WHAT HAPPENED TO PEACE IN MALI? (Abstract) (2018)
Abstract dated 2018
The CENTRAL QUESTION of this paper is to enquire what is Mali’s underlying weakness?
The main ANSWER is that, despite the crisis in North Mali, the principal cause of Mali’s democratic implosion in 2012 was the weak post-colonial State. The peace process of the 1990s, which the authors described in detail in their book A Peace of Timbuktu (United Nations, 1998), could serve as a model for reconciliation and Nation-building today, if the Malian State had not failed to reduce poverty and exclusion in the North, and to help Mali’s refugees. Bamako’s internal failings have been exacerbated in recent years by the external manipulations of three types of transnational “Corporations” that Malians alone cannot easily control: extractive and military Corporations; criminal mafia Corporations; and international religious Corporations.
The article’s main argument is that Mali is a STATE WITHOUT A NATION. For a century, North Mali was under military rule (French, then Malian). After the 1992 democratic elections and signing the National Pact, and following the 1996 Flame of Peace in Timbuktu, northerners were prepared to “buy in” to president Konaré’s (AOK 1992-2002) new “democracy” and give it a go. The National Pact’s implementation was defective. After Konaré, the corrupt and centralizing regime of general-president Touré (ATT 2002-2012) undid the good will. Now the North is fed up: it no longer believes in Western Democracy à la malienne, which has proved (alongside globalization) to be a source of greater poverty and exclusion. Not only that: in 2012 North Mali suffered a foreign Arab invasion, and the Malian army failed to defend North Mali against a jihadist terror regime.
Our secondary (supportive) argument is that the failure of the Malian State is mainly, but not entirely, the fault of Malians. Western and Arab powers are more interested in money for their corporations, than in Mali’s peace or development. Europe allowed the cocaine trade to prosper, and the ATT regime shared the corruption. There is strong evidence that the smugglers of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have had Saudi and Qatari and other Gulf State funding, as well as Algerian and US-UK support, and that some AQIM leaders are agents of Algeria’s military security service. The creation of G5 Sahel in 2013 – 8 years after ATT tried to establish a similar grouping (which Algerian sabotaged and the EU and France ignored) - is “too little too late” unless, of course, maintaining a permanent War on Terror suits certain Americo-European political and security agencies? Mali was a State without a Nation. Thanks to European neglect and Colombian-Italian-Algerian mafia sabotage, Mali is no longer even a State. It is certainly not a Nation.
ARTICLE
WHAT HAPPENED TO PEACE IN MALI?
Summary of the Mali Story 2012-2017
On March 21st 2012, a mutiny allegedly against army incompetence and corruption, brought Captain Sanogo to power in the West African Republic of Mali. The next day, he was leading a junta called the “National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the State.” Many soldiers in North Mali immediately abandoned their posts, and drove down to Bamako, Mali’s capital city, to celebrate their new power by looting shops and bars. Tuareg soldiers from Libya’s army, who had returned to Mali after the assassination of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafy, were waiting for the April 2012 presidential election to negotiate their re-integration into Malian society. The elections were now cancelled, so the Tuareg soldiers seized the northern regions and declared an independent state named “Azawad” corresponding to the French colonial area ruled from Gao, that stretched across a vast area containing many different culture and language groups living between the Malian frontiers of Mauritania, Algeria and Niger. By July, foreign jihadists had chased the Tuaregs out of Gao and Timbuktu, Al Qaida was in the ascendant, Mali army units were killing each other in Bamako, and Interim President Dioncounda Traoré was lying in a Paris hospital, