MUSIC

CULTURE

& CONFLICT

IN MALI

By Andy Morgan

A Freemuse Publication

 220 Pages

Out on May 21st 2013

PRICE: (Digital) £5.99 / €6.99 / $8.99 

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 ”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

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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

[pp 41-45] The Festival in the Desert and the advance of Islamism in the north

Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita soundchecking at The Royal Welsh College of Music  Photo by Andy Morgan (c)

This wasn’t so much of a grand opening as a work in progress preview before an audience of warmth-seeking guinea pigs. The coldest March in fifty years brought them to The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff for a night of a thousand and one strings. After the last had been plucked, they disappeared into the slate grey gloom halo’d by what connoisseurs of the British breakfast might call a “Ready Brek” glow.

Apart from a brief first attempt a few years ago involving the great Toumani Diabate, Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita had only been working on their mission to marry the classical harp and the West African kora in total, on an off, for less than a week. This was hard to tell at times given the instinctive intertwining of notes that cascaded up the aisles, eddied round the rafters and poured into the ears of the magnetized audience. Discerning precisely whose flurried fingers were responsible for which cascade often proved fruitless.

Dressed in what he called his “Chelsea Blue” robes, brick brown babouches and tight black skull cap, Seckou Keita wore an absorbed smile in which both the delight in being there and the relief that a marriage of such distant relatives actually seemed to be working were present. Catrin Finch meanwhile, in floating black cape, black tights and spangled gold pumps, was focussed on throwing away her compass, log book and the other paraphernalia of precision that 25 years of classical music training had afforded her to go beyond calculation and lose herself in the flow.

Old Welsh harp songs, Manding kora staples, Latin dashes, Celtic arias and more were woven together to create something new that also possessed enough depth to sound sage, even timeless. If you closed your eyes you might just have glimpsed the late medieval Welsh harpist Robert ap Huw landing on a West African shore, trading his slate-grey skies for the shimmering light of Africa and the busy dark flow of the Taff for the lazy effortless meander of the Gambia river.

Cross-cultural musical collaborations are strange beasts, sometimes beautiful and coherent, sometimes daft and flat. A marriage of kora and harp, distant members of the same family, makes sense on paper. But whether it would work in flesh and bone was uncertain.  Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita each have the requisite courage, open-mindedness, patience and affability for the task. They’re also undeniable masters of their own instruments and determined to devote the necessary time for the alchemy to work.

This was only a first taste but it was already golden, despite occasional rawness and hesitation, easily forgiven. With albums to be made, tours to be done and an inevitable maturing yet to come, the marriage of harp and kora seems blessed to be long, warm and fruitful.

Andy Morgan (c) 2013

Tamikrest

When people discover that many of the songs by leading Touareg artists like Tamikrest, Tinariwen or Terakaft are about nostalgia, they’re often puzzled. Nostalgia for what exactly? Surely the black and barren hills of the southern Sahara, the scorpions, the 50C summer temperatures, the droughts, the political turmoil, the brittle harshness of sun-baked nature all amount to something godforsaken, unworthy of longing or nostalgia.  And yet the love of a Touareg (or ‘Kel Tamashek’ as they call themselves), a Songhai, a Moor or any of the other desert peoples for their sandy wilderness is every bit as strong as that of an Irishman for the green green grass of home.

A powerful symbol of that love is the enormous dune the Songhoi call ‘Koïma Hondo’, which lies on the banks of the broad Niger River, not far from the ancient city of Gao. The dune, whose ‘feet’ cool themselves in the blue waters of the Niger, turns pink when the sun sets. Hence its nickname; La Dune Rose. Until recently it was Gao’s premier tourist attraction, but now that there are no more tourists, its older populace, the wise spirits and sorcerers who the Songhoi believe use the dune as a meeting place, have reasserted themselves. They’re holding the dune in trust, while the world around them descends into confusion, conflict and barbarity.

On 22^nd August 2012, a heavily bearded spokesperson for the MUJAO (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa), a motley militia of radical Islamists and big time drug barons, who, at time of writing, currently control Gao, issued a decree banning all western music in northern Mali. “We don’t want Satan’s music,” the spokesman declared. “Sharia demands it.  It is the will of God and we must obey.”

The decree effectively outlawed music and forced musicians like Sidi Toure, who had been the director of Gao’s prestigious regional orchestra, the Songhoi Stars, into exile. Anyone caught listening to the radio, watching TV, or playing songs on his or her mobile phone risks a whipping. Musicians have been stopped at checkpoints, their instruments impounded and burnt. Music, the lubricant of life and community, has been driven underground, or out of the territory completely. Tamikrest have fled north over the border into Algeria.  Bassekou Kouyate lives down south in Bamako, the economically blighted capital city where musicians spend their days wondering where their next meal will come from.

It’s fitting that Sidi Touré has called his latest album ‘Koïma’, which literally means “go and listen” in Songhoi. Even if it might be impossible in a physical sense, this is the time for all Songhoi to go their Ayers Rock, Koïma Hondo, to ask their guardian spirits for courage, honesty, peace and understanding.  It’s time for all Touareg to commune with the Kel Essouf, the spirits of the wilderness, to find answers to the pain and suffering they are experiencing. It’s time for the Manding of Segou, the home of Bassekou Kouyate, to do the same.

That spirit world is ancient, and it lives in all the instruments that you’ll hear on stage today; the ngoni lute of Bassekou Kouyate, the electric guitars of Tamekrist, themselves descended from the teherdent of the Tamashek griots, and the acoustic guitar and sokou monocord violin of Sidi Touré.  Go, listen, and you’ll hear all those spirits talking to each other, like they have done for centuries.  What are they saying?

Their exchange won’t necessarily be one of love and blissful co-habitation. Songhoi and Tamashek have fought periodic wars against each other since the 16^th century, when Gao become the capital of a vast Songhoi empire under the emperor Sonni Ali. In the 1990s Songhoi vigilantes killed Touareg civilians, and vice versa. Since the outbreak of the Touareg rebellion in January 2012, which lead directly to the Islamist take over of the northern two-thirds of the country, southern Malians are deeply suspicious of Touareg secessionist intentions.  Many Touareg however feel that they need independence in order to preserve their unique nomadic and Berber culture.

So the conversation won’t be easy. But listen to the spirits there in the music and they’ll tell you a deeper tale. They’ll tell you that in that vast desert which outsiders are content to call a wasteland, good for nothing except for the oil, phosphates and uranium that lie under its soil, there exists an endless calm, tranquillity and beauty that makes the nomad cry in his heart every day he is forced to spend in exile. They’ll tell you about their home, where space and time are so abundant that they make a visitor from the time and space-starved west feel light-headed and reborn.  They’ll tell you that various ethnic groups – Tamashek, Songhoi, Manding – may have battled each other continuously throughout history, that they may be fighting each other now, but that, in truth, they have also always been neighbours, sharing the same vast space, ribbing each other with gentle humor, tolerant of each other’s presence in times of peace. They’ll tell you about the Sahara’s true soul, a musical soul that no bearded tooled-up Islamist militiaman can destroy.

The spirits are waiting for that soul to reassert itself. You’ll hear them singing their hearts out tonight, out under the stars, around the fire, on the pink dune, by the silvery waters of the great Niger river.

Andy Morgan (c) 2012

Programme notes for the ‘Sahara Soul’ concert at The Barbican, London – January 26th 2013

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.

A panorama of Kidal in north eastern Mali. (c) Andy Morgan 2001

The MNLA and MIA have taken control of Kidal and welcomed in the French army. Chadian troops, who are less welcome thanks to bitter memories of the conflict between Touareg fighting for Ghadafi and the Chadian army in the Aouzou strip three decades ago, are also in Kidal. Following a reported meeting between the MNLA top brass and the Chadian government a few weeks ago, this move was probably carefully premeditated.  It’s also clear that the MNLA made some kind of deal with the French in the days, or even weeks, leading up to the arrival of French helicopters and transport planes on Kidal’s makeshift beaten-earth runway last Wednesday. What seems spontaneous in northern Mali often proves to have strategic and well-planned roots.

As far as the Touareg leadership in Kidal is concerned, the most important aspect of the French arrival in Kidal is that they didn’t bring the Malian army with them. This intelligent decision benefits all parties.  First it avoids the prospect of the Malian army running riot in the heart of ‘enemy territory’ and no doubt suffering considerable casualties at the hands of the MNLA / MIA coaltion, who are still heavily armed. Secondly, it gives the French time to pursue the remnants of the Islamist coalition who are apparently still hiding out in the remote Tegharghar mountains north of the town, although I suspect that most of the foreign jihadists have already vanished from the region altogether.  Thirdly, it gives France and the international coalition behind it the chance to say that the mission in northern, or rather its first phase, has been successfully completed.  It also gives the region some breathing space to contemplate the must harder challenges that lie ahead.

Meanwhile, the remaining jihadists in northern Mali have already switched from occupation to insurgency mode. Holding the cities is not longer part of their strategy.  They will now resort to a mix of classic guerrilla and terror tactics to pursue their holy war. Defeating them will be akin to exorcising ghosts or bad spirits. It will be as asymmetrical as warfare can possibly get.

The recent resurgence in the fortunes of the MNLA begs many questions.  Either the secular Touareg nationalist movement found the backing from somewhere to take Kidal before trying to negotiate some kind of collaboration with the French and thus avoid seeing their town, which has been the epicentre of Touareg rebellions in Mali since 1962, handed back to the Malian army and placed under a martial law far worse than the one imposed on it between 1964 and 1990.  Or Alghabass Ag Intalla, the heir to the chiefdom of the local Ifoghas ‘nobility’, and his new Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA) let the MNLA back into the town because they see a partnership with the MNLA as the best way of saving their own skins and avoiding execution / arrest / the ICC and the terrible vengeance of the Malian army.  Last week’s demonstration in the town in favor of the MNLA and against a Malian army occupation, with all the summary brutality against Touareg and Arabs that the local population fear it will bring, is clear proof that the secular nationalist are on the rise again.

The MNLA / MIA will use their hold on Kidal to strengthen the case that they have been putting  to France and the international community for the past three months and more, namely that they should be accepted as natural partners in the continued struggle to rid northern Mali of violence Salafi extremism and foreign jihadists, a struggle which is likely to last months if not years.  Such a partnership between western powers and the MNLA is likely to be entirely unacceptable to the Malian government and most of the Malian people.  However, France might well use its accumulated kudos and leverage to impose such a solution on Mali, whilst forcing the MNLA to accept autonomy rather than independence. After all, in present circumstances, France can pretty much dictate terms in Bamako. Possibly even in Kidal for that matter.

What’s certain is the the Malian army is entirely incapable of pursuing the fight against a protracted Islamist guerrilla insurgency in the north on their own, or indeed, with the help of ECOWAS forces from countries such as Nigeria or Ivory Coast.  So unless France envisages extending their military intervention from the original to months or years, a most unappealing prospect no doubt, they’ll need to build coalitions with other local anti-Islamist groups who have at least some chance of success.  Who will those groups be?  The MNLA?  MIA?  The Chadian army?  Algeria?  Local ethnic militias lead by tainted strong me like Alhaji Ag Gamou or Abderrahmane Ould Meydou?  From France and Mali’s point of the view, the list of candidates is unappetizing to say the least.

Whatever the scenario, the Rubik’s cube like complexity of Mali’s problems, especially in the north, presents one of the greatest conflict resolution challenges in recent African history. Success relies on solving a short list of pressing problems, each of which look like a challenge fit for gods not men.

First, Captain Sanogo and his felow putchistas in Bamako must be thrown out (and in jail preferrably) and control of the country handed back to an interim government with some kind of legitimacy.  The army must then be put under the firm control of that government.

Then the north must be stabilized and secured.  As I’ve already said, this cannot be done by the Malian army and ECOWAS forces.  Other partners will need to be involved.

Then a long lasting relationship between the remote desert regions in the north and Bamako must be defined and negotiated.  Federalism?  Autonomy?  Devolution?  The status quo ante?   In order to define and negotiate this relationship, a legitimate and representative forum must be created in the north, in which all the people’s of the north have both a stake and trust.  Such an assembly cannot be dominated by one ethnicity, especially not the Touareg. Anybody who knows the history of northern Mali will know that this challenge in itself is truly gargantuan.

Once the future form of the Malian nation is agreed upon, elections must be help to bring the political process back onto legitimate foundations.  Meanwhile war criminals on all sides must be identified, arrested and tried.  A process of truth and reconciliation must be implemented.

Then the most destructive of the smuggling rackets, the ones that have helped to fund insurgency and destabilize the entire southern Sahara – arms, people, cigarettes, hashish, cocaine and stolen cars – will need to be dealt with.  This will involve weeding out all the corrupt politicians, officials and military / security personal in Mali, Algeria and other countries, who have benefited from this system for decades, and continue to do so.  In short, it will involve recalibrating the entire Saharan economy away from lucrative but illegal trades and back to more or less benign but legal ones – tourism, mineral wealth, and the important and exporting of legal goods.  This will take years and a huge amount of investment.

And meanwhile the social, political and economic fabric of northern Mali must be repaired and rebuilt.  Touareg, Arab, Songhoi, Fulani and others must learn to live together again.  Smashed and looted hospitals, banks, schools and shops must be put back together again.  Nomadic herds must be restocked. Society must be nurtured back to health and prosperity.  Once again this will take enormous  amounts of time and money.

So before François Hollande and the  Malian President Dioncounda Traore contemplate staging a Bush-on-the-deck-of-the-USS-Abraham-Lincoln-mission-accomplished “We beat ‘em boys” moment, I’d like to see them give a hint of how they propose to tackle all these challenges.  Most intelligent observers agree that it’s far too early to hold Presidential elections next June.  The Malian people need to decide precisely what the future shape of their country might be before they immerse themselves in the divisive games of African democracy and vote for the people who will try to make that future work.  Mali’s utterly discredited political class, its more than 150 continually bickering political parties and its head-in-the-sand insistence that if only everything could go back to the way it was in December 2011, then all would be fine, prove that a lasting solution to the northern question is as far away as it has ever been.

All in all, I’m getting a horrible feeling that the often painful history of western intervention in the complex affairs of Africa, southern Asia and the Middle East is about to repeat itself.

Andy Morgan (c) 2013

First published by Aljazeera English Online – January 2013.

Touareg boy watching Camel Race, Tin Essako, Jan 2001

What do the Touareg want? Well, find me a person called ‘the Touareg’ and maybe he or she will tell us. You might as well find ‘the English’ or ‘the Japanese’ and ask them what they want while you’re at it.

A nation or people rarely if ever think as one. In the case of the Touareg, difference and disharmony is exacerbated by their vast desert habitat and dispersed nomadic lifestyle, both of which tend to foster an allegiance to blood and tribe that is stronger than their attachment to nation or ideology and militate against collective thought or action.

It can be argued that the very notion of a people called ‘The Touareg’ is an invention of 19^th century explorers and anthropologists, who adopted this supra-tribal and alien, i.e. Arab, collective noun to group together the Amazigh or Berber speaking nomadic tribes of the southern Sahara. Before ‘Touareg’ there were only different clans loosely affiliated by their language and cultural habits; Taitoq, Kel Ghela, Kel Ajjer, Kel Gress, Kel Fadey, Kel Ferwan, Ifoghas, Taghat Mellet, Iwellemeden, Chamanamas, Kel Antessar, Daoussahak…the list is long.

And all these clans were further sub-divided into sub-clans and sub-sub-clans. Within one of the six large confederations – the Kel Ahaggar, Kel Ajjer, Kel Aïr, Kel Adagh, Iwellemeden and Kel Taddemakkat – clans and sub-clans were organized into a complex hierarchy of nobles, vassals, warriors, artisans, marabout and slaves. This intricate social structure, which is well nigh-impossible for an outsider to grasp instinctively, underpins modern Touareg politics, despite the considerable erosion of the old clan system in the past century or so.

This historical backdrop, coupled with the fact that the Touareg share their living space with other ethnicities like the Arabs, Fulani and Songhoi, all of whom have their own layered clan structure, makes the Sahara one of the most complex places on earth for an outsider to understand.

Today, the Touareg are a made up of individuals with residual tribal allegiances, different levels of wealth and social position, different attitudes to religion, life and the world beyond their horizon.

Amongst the Touareg of northern Mali, you will find every shade of opinion from diehard nationalist through moderate Islamist, convinced Salafist and heartfelt loyalist – loyalist to the Republic of Mali that is. Some of the secular cadres and footsoldiers of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) still cling to their nationalist dream of complete independence from Mali. Others realize that forces beyond their control won’t them to realize this ultimate goal, and are pragmatically realigning the aims and objectives with a autonomy within the current borders of Mali, or some kind of federal solution.

The leaders of what remains of the hardline Islamist militia Ansar ud-Dine trust that Allah and his unbending law will put their world to rights, whilst maintaining links with out-an-out mafia-terrorist organisations such as Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or the West African Movement for Oneness and Jihad (MUJAO). The ‘moderate’ Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA), either for ideological or opportunistic reasons, most likely both, has severed all ties with Ansar ud-Dine, and is pursuing a more conciliatory line which nonetheless shares most of the MNLA’s autonomous ambitions. Loyalists like the Touareg militia leader Alhaji Ag Gamou, who has re-entered the fray in northern Mali after languishing for ten months in exile in Niger, keep faith with the Republic of Mali and its promise of advancement for Touareg social groups that were once firmly at the bottom of the tribal pile.

Disharmony and enmity between different Touareg groups and individuals has always existed. At independence in 1960, Mali, Algeria and Niger effectively co-opted the French strategy of divide and rule to deal with their Touareg populations, favoring and advancing ‘friendly’ tribal chiefs whilst curtailing the power of hostile ones. When seething tensions in the north east of Mali burst into open rebellion in 1963, the two sons of the amenokal or chief of the noble Ifoghas clan who ruled in northeastern Mali, were on opposite sides of the argument. Intallah Ag Attaher favoured making peace with the Malians and finding an accommodation within the new socialist republic, whilst his brother Zeyd Ag Attaher sided with the rebels and paid for it by spending over a decade in one of the remotest prisons on earth, up near the salt mines of Taodenni in the far north of Mali.

Perhaps, at this stage, it’s worth giving a brief answer to the most essential of questions: why did the Touareg of northeastern Mali rebel in the first place? Nina Wallet Intallou, ex-Malian politician and member of the MNLA’s executive council, proffers the simplest of answers; because the new nation was a mistake. What she means is that the new borders of Mali divided the Touareg of north eastern Mali from the Arab and Berber dominated desert lands further north, with which they had deep economic, cultural and historical ties, and lumped them together with the sedentary black people of the south, with whom they had less in common.

Many Touareg could not see why the Bambara, Soninké and Malinké people of the south should impose their language, culture and socialist ideas on them, especially as these ‘blacks’ had never actually vanquished the Touareg in battle, which, although painful, might at least have given their new overlords some kind of legitimacy. And, yes, racism was part of mix as well. Some northern Touareg and Arab leaders argued that they came from noble Cherifian lineages that went right back to the Prophet Mohammed and, as such, found the idea of being subservient to less ‘favoured’ southern blacks completely unacceptable.

Meanwhile, the new rulers of Mali, hundreds of kilometres down south in the capital Bamako, thought of the Touareg as belligerent, racist, feudal, arrogant and lazy. They couldn’t understand why these recalcitrant nomads refused to salute the new Malian flag and accept the government’s bright new socialist ideas, especially their modern ‘scientific’ collectivised farming methods or the secular school curriculum, all of which, the new leaders hoped, would drag the Touareg kicking and screaming from their outmoded, ‘medieval’ way of life and into the 20^th century.

It was, in short, a dire mismatch. The first rebellion of 1963 and its brutal suppression by a paranoid and inexperienced Malian army ensured that relations between the central government and their far-flung nomads in the north got off to the worst possible start. The bitterness generated by the conflict was deepened by the terrible droughts of 1972-3, during which up to 80% of the northern animal herds died and thousands of Touareg families were forced to flee the country in search of food and work. The corrupt misappropriation of aid by government officials during the crisis only made things worse.

From about 1985 right through to the signing of the National Pact in 1992, which signaled the official end of the great rebellion of 1990-1, the Touareg rebel movement was perhaps more unified under the leadership of the then firmly secular and nationalist Iyad Ag Ghali than it has ever been, before or since. But after the Pact was signed, the movement split along tribal lines into a chaotic alphabet soup of different militias, some of which ended up actually fighting each other in open combat. At the roots of this split was a jealousy and fear of the ruling Ifoghas tribe, to which Iyad Ag Ghali belonged. Other competing tribes like the Idnan and Taghat Mellet formed their own rival rebel group, in which Imghad or ‘vassal’ groups, think of them as the Touareg working classes (a gross over simplification, but I fear more complexity at this stage will simply loose you dear reader), slowly gained prominence and eventually ended up fighting a bitter internecine war with the Ifoghas.

As the 1990s progressed, the new democratically elected Malian government of President Amadou Toumani Touré, an ex-soldier who many Touareg accused of perpetrating atrocities against civilians during the rebellion, did little to honour the promises made in the National Pact and continued the policy of divide and rule in the north. Rebellion broke out again in 2006 and then again in January 2012. In fact, many Touareg argue that the north has been in one constant state of rebellion, with periods of greater or lesser open armed conflict, since 1963.

Nonetheless, the status of the Touareg within the Malian republic has undoubtedly changed over the years, whatever the ultra-nationalist Touareg might say. When Mali threw out the military dictatorship of Moussa Traore and brought in multi-party democracy in 1992, which heralded a period of great hope and social dynamism in the country, the total isolation that the Touareg of the far north east had known since independence was broken. Touareg leaders were given representation in national politics, and in 2002, for the first time ever, a Touareg was nominated prime minister. Even though many of the funds allocated to developing the north were embezzled, either by corrupt local leaders or central government officials, some of the money did get through and some schools, wells and clinics were built, although far too few in the eyes of those who continued to clamour for development and independence.

Touareg clans who had been subservient to the warrior-nobility in colonial times, such as the vassal Imghad or Bellah (‘slaves’) favoured the weakening of the old social hierarchies that being citizens of the Republic of Mali inevitably entailed. It gave them the chance to climb up the social ladder and achieve both wealth and status, a redrawing of social boundaries that often angered old clan bigwigs.  The Malian government also favoured a few talented Imghad men when it came to filling important vacancies in local administration or the army, much to the envy and fury of some belonging to ‘nobler’ tribes.

Furthermore, many younger Touareg, born after the years of drought and deprivation in the 1970s and 1980s were less driven by the notion that a future within Mali was impossible. They had, de facto, been Malian all their lives. Many had traveled to the south and learned at least a few words of Bambara. They listened to southern music and watched TV programmes made in Bamako. Whilst they still felt separate in many ways, that sense of alienation was weaker than it had been in their parents’ day.

But the bitterness and frustration remained and so did the marginalization. Touareg soldiers like Hassan Ag Fagaga, leader of the 2006 uprising, seethed at being denied promotion in the Malian army. Touaregs saw injustice in the fact that there was hardly any Tamashek music on national TV and absolutely no Tamashek language programmes. They bemoaned the lack of proper schools, clinics and roads in the north east. Furthermore, bitter old memories continued to die hard. Most of the Touareg rebel leaders in northern Mali are the “sons of ‘63”, in other words, men whose parents suffered great injustices in the uprising of 1963. Ghali Ag Babakar, the father of Islamist leader Iyad Ag Ghali, was killed in that uprising, as was the father of Mohammed Ag Najm, the military leader of the MNLA. Their hurt is still visceral and deep, as is their mistrust of the government in Bamako.

Islamism, however, is an entirely new element in this story. Until the mid 1990s, no Touareg leader had ever fought a rebellion in order to impose his brand of Islam on others by force. It was around 1995 that proselytising preachers from the Tablighi Jama’at, a peaceful Pakistani Muslim missionary organisation, started spreading their daw’ah or ‘summons’ throughout Mali. Iyad Ag Ghali, fascinated by their message, invited them up to Kidal in the northeast. He was disillusioned by the fractiousness of Touareg tribal politics and had more or less come to the conclusion that an independent Touareg state in northern Mali would never work. Moreover, although he doesn’t belong to the sub-clan of the Ifoghas from which the clan chief is chosen, he hoped that by associating himself with this new Islamism he would reinforce his prospects of becoming the first non-hereditary leader of the Ifoghas Touareg. No one doubted his supreme talents as a military and political leader, but Ag Ghaly lacked legitimacy as a religious figure. He figured that an association with the ‘alien’ Salafi doctrines of the Tablighi Jama’at and their logical ‘modern’ view of Islam might provide him with that legitimacy and allow him to contest the authority of Intallah Ag Attaher, the current aging leader of the Ifoghas clan.

Other figures in the Ifoghas nobility were also seduced by the ‘purist’ Salafi teachings of the Tablighi preachers, including Alghabass Ag Intalla, the current leader of the MIA, and the notorious war lord Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, who was killed in a ‘car crash’ in the summer of 2011. [NB Getting 'killed in a car crash' is often a desert euphemism for being assassinated in some way]. But in the end it only was Iyad Ag Ghali and a very close coterie of fellow Ifoghas who immersed themselves entirely in this new religious philosophy. Some, including Iyad, went so far as to further their studies at a Tablighi centre near the city of Lahore in Pakistan and at mosques in Bamako and Paris. He also became very strict and puritanical in his outlook and personal habits.

After Islamist terror groups from Algeria started to operate in northern Mali from about 2001 onwards, they soon made common cause with Iyad and a small but growing group of Touareg Salafists. Moreover, the GSPC, precursor of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), began to earn large sums from kidnapping, smuggling and money-laundering. Their presence and nefarious activities skewed the economy of northeastern Mali, such as it was, and realigned it around kidnapping, and the smuggling of drugs, arms, cigarettes, stolen cars. Tourism died a swift death, and, thanks more to desperation than religious fervour, some young Touareg accepted employment with the Islamists as drivers, informers, foot soldiers and runners.

In order to undermine the continuing Touareg insurgency, the governments of Mali and Algeria at best tolerated this presence and, at worst, actually encouraged it in clandestine ways. Confusing the cause of Touareg self-determination with that of Islamic militancy bought Mali kudos in the international community and enrolled their decades old secessionist problem into the much wider and better publicised global war on terror. France and the USA reacted to the creeping presence of Al Qaida-affiliates in northern Mali by boosting military aid, money that often disappeared into the pockets of corrupt politicians and generals. Eventually, the Touareg nationalist cause became synonymous with Islamism, Al Qaida, Osama Bin Laden and the global war on terror. The effect was a very neat emasculation of Touareg dreams and a deep tarnishing of the Touareg image in the eyes of the rest of the world.

