Mali Today!

Mural of Segou Region
shows all the villages,
cities and "counties".

MALI ELECTIONS: 21 NOV 2016

UPDATE: Mayor Simaga and Councillor Sissoko ran for the office, but M. Nouhoum Diarra was the winner of the City of Segou's race for office of Mayor in the long awaited, post-coup, national election season.

VFOM extends its congratulations to all candidates for a race well run, to our special friends Ousmane Simaga and Madani Sissoko for their passionate commitment to our sister city relationship, its goals and achievements.

We now extend a hearty congratulations to Segou's new mayor, M. Nouhoum DIARRA! 

M. le Maire DIARRA,

We wish your administration all success in your goals for a stronger, thriving Segou! And we send very good wishes to your family as well. We hope to share a productive relationship going forward, eagerly taking advantage of all that is easy to do and tackling with enthusiasm all that will require hard work. We all look forward to meeting you sometime in the near future! 

With friendship and respect,

Virginia Friends of Mali

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On January 11th president François Hollande launched a French military OPERATION SERVAL, that chased away the jihadists who were threatening to take over the key political centers of Sevaré, Ségou and Bamako. This was so poplar in Mali, that within a week several new-born Malian children were baptised "François Hollande" (poor kids!)

But how do the French now withdraw from a country which has no functioning army and no functioning administration? The French have determined that ELECTIONS shall be organized. With an incomplete list of electors, and with 250 000 refugees outside the country's borders because of the fighting in North Mali, it is doubtful whether "real and valid elections" can take place. However, the presidential election is going to take place, starting with a first round on July 28th - and at least, at the end of the process (there will be a second round with the two top candidates facing off against each other) Mali will have a new president. The interim president Me Dioncounda Traore, formerly Chairman of the National Assembly, is a nice man and a former minister of Education and of Defense.... but he has been uninspiring as interim Head of State and Mali definitely needs new political leadership in order to move forward.

The most likely 'winner' of the presidential election is Mr Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister during the 1990s who has the reputation of being able to take tough decisions.

His main rival - according to VFoM analysis of the political realities - will probably be Mr Soumaila Cissé, another former minister from the q990s who has recently been head of the UMOA, the West African Monetary Union - which has its headquarters in Ouagadougou, capital of the neighboring state of Burkina Faso. This gives Mr Cissé the advantage of being able to say he was not connected with the failed regime of ousted prsident Ahmadou Toumani Touré, which collapsed under a mass of cocaine corruption and a jihadist takeover of the cities of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu.

Mali's electoral system badly needs overhauling. There are expected to be 27 candidates on July 28th, which is obviously unmanageable. Most of them represent only themselves. Mali needs to redefine "political party" and insist that registered parties should have membership in several regions - not just one village ! One candidate is an unknown Mormon (there are only a few dozen Mormons in Mali) who is standing because he has been able to raise funding from USA. That sort of foreign interference does nothing to help the progress of 'democracy' in a Secular State like Mali where religious political parties are forbidden. On the contrary: to present a presidential candidate, a "political party" ought to have to prove that it has at least 1000 paid-up members in each of at least 5 Regions (Mali has 8 Regions) .... otherwise individuals with a wealthy family stand for personal prestige and make a mockery of the electoral process.

Mali should therefore have a new President by the time VFoM celebrates Mali's National Day at the peace conference we are co-sponsoring with VCU at the Student Commons on 20 and 21 September.

We hope to see you there !

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The problem of Child Soldiers in Mali

The recent conflict in North Mali has raised yet again the problem of children as victims of war.

Girls are even more vulnerable than boys: this is proven by the rumored rapes that took place in the city of Gao last summer, when it was invaded and taken over first by MNLA troops from the former Libyan army, and then by MUJAO jihadists.

France 24 TV showed repeatedly during March, a film clip of a 14-year-old jihadist (probably from Nigeria) who was captured by French paratroopers in the mountains around Kidal, in Mali's Sahara Desert.
Mostly, child soldiers in Mali are unemployed teenagers who were glad to be paid $10 per day to toe a Kalashnikov and feel powerful. We doubt whether most of them were motivated by 'jihad'.

Our friend Violet Diallo reports from Bamako that UNICEF has been looking after those armed boys who were captured and held for some time by the gendarmerie. They had expert resources on how to set about de-briefing them. 

A 16 year old who had been press-ganged into cooking for MUJAO in Douenza and was captured in January appeared widely on TV and worried many children elsewhere in Mali has been sent back to his family and is settled back there. 

