An A-Z of subjects other than musician’s names
Listen to the spirits and they’ll tell you a deeper tale: that in that vast desert which outsiders are content to call a wasteland, there exists an endless calm, tranquillity and beauty that makes the nomad cry
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.
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.
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
Alghabass Ag Intalla is undoubtedly one of the most important players in the drama that is current unfolding in the far north east of Mali. An opportunity to interview him was one that I could not refuse.
There are facts about Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that are reassuringly hard and verifiable. The organisation exists. It’s run by Algerian Arabs. It’s made a home from home in the north east of Mali, on Tinariwen’s native earth. It earns millions and millions of euros from kidnapping westerners. No one knows exactly how much. Every now and then it chops the head off one of its victims. All in the service of a dream that has become a nightmare for the people of the Sahara
The situation along the demarcation line that separates Islamist-held northern Mali from the south of the country is agonizingly confusing. How can we look through the sandstorm that surrounds the current Islamist advance south towards Mopti and the Malian heartlands.
Ansar ud-Dine speak up…at last! The Touareg lead mujahedeen group currently controlling large tracts of northern Mali have finally posted their ‘Political Platform’, on their website. It’s one of the most illuminating and troubling documents that I’ve read so far during this entire crisis.
The black salafist flag that flutters in the hot desert breeze over Timbuktu symbolises the abject failure of western policy in the Sahel over the past decade or more.
A few days ago, the pro-Azawad website Toumast Press reported that Algerian army personnel were in Gao training fighters belonging to Ansar ud-Dine and MUJAO, the Islamist militia who recently drove the Touareg separatist MNLA from the city. They also reported that the Algerians have been sending heavy weaponry to the city under the guise…
