, at least not without the help of local pro-government Touareg and Arab militias who know the terrain. Unfortunately, these militias won’t be on hand to help the Malian invasion this time round, not in the short term at least.

The north of Mali is as alien to the average soldier from southern Mali as the Alaskan tundra is to a citizen of Massachusetts or Vermont. That sense of alienation will be felt even more keenly by troops from Nigeria, Senegal, Benin and Ivory Coast, who are more used to jungle and savannah bush warfare, when they finally roll onto the vast treeless plains of the southern Sahara.

This is the land where the local Touareg or Arab in his souped up turbo 4×4 Landcruiser is king. Iyad Ag Ghali, the Touareg leader of the Salafist Ansar ud-Dine militia, is a master of the kind of super-fast hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that suits both the desert conditions and the sheer size of territory in question, which is roughly equal to that of Spain. His mujahedeen showed their verve last Sunday by capturing the small town of Diabaly, due north of Mopti, with a lightening strike that originated over the border in Mauretania. The ability to crisscross borders with little hindrance is another important aspect of the Islamists’ Houdini-esque style of combat.

Even if the Malian and ECOWAS troops manage to march in and recapture most of the major cities in the north, they’re likely to find that their enemy has become strangely invisible. All those foreign jihadists from Libya, Mauretania, Morocco, Algeria and even as far afield as France, Pakistan and the Middle East will slip away and return home. The local youth who have been fighting for one or other of the Islamist katibat or cells will simply stash their Kalashnikovs and don the ‘uniform’ of the local inhabitants; a civilian robe and a turban that covers the head and face, leaving only the eyes exposed.

A junior army officer from Lagos, Cotonou or even Bamako will find it very hard to tell the Islamist mujahid apart from the innocent native city-dweller or nomad. No doubt local informants will tender their services to the African coalition and no doubt summary executions and brutality against both the guilty and the innocent will ensue. Feelings of revenge against ‘white’ northerners – Touareg and Arab mainly – that have been brewing in the hearts of southern blacks and the darker skinned northerners will spill over into racial and ethnic violence. Vigilante groups, such as the feared militia of the black Songhoi people, the Ganda Izo, will rage into action with their machetes and petrol cans. Human rights organisations will have to work overtime.

The secular Touareg nationalist movement, the MNLA, are currently playing the good guys and offering to help the international community rid northern Mali of their bitter Islamist adversaries. This offer however is conditional on the autonomy, if not complete independence of the northern two thirds of the country, a condition which Mali is unlikely to accept. Moreover, the struggle between the MNLA and the Touareg-dominated Islamist Ansar ud-Dine militia will be a fratricidal one, pitting Touareg against Touareg, often within the same family or clan. It is unlikely to do much good to the social fabric of the region.

Meanwhile the Algerian and Mauritanian leaders of the Islamist groups who currently control the north of the country will simply vanish into the desert, possibly to live and fight another day. The Touareg, discredited by an association with Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and other jihadist groups that only a small handful of their leaders ever really sought or wanted, will be back where they were before the great rebellion of the early 1990s; a marginalised, harassed and vilified people living under military occupation and watching their nomadic lifestyle and culture slowly disappear.

The question that France and international community need to answer is not how they can bomb Islamist columns and arms dumps without killing too many civilians, or how they can best support the Malian army and ECOWAS in their bid to retake the north, but how they can help to bring about a stable, functioning and harmonious Malian Republic to which all its people, northerners and southerners, feel they belong.

The joy expressed at the arrival of French fighter jets and paratroopers by most Malians in the south of the country and by a large tranche of the bruised and battered people of the north, who have been groaning under a doctrinaire Salafist regime since last April, is completely understandable. And perhaps the Islamist advance southwards towards Mopti had to be stopped in its tracks, threatening as it did the most strategic airport in the centre of the country and even the capital city Bamako further south. But if sanctioning a Malian army lead invasion of the north means returning Mali to the status-quo ante that existed before the Touareg uprising in January 2012, then it’s simply not a credible long term option. The Touareg ‘question’, the endemic corruption, the collusion between Mali’s security apparatus and shady northern criminal and Islamist elements, the lack of democratic accountability, the breakdown of law and order, all of these issues were alive and rampant back in 2011 and they’re still far from being resolved.

Like a massive dose of chemotherapy administered to a patient with advancing cancer, France’s intervention in Mali will serve to halt and stabilise the situation. But negative side effects are inevitable, and a complete cure seems as far away as ever.

Andy Morgan (c) 2013

First published on The Guardian’s website, January 15th 2013.

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