The Senegalese psychiatrist Prof Sérigne Mor Mbaye who has done research on children in W Africa who have suffered violence, has worked with ex child "soldiers" in Liberia and Senegal. He is now working with Plan Mali to develop an approach in Mali for these and other children affected by conflict.

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Briefing on Mali and the Sahara 

Dr RE Poulton is Vice-President of Virginia Friends of Mali,  Professor of French West African Studies in the VCU School of World Studies, Senior Fellow of UNIDIR in Geneva, Managing Partner of EPES Mandala Consulting. He is the author of five books and many articles on Mali.

1. Mali in political chaos
2. There is anarchy in Bamako
3. There is still hope!
4. Conclusion: medium optimism
5. Who are the northern ‘rebels’?

Dr Robin Edward Poulton spoke about Mali, Timbuktu and oil wars in the Sahara on July 3rd, 2012 at the prestigious Royal Society for International Affairs in London (known as "Chatham House" because it is housed in the London mansion of the Earl of Chatham, Prime Minister William Pitt (1708–1778) - a man who supported the position of the American colonies before their revolution against George III). 

1- MALI  IN  POLITICAL  CHAOS

After an 'accidental coup' on March 22nd 2012 - which followed a mutiny the previous day in the Kati barracks near Bamako - Mali finds itself with a state of government paralysis in Bamako. The takeover by a military junta of corporals and sergeants, forced armed Tuareg rebel movements in the north – people who were waiting to renegotiate their status with a newly-elected government following the planned the April 29th elections – to move south. Within one week of the coup, they took control of the key cities of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu.

Last year the Tuareg movement MNLA declared its intentions to demand Independence for a state called AZAWAD. It seemed in those days to be mainly some Tuareg intellectuals with a website in France, and a bunch of armed smugglers in the mountains north of Kidal whose links to the French were tenuous. But Al Qaeda in the Maghreb was active in the same zone and the cocaine route was thriving. The potential threat to Mali, West Africa and the European Union’s cities was evident, even six and seven years ago when the state of Guinea Bissau was taken over by Colombian drug lords. Back in 2006, Mali’s president tried in vain to create a ‘regional platform’ of the countries most threatened by cocaine, from Mauritania to Chad: but self-interested elements in Algeria and Libya blocked the initiative, which the EU more-or-less ignored.

The southern brigade of the Libyan army (led in the past by Gadafy's son Kamis) was largely composed of Malian Tuaregs. When Libya fell apart, these Tuaregs (mercenaries with no more pay checks) crossed the Malian border into Kidal region with their vehicles and their weapons. Who controls the men and the weapons becomes more confused by the day, as numerous armed movements of Tuaregs and Arabs have emerged: some (FNLA, Mujao, MNRA) do not seem to want independence from Mali; others (Ansar Eddine, some leaders of AQMI) want to impose an Islamic State based on their personal salafist theology; most Algerians of AQMI simply want to continue smuggling cocaine from Colombia and kidnapping foreigners for ransom. We offer a summary of the armed movements at the end of this essay. Meanwhile, everything points to the probability of war between the different factions in Northern Mali.

In Bamako, the leaderless army allowed 'rent-a-mob' to attack the interim President Dioncounda Traoré, a man of 70 who is now in a Paris hospital. 

The corporals and sergeants - with their nominal head, Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo - have no idea how to run a country. They are clinging to power, but there is really no Malian army: the power of the Kalashnikov and a state of anarchy that is leading the country towards economic ruin. 

It seems that the technocratic ministers of transitional prime minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra (a nuclear scientist) are as powerless to impose order on this state of chaos as transitional President Traore lying in his hospital bed.

Mali's future is divided North and South right now. The ECOWAS regional group is threatening military intervention to reunite the country with 3000 troops from Niger, Guinea and Burkina Faso: an absurd idea that would simply humiliate ECOWAS, while increasing war misery for the northern populations that are already suffering from lack of food and other supplies. 

Mali's neighbours are equally as divided as the Malians between approving military intervention, or not.

But the immediate key to Mali's future in the short term does not lie in the North. What happens to Mali (whether Mali and Azawad can reunite) depends on what happens in Bamako. In the longer term, it depends also on the desires of key external players in places Algiers and Stuttgart = Washington and Paris, although Paris is losing ground rapidly in Africa.... maybe also in Riyadh, Qatar, Ankara and Beijing.

2. THERE IS ANARCHY IN BAMAKO, a Capital City without any governance 

There can be no future for Mali, until there is a government functioning in Bamako: if there is no one to negotiate with, there can be no negotiation.