With weapons stolen from Colonel Khadafy, a man who had always dampened Touareg ambitions whilst seeming to support their cause, the latest and most far reaching rebellion was launched a year ago. But it was hobbled from the outset by disunity. A large number of the Touareg soldiers who returned from Libya belonged to a tribe called the Idnan who had traditionally competed with the Ifoghas for dominance in the northeast. Iyad Ag Ghali demanded to become leader of the new rebellion but his advances were rejected. He also tried to impose his Salafi philosophy on the movement, but he was once again turned down. Smarting from this rejection he formed his own militia, Ansar ud-Dine, to which the best Ifoghas fighters soon swore allegiance. Blood proved thicker than water, or political philosophy for that matter, and furthermore, his coffers full of AQIM money, Iyad was able to pay and equip his army properly. His aim was not independence but Shari’ah law for all of Mali. He ‘lent’ his muscle to the MNLA but when the Malian army were defeated in May, he and his backers in AQIM hi-jacked the whole uprising and turned it into an Islamist takeover. The MNLA meanwhile, abandoned by most potential backers at home and abroad, limped along without the necessary funds.

Now, the Touareg nationalist cause has been as good as buried under a tempest of paranoia about “Al-Qaida linked terrorists” in the Sahel, a new front in the global war on terror and all the other pat phrases that the media habitually resort to in these circumstances.  Iyad Ag Ghaly and his fellow Ifoghas Salafists will obviously bear the brunt of the blame for this turn of affairs. His reputation in certain Touareg circles, once fairly glowing and venerable, is now devilish indeed.

France has piled in to stop the rot. Malians are understandably jubilant. But contrary to what the British Prime Minister David Cameron said in the House of Parliament recently, this isn’t primarily a global problem. It’s a very local one. Yes, the Algerian terrorists who run AQIM have sworn allegiance to the global Al Qaida franchise. Yes, they dream the same dreams and talk the same flowery language as jihadis in Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. But the prime reasons behind the existence of radical armed terrorist groups in northern Mali are all to do with local problems; poverty, underdevelopment, corruption, crime, regional self-determination, ethnic aspiration etc etc.  To wade in with MIGs, tanks and boots on the ground without understanding the specific local problems facing people in northern Mali is to court eventual defeat and disaster.

Perhaps, on deep reflection, it’s possible to define a few hopes and dreams that unite most Touareg. I say ‘most’, because total agreement seems virtually impossible. A visceral attachment to their earth, to the beauty, pristine wildness, simplicity and space of their desert home seems to be almost universal. So is the deep nostalgia or assouf felt by most Touareg when they’re absent from it, either by compulsion or of their own free will. This feeling alone accounts for the emotional power of 90% of all Touareg music, including that of world famous Touareg guitar groups like Tinariwen, Tamikrest and Terakaft.

Most Touareg want to see this natural beauty, this freedom of the wide open spaces preserved and with it the nomadic pastoralism that has been practised there for millennia. Then again, there are some, a few, that consider nomadism to have no future at all and who urge their fellow Touareg to accept the sedentary life as the only route to a modern and sustainable future.

Allied to nature and nomadism is the Touareg’s unique Berber culture, especially their language, which is called Tamashek and their alphabet, the oldest in the world to have been kept in continuous use, which is called Tifinagh. Keeping Tamashek alive has been a major motivation behind the Touareg rebellions of the past, spurring demands for Tamashek education and Tamashek speaking television channels

Then there are the other mainstays of Touareg culture that most Touareg treasure. Among them are music, poetry, jewellery-making, leather-working, story-telling, traditional healing, camel breeding and more. But, once again, this cultural pride isn’t felt by all Touareg. A tiny ‘lunatic’ fringe of Salafi Touareg consider their Berber culture to be backward and irrelevant in the modern world, a folksy throw-back kept alive by meddling western anthropologists. They would prefer their people to adopt Arabic, the language of the Qu’ran and of the wider Muslim community. With that they would welcome a greater Arabisation of the Touareg. They deem certain other aspects of Touareg culture, especially music and dance, to be licentious and ungodly and they object to the relative freedom and social power that Touareg women enjoy. They also revile the old ‘backward’ Sufi traditions of Islam that most Touareg adhere to.It’s important to stress however that these Salafi attitudes are shared by a small minority of Touareg. Unfortunately, that minority includes a few of the most powerful men in Touareg society, including Iyad Ag Ghali.