On the other hand, with whom can the South negotiate in the North?  Here civil war seems the most likely in the immediate future. Outside powers want the former Libyan army of Tuaregs to kill off AQMI, which may or may not happen.

We are witnessing international politics at its most ruthless. Most Malians have no idea what is happening. Most people in Bamako do not understand what is really going on (starting with the soldiers). As for internet discussions and comments from the Malian diaspora, they are a mixture of the extreme and the absurd - all of them fueled by a complete absence of analysis of the real events in the Sahara and on the Boucle du Niger.

When/if there are negotiations with the people who exercise power in 'Azawad', the people of southern Mali will have to reconcile themselves to a number of harsh realities :

1) The North is stronger than the South, despite the fact that its population is small (1.5 million) and the population of Tuaregs is tinier still (maybe 200 000 in Mali). Unlike Bamako, Azawad has an army - or several armies – with weapons and ammunition, including all the Malian army’s stocks in Gao. The desert contains much-in-demand natural resources (petrol, manganese, uranium, phosphates). A, MNLA Council was named in June to lead Azawad, but since the MNLA was chased out of the cities by Ansar Dine and AQMI on July 1^st, it remains unclear who will emerge as the real leadership in the North.

2) Expressions of racist invective and military bravado in Bamako and on the internet will bring no practical solutions for Timbuktu and Gao.

3)  There is no rule of law in Bamako, where people are arrested by soldiers without reference to any other system of justice than a military uniform and a Kalashnikov.

4)  There is no real Malian  'army' - today we have just a rabble of armed men abusing the power of their weapons to do whatever they want.

5)  The previous regime of President Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT) hollowed out the institutions of state and weakened the systems of democratic governance. He bought the opposition, removing all discussion about policies, and he neglected the process of decentralized and democratic governance by concentrating decision-making in the palace. This weakened the ministries and the municipalities. A retired army general, ATT undermined the structures, finances and morale of the Malian army by promoting all his class-mates to the rank of general. Finally, ATT tolerated the cocaine trade from Colombia, which allowed the influence of Libya and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb to dominate the politics of Northern Mali (especially in Kidal).

6)  Mali must now renegotiate its identity between N and S, and find a new federal or some other solution. The Tuaregs are a small minority, but they and their allies must be accommodated inside a newly-defined system of governance.

7) There are major international powers that have an interest in keeping Mali weak and Azawad independent. 

8) Most Malians North and South want a united Mali within the traditional borders, and a return to democratic governance and constitutional rule: but there are very few mechanisms working that allow them to express their views. The political process has been hijacked by the military junta and a corrupted political elite in the South, and by armed groups of bandits in the North.

9)  The political class has lost its influence in Bamako. There are still Malians with clout and others with vision, but most of the people who served in the regime of the ousted president ATT are yesterday's people. 

3. THERE IS STILL HOPE!

However Malian civil society remains vibrant and powerful in the North and in the South: we are thinking of the strong savings and credit banks, farmers' associations, cooperatives, women's groups and civil society organizations (CSOs) that have a solid economic base. There is also an 'NGO' community in Bamako, whose strength-and-weakness is their dependence on the money of foreign embassies: these NGOs can be counted as lying mid-way between the political class and 'real' civil society.

The core of Malian civil society and Mali’s social capital can be found in the traditional institutions of civil society. Mali has been governed for 15 000 years by village councils and by the 7-year cycle of age-groups, by hunter societies, blacksmith guilds, women's initiations societies and by the griots: the source of knowledge and wisdom and cultural and historical experience.  These people could lead Mali towards a new and stronger future.

That is the route we should follow.

The South of Mali also has great diplomatic and economic negotiating strengths: for a start, Azawad could survive as an independent state only through total economic dependence on Algeria or Mauritania, and on cocaine. It has no fuel and no food, no good roads to the outside world except those that lead from Gao to Niamey and Bamako. It is a land-locked narco-state unable even to feed itself.

ECOWAS does have real economic clout to exercise in favor of negotiation, although it has very little political influence. and its military ambitions are ridiculous. ECOWAS does not have the capacity (men, equipment, military leadership, field experience) to take on the armies of Al Qaeda and its Islamic allies in desert and mountain terrain. NATO might provide airpower, but NATO success has been mixed:  in Libya, NATO wiped out Gadafy’s army, but in Pakistan the USA has failed (spending ten years being unable to curb the Taliban and Haqqani terror organisations).

Once North Mali has sorted itself out (probably through inter-factional war), there will be negotiations... inevitably - not least because the Sonrai, Peul, Bella, Bozo, Bambara, Dogon populations who dominate the north will refuse to be ruled by Wahabbist fanatics, or by Algerian terrorists.

4. CONCLUSION – medium optimism

No one really knows what is happening in North Mali right now (July 2012). The MNLA seems to have lost a major battle on July 1^st in Gao : its leader was wounded and is having treatment in Burkina Faso, which is the Official Mediator for the ECOWAS. The MNLA may be falling to pieces. Members of the ‘Libyan Tuareg Army’ have been hired away with Wahabbist money by the extremist Islamist group Ansar Dine, which seems to have taken control of the main towns. MUJAO may have siphoned others away with money from kidnapping and cocaine. AQMI may have recruited some, using its own drug and ransom monies.

We have seen that Azawad is not sustainable as an independent nation, but the problems posed by this new ‘Sahelistan’ to the security and stablility of Africa and of Europe are immense. ‘Sahelistan’ or ‘Africanistan’ is what can arise, when political leaders do not listen to their expert advisors (I and my colleagues have been warning about the extreme dangers of the West African cocaine route for several years).

I wish I could be more optimistic in the short term: predicting war is not a happy place to be!  But in the longer term, I know that Mali's social capital will prevail and Malians will emerge with a new and positive chapter to add to their glorious history.

5- WHO ARE THE NORTHERN REBELS?

Al-Qaïda in Maghreb Islamic (AQMI)AQMI (or AQIM) is a group of extremists defeated in the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, who found refuge in the mountains of northern Mali – just across the frontier. Created in 2006 out of the Salafist Group for preaching and Combat (GSPC) – and originally from the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA) - they aligned with Al Qaeda in order to become more notorious and more powerful. Living from cocaine smuggling and from kidnapping (see the 2012 book by AFP journalist Serge Daniel : AQMI, l’industrie de l’enlèvement) they are very well armed since they were able to purchase heavy weapons in Libya after Gadafy was destroyed by NARO.
They have more than doubled their numbers from maybe only 200 ten years ago, through recruitment of unemployed Africans – some of whom they saved from dying in the Libyan desert, trying to walk from Ghana or Mali to a new life in Europe. Others were recruited from Mauritanian, Malian and Nigerien madrasas. More recently, Nigerians from Boko Haram are believed to have joined in the April attacks on Gao, and there are wild rumours of Philippinos, Somalis and Afghans being among the AQMI fighters.
Leadership : The overall boss is said to be Abdelmalik Droukel, who is based in Algeria. It is he who wrote to Ousama ben Laden in 2005 pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda. Organized in semi-autonomous katiba, AQMI in Mali has a number of leaders. The best-known is Mokhtar Belmokhtar, long-time cigarette and drug smuggler known as Marlboro, who lost an eye fighting in Afghanistan. He is an Algerian from the region of m’Zab. Other katiba leaders include Nabil Sahraoui (from the Polisario), Abou Zeid, an Algerian born in Touggourt, Yahya Abou Hammam, an Algerian in charge of military operations. 

Movement for united Jihad in West Africa (Mujao)A mysterious group, they appear to be mainly Mauritanians  involved in the cocaine route, who have separated from AQMI. Some were promised they would be sent to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, who left AQMI in disappointment. In addition to drug money, they are rumoured to have gathered 45m euros from kidnap ransoms.Leadership: Their leader is said to be Sultan Ould Baldi, an Hamrare Arab from Gao; and his second-in-command is the Mauritanian Abou Qoumqoum from Nouakchott. According to MNLA, Colonel Ould Meydou is their military chief. 

MNLA (Mouvement national de Libération de L’Azawad)The MNLA was created in October 2011 through the fusion of MNA (Mouvement national d’Azawad) and MTNM (Mouvement touareg du Nord-Mali) following the arrival of ex-soldiers from Libya after the fall of Gaddafi.  The MNLA claims that it wants a separate state from Mali for the Tuareg (although this is unrealistic since Azawad is cut off from fuel and food supplies).Leadership :  Bilal Ag Chérif, is General Secretary of the MNLA and President of the Transitional Council announced on 7th June 2012.  He studied in Libya. On 1^st July 2012, Bilal was wounded during fighting in Gao with Ansaar Dine, and two days later he was evaluated to Ouagadougou for treatment as MNLA abandoned the city.
Moussa Ag Assarid, Member of the Conseil Transitoire de l'État de l'Azawad (CTEA), is in charge of information and communication, and his name dominates the MNLA website. Colonel Mohamed Ag Najim (defence) and Colonel Hassan ag Fagaga (Security) seem to be the strong men. Najim served in the Libyan army, crossing from Libya in 2011 with a large amount of weaponry. Fagaga was integrated into the Malian army in the 1990s, deserted several times and seems to have been involved with the late Kidal politician-cum-rebel-cum-terrorist Ibrahim ag Bahanga in smuggling activities.
Nina Wallet Intalou described as the ‘passionaria’ of Malian Tuaregs attracts Western attention because she is the only woman in the direction of MNLA (No 23 on the list: in charge of women’s affairs).  She was elected mayor of Kidal in 1997, but was blocked when the Islamists refused to recognise a woman as Mayor.  According to the Joliba Trust, Nina is close to Mohamed Ag Najim and is tenaciously opposed to Ansar Dine and Iyad Ag Ghali because of their links to Al Qaeda (AQIM).  She feels Ag Ghali can never be pardoned because of the harm he has done to their cause. 

Mouvement Touareg Nord du MaliThis was the group led by Ibrahim Ag Bahanga based in Tinzaouaten, NE of Kidal. This elected municipal official in Kidal caused an immense amount of trouble  for Mali in the early years of ATT’s rule, kidnapping Malian soldiers and trying to negotiate Kidal as a Police-Free zone so that his smuggling activities could continue without hindrance. A partner of Col ag Fagaga, he provoked the 2006 Accords d’Alger – one of the ‘deals’ that weakened the Malian State when it should have been implementing the legally-binding National Pact of 1992. In February 2011, Bahanga issued the following threat: “Some of the Tuareg fighters laid down their arms in March 2007 and agan in February 2009, in the spirit of the July 2006 Accord which has never been implemented. We are still waiting. The Malian government is taking advantage of this Tuareg disarmament, to allow its partner AQMI to occupy the Tuareg space and to set down roots.” Leadership: Ag Bahanga was killed in a car smash near Kidal on 26 August 2011. Iyad ag Ghali reputedly tried to take over leadership of his fighters, but they were not interested in his Wahabbist ideas. Instead they seem to have integrated the MNLA (Note: allegiances are fluid: there are no membership cards in these groups, and people easily move between them. Clan allegiance and personal loyalties are often more important than ideology). 

Ansar Dine - ‘Defenders of Islam’In the rebel-held areas, this group is  doing all the beatings and terrorising of Malian people. They seem to be a mixture of Tuaregs and foreigners (hiring any extremist who needs money: Chadians, Burkinabés, even Liberians and Muslim Philippinos are rumoured to have been recruited). Ansar Dine is destroying holy Islamic saints’ sites in Timbuktu in order to emphasise their extremist salafist ideology and to reinforce their political authority, introducing Sharia punishments (beatings, executions) ; and they are said have killed Christians.
Leadership: Iyad Ag Ghali is the leader of this Islamist group. A charismatic and emblematic figure of Mali’s Tuareg resistance, Iyad led the initial attack in June 1990 that brought the beginning of the end of the 23-year-old military dictatorship of Moussa Traore. A Malian from Kidal whose family was forced to emigrate to Algeria during the 1974 drought, Iyad went to Libya at the age of 20 and spent many years in Gadafi’s army. A signatory of the 1992 National Pact and a participant at the 1996 Peace of Timbuktu, in 1998 Iyad was sent to Saudi Arabia as Mali Consul. He came back with a big beard, Wahhabist ideas and plenty of Gulf money to pursue his dreams. Iyad seeks the leadership of the Tuaregs; he wants to become President of an Malian Islamic Republic. 

FNLA  (National Front for the liberation of Azawad)A new organisation created on 8 April 2012 during the crisis in the north, these Tuaregs and other Northerners (Moors and Arabs, reputedly also with Sonrai, Fulani, Bambara, Bozo, Bella supporters) are neither sessessionists nor Islamists.  They are for peace and do not want a separate state, but to continue to be part of Mali.  They entered Timbuktu in triumph on 24 April to confront Ansar Dine and MNLA, but they have been very quiet since then. Do they still exist? Since the MNLA was defeated on July 1st, Ansar Dine seems to be the only game in town.Leadership: Mohamed Lamine Ould Sidatt, an elected leader from the region of Timbuktu is their General Secretary. Aly Ould Hamaha is political leader-spokesman in France, and the military leader is supposed to be Colonel Housseyn El Moctar, formerly head of the garde nationale garrison in Timbuktu (according to Essor on 02 May 2012). Housseine Khoulam, lieutenant-colonel  of the Malian army who defected is also a military chief. 