Lastly, almost all Touareg bemoan the dearth of social and economic development in their homeland since the end of colonialism. They would like to see more schools, more health clinics, more wells, better roads, cheaper petrol, cheaper food, better distribution of goods, less criminality, more peace and stability. When a Touareg musician sings that his desert is dying of thirst, this is what he means. Without development, the desert is going nowhere.

These then are the dreams that most Touareg share. It’s the conflicting views on how to make those dreams come true that divide them. The nationalists believe that Mali can no longer be trusted to serve the best interests of the Touareg. They argue that the Touareg and other northern ethnic groups, especially the Arabs, will forever be marginalised and discriminated against within a Malian state. Only independence can guarantee a future for the Touareg people and their culture. The MNLA have also been at pains to prove that this opinion is shared by all the major ethnic groups in the north – Touareg, Arab, Songhoi, Fulani, Bozo etc. Mostly however, it’s only Touareg and Arabs who buy into it in large numbers. The nationalists also look outwards and favour alliances with foreign powers and international institutions such as the UN and the EU, as long as they further the cause.

The hardline Islamists believe that borders only serve to divide up the great Muslim community or ‘ummah’ and will eventually lead to greater human suffering and evil. For them, a simple and strict adherence to the word of God and to his law is all the Touareg and the greater Malian nation need in order to eradicate the vices introduced from the west and re-establish a safe, clean and prosperous state of affairs in the Sahel. They distrust the west of course, and if help is needed, prefer to consider local resources or appeal to other Muslim states, especially those in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia or Qatar, for support. Iyad Ag Ghali himself is especially adamant that Muslims should help each other and not go running cap in hand to infidels. That is why he chose to make a pact with Al Qaida and accept their ‘dirty’ money in his fight to create an Islamic Republic in the north of Mali, even though he doesn’t necessarily share AQIM’s cold hatred of all things non-Muslim or their propensity to target innocent people. More moderate Islamists like Alghabass Ag Intalla have rejected this alliance with the ‘narco-terrorists’ and aligned themselves with MNLA whilst maintaining their insistence that the future autonomous region of Azawad should essentially be founded on Islamic principles, in legal, political and moral terms at least.

It must be said that what motivates Touareg Islamist leaders like Iyad Ag Ghali and what spurs young Touareg men to join his cause isn’t necessarily the same. For the latter, the promise of safety within a large, powerful and well-armed group coupled with the prospect of good equipment and regular salary are major attractions. Furthermore, for a young man who has known only poverty, unemployment and hopelessness is recent years, a job and concomitant status with Ansar ud-Dine can seem bright and attractive.  The fact that Ansar ud-Dine has seem its ranks heavily depleted almost overnight following the French intervention is proof of the opportunistic motives of many of its former footsoldiers.

Some have even claimed, probably too charitably, that Iyad Ag Ghali created Ansar ud-Dine in order to given young Touareg a chance to express what he believed to be their natural Islamic identity whilst avoiding the compromise of joining the Arab dominated Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.  In other words Ansar ud-Dine offered young Touareg the opportunity to be both genuine Islamists whilst preserving their essential Targuité or Touaregness.

Lastly, there are the loyalists who prefer to see Mali remain intact. They believe that a Touareg dominated state in the north is an impossibility. The Touareg are simply too internally divided, they say, too inexperienced in terms of administration and statesmanship and too dominated by self-serving clan elites to make an independent state viable. They’ll probably admit that Mali is far from perfect, but better to build a future within its democratic and republican confines than accept the possibility of an autocratic ruler in the north, who needs must will inevitably resort to repression and violence in order to keep all the disparate tribal and ethnic tensions in an independent Azawad at bay.

Moreover, what would an independent Azawad actually live on. Gold? Oil? Phosphates? Livestock? Tourism? The economic life of the Sahara is simply too fragile, and too dependent on more urban societies to the south and north to exist independently. Lastly and most importantly, Azawad is an impossibility simply because Algeria would never allow it.

This loyalism is common not only among the Imghad clans of the far north east, but among other Touareg tribes who have had a less tortured relationship with Bamako in the past than that of the Ifoghas. These include the giant Iwellemeden confederation of the Menaka area, the Kel Antessar of Timbuktu and Goundam and the Chamanamas of the Gao region.  But then again, within all those groups, the full range of opinions can still be found.

So what do the Touareg want?  Impossible to say in one snappy soundbite. Except perhaps, a good drenching of rain to soak the parched earth every summer.  But that, only the Almighty can provide.

Andy Morgan (c) 2013

First published in Al Jazeera English Online eMagazine.  Download it from iTunes!