MRRA (Mouvement Républicain pour la Restauration de l'Azawad)This may be a serious group, or it may simply be the creation on the internet of an idea. Toumast Press has concluded that it is the invention of Ishaq Ag Alhousseyni, whom they characterize as ‘unstable’. 

MNRA (Mouvement national de restauration de l'Azawad)
This appears to be a new creation by Tuareg members of the Malian army who escaped from Kidal under the leadership of the controversial Colonel-Major Ehhaj Gamou, the former commander of the army garrison in Kidal. Surrounded by MNLA forces arrived from Libya, Gamou surrendered and declared allegiance to the MNLA… before escaping into Niger with 500 troops (204 southerners then returned to Bamako). He claims he will take back northern Mali, that he can mobilize 2000 fighters. He and his 300 men are still being paid by the Malian ministry of defence in their camp at Saguia (near Niamey) where Col Gamou says he is waiting for orders to attack as part of an overall plan to reunite Mali by force of arms. 

From All Africa 
April 5, 2012: http://allafrica.com/stories/201204050885.html

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31 Mar 2012: Whither after the Mali Coup?

Exclusive to Al Jazeera 31 March 2012

Whether or not it was a mutiny that went too far, or a coup d’état organized by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, he appears to be in charge but Mali is now under mob rule. Meanwhile the Tuareg rebellion in the North appears to be gaining ground after the capture of the regional capital of Kidal March 30^th and rumors of attacks on the river city of Gao March 31^st. The people who benefit from the coup d’état are the Northern rebels, where the complexity becomes greater by the day.

The heavily armed Southern Brigade of the former Libyan army, composed mainly of Tuaregs recruited by ATT for Khadafy, is sitting in the important northern city of Kidal. If I were their commander, I would now march on Gao while the national army and the State are leaderless and in chaos. But maybe they are too late: rumors are flying that a new group from Mauritania called Mujao attacked Gao on March 31^st. The Tuareg MNLA wants independence[1] or at least some autonomy, and Iyad ag Ghali, the former Libyan soldier who led the June 1990 armed revolt, now has a heavy beard, leads a group called Ansar Dine, and  wants to create an Independent Salafist Republic of the Azawad under sharia law.

Who benefits from the coup? Only the armed political movements can gain, while the populations of all colors and all nationalities will become corpses or refugees. Maybe the biggest winner will be Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) which wants freedom to kidnap tourists and transport cocaine to Europe. The cocaine route opened one decade ago, and Colombians have too much money ad firepower for the Malian army to control alone. European leaders have allowed the trade in cocaine to corrupt not only their cities, but also the Malian state which is crumbling under the strain.

What would the Independent Republic of Azawad look like, if it came about?  It would be a lawless narco-state in the middle of he Sahara desert, sitting on top of a lot of oil. So the question lurking behind the action is this: Who is pulling the strings? Regional war threatens, and we must wonder whether it is being encouraged by Sunni Islamic extremists, by European arms salesmen, by Columbian and Lebanese cocaine smugglers linked to Hezbollah, or by American oil companies keen to destabilize the frontiers left by the French Empire and to redraw the map of Africa?

How can Mali extricate itself (and Captain Sanogo, and the rest of West and North Africa) from this colossal mess, which threatens the stability of all Mali’s neighboring countries? On March 31, Sanogo is rumored to be in Ouagadougou, visiting the official ECOWAS[2] Mediator, President Blaise Campaoré of Burkina Faso. Blaise has been in the thick of West African intrigue for decades, ever since he was trained in Gadafy’s Libya: now that his own country is threatened by the possible destruction of Mali next door, President Blaise seems like the only person who might pull the pieces together and stop the impending massacres.

The National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State (CNRDR) in Mali, led by Captain Sanogo, appears to be a group corporals and sergeants, with a Lieutenant as their television spokesman who has a tenuous command of French, the official language of Mali. Undisciplined soldiers have been looting government offices and racketeering in the streets, while unemployed youths are paid $1 per day to riot in support of the junta throwing stones at the democratic opposition and imposing a reign of terror.

Opportunists have quickly filled the political void : notably a former student leader Dr Oumar Mariko has moved center-stage, and there are suggestions that he may have encouraged the coup d’état. There are certainly indications that Mariko was funding youth movements calling for the early departure of President Amadou Toumani Touré (known as ATT), even if they never openly called for military intervention. But if Mariko is the rent-a-mob’s puppet paymaster, who is pulling the strings that make Mariko function? Who is paying Oumar Mariko?

Under Mariko’s influence, the CNRDR has suspended the 1992 Constitution and all state institutions (soldiers actually chased elected representatives out of the national Assembly building to stop them deliberating), and presented a its own Constitution. A complete change of military leadership has been announced, with new colonels in every position. While no senior officer had made a statement of support for the CNRDR, there appears to be de facto acceptance of its authority.

So Captain Sanogo is in charge – yet he seems to recognize that he is out of his depth, that his position is untenable. After this week’s ECOWAS meeting in Abidjan, rent-a-mob occupied the airport runways and blocked the visit of a delegation of six West African Heads of State. Their airplane was unable to land. The ECOWAS strategy has been anything but subtle, but these presidents will not forgive their humiliation.

ECOWAS issued an ultimatum: economic sanctions will be imposed in 72 hours, unless a return to democracy is arranged.  Mali is a land-locked country: even basic necessities like salt and sugar come in by train from Senegal or by road from Ivory Coast, Togo or Guinea. Gasoline is already in short supply; if rice and millet and wheat flour cannot be trucked into the capital city of Bamako, there will be food riots. And where is Captain Sanogo going to find the wages for his soldiers, teachers and civil servants, if the banks are shut? Adding sanctions to its present state of confusion and lawlessness, I doubt whether Mali could hold out for more than one month.

There is no doubt that ousted President ATT bears responsibility for the fiasco. A former general, his instincts have always been military rather than political. His one-man rule has undermined the institutions of state and concentrated power in the hands of a coterie of favorites, most of whom were weak… while some have been fingered publicly as corrupt and getting rich from theft or from the Colombian cocaine flowing through northern Mali to Europe. ATT appointed dozens of generals – his friends and supporters – all of whom are superfluous for an army of 7000 men. Maybe Mali needs six generals, even ten, but ATT has promoted flagrant cronyism. The "Malibya regime" is the term critics use to describe the Mali president’s cronyism with the late Muammar Khadafy, and that relationship has come unstuck.

The final straw for the underpaid and abused Malian soldiers, came with the massacre of Aguel Hoc, a garrison in the desert near the frontier with Niger. When they ran out of ammunition, the Malian garrison was overrun by the MNLA. Algerian Arab fanatics from AQIM then arrived, tied up the defenseless soldiers, and executed them in cold blood. Pictures of the massacre caused the wives and daughters and mothers in the Kati barracks to riot on February 2^nd and they marched on the palace in anger and distress. When the Ministry of Defense told soldiers in the Kati barracks on March 21st that they would be going north to fight the MNLA, he was greeted by angry cries of ‘we need weapons and ammunition’ and a hail of stones…. Mutiny had begun, and the coup followed.

Meanwhile West African Civil Society is organizing in favor of peace. How many battalions do they have? None. But civil society leaders are non-politicians with good ideas, high motivations, and a petition called the Initiative for Peace in the Sahel! Malian society is built on principles of djatikiya = hospitality and sanankuya = neighborly interdependence, fundamental cultural beliefs that have created strong social capital throughout the region. In the 1990s, when Mali came close to civil war, the Peace of Timbuktu was negotiated by civil society leaders (wise women and men, without any soldiers or politicians) seeking ways to cooperate the get the economy moving again for the benefit of everybody. The same can happen again, even though today’s situation is complicated by cocaine money and AQIM, by large quantities of Libyan weapons, and by numerous armed splinter groups like Ansar Dine and Mujao. A civil society conference to seek peace and to transform the conflicts will be held April 5-6 in Ouagadougou, and we must pray that this will set in motion a stream of actions that promote peace and conflict transformation. The alternative is a new Congo in the Sahara, which God forbid!

 Robin Edward Poulton is Affiliate Professor of World Studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University USA) and a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva.  is a human-environment and development geographer. He first worked in Northern Mali  rebuilding socio-economic activities following the extreme droughts of the 1970s, and spent a month in Mali in February 2012 as part of a United Nations exploratory peace delegation.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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[1] Mouvement National pour la Libération de l’Azawad; Azawad is the Tamashek name for a desert region north of Timbuktu which could become the name of a new country.

[2] Economic Commission of West African States, a regional grouping of 15 States including Mali.

26 March 2012: The Truth about Mali

The Mali coup was not really a coup: it was a mutiny that sanctions a series of terrible and crass political errors by Mali’s leaders.  On Jan 24th massacre took place at Aguel Hoc in north Mali. The Tuareg independence Mouvement National pour la Libération de l’Azawad [MNLA] won a battle over government soldiers; later the same day, Al Qaeda extremists attacked the remains of the garrison which had run out of ammunition. Al Qaeda in the Maghreb [AQIM] is an extremist Algerian group living in the desert outside Algeria. The Algerians tied the hands of Malian soldiers behind their backs, and killed them. Black soldiers were shot in the head. The ‘white’ Tuareg and Arab soldiers were eviscerated. The Malian government said NOTHING. As I later  told President Amadou Toumani Touré [ATT] when I visited him four weeks ago, silence allows the agenda to be taken over by rumor and manipulation.

Manipulation duly occurred: within a week, photos of the massacre were posted on the internet, yet the government maintained its stony silence.  Someone printed them and circulated the pictures among the women in the Kati garrison, a group that includes the mothers and wives of the murdered soldiers.  The women marched on the Palace of Koulouba, and the security forces allowed them to reach the gates of the palace.

I was in Bamako on a UN peace delegation, trying to put in place a strategy for employment creation and economic re-generation in the North. The President was obliged to receive the women, and his two-hour session with them was televised. It was a very emotional session.....  ATT did a good job, but the President should not be the principal spokesman for the Minister of Defense.  As I asked his Diplomatic Counsellor, "Where are the griots?" In a land where traditionally communication is a strength, the military regime (for ATT was a general before he was a president) has smothered communication ; indeed the ten years of ATT rule has led to a weakening of all State institutions as power became increasingly concentrated in the palace run by ATT's military cronies.

ATT has appointed 60 generals – his friends and supporters.  Nothing illustrates better the failure of the regime than to have 60 generals for an army of 7000 men! Maybe you need 6, even 10..... but this is cronyism at its most flagrant. Some cronies are corrupt, and some even have a share in the cocaine profits. The "Malibya regime" is the term critics use to refer to the Mali president’s cronyism with the late Muammar Khadafy, and the relationship has come unstuck.

I confess that my meetings in February with relevant security ministers (all soldiers) and presidential advisors (very weak) and with the President himself left me with the feeling that the State has no direction at all. The Minister of Defense is General Sadio Gassama. A finer military officer would be difficult to describe, but a less gifted politician would be difficult to discover.   For what should be a political post, ATT appointed a totally unpolitical, loyalist soldier.

On the morning of  March 21^st, Gassama went to Kati to make a speech to the troops, accompanied by Colonel Ould Meidou, a former Libyan officer who is now a Malian officer. The outcome was a disaster. When Gassama reached the moment in his speech where he announced that the assembled soldiers in Kati would be sent to the north to fight the Libyan Tuareg rebels, he was booed, and stones were thrown by soldiers shouting that they needed more weapons and ammunition. Gassama and his party fled in their cars under a hail of stones. The soldiers then broke open the armoury, took weapons, and marched on Koulouba. If the army was weak in the past, now it has become an undisciplined mob. Malians are trying to pick up the pieces.

Meanwhile the heavily armed Southern Brigade of the former Libyan army, composed mainly of Tuaregs recruited by ATT for Khadafy, is sitting in the important northern city of Kidal. If I were their commander, I would now march on Gao and declare the North autonomous while the national army and the State are leaderless and in chaos. The Tuareg MNLA wants independence[1], and Iyad ag Ghali, the former Libyan soldier who led the June 1990 armed revolt, now has a heavy beard and  wants to create an Independent Salafist Republic of the Azawad under sharia law.

Mali is a mess. Poor Mali !  Its promising democracy deserved better that more military incompetence and corruption. No serious politician and no senior officer have joined the rebels, who have been condemned by almost everyone. Some sort of political solution may emerge through a transitional government of national unity, and elections …. once the rabble of sergeant and colonels (and the one single Captain Sanogo) realise they have no money and no gasoline, the banks and petrol stations are still shut, and the bars have no more booze because they have already looted it (including from my bar in Faladié), they may finally realise they have not a clue how to run a country and seek a graceful way out! 

Captain Sanogo was trained by the CIA.  Make of that what you will, but the USA has a big military listening base in Tessalit on the Algerian frontier, with significant amounts of oil underneath. They have already engineered the creation of a new, oil-rich South Sudan.

Meanwhile Civil Society is organising in favour of peace. How many battalions do we have? None. But we have ..... good ideas, high motivation, and a petition !  And we are preparing a conference to seek peace and to transform the conflicts.

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[1] Mouvement National pour la Libération de l’Azawad; Azawad is the Tamashek name for a desert region north of Timbuktu which could become the name of a new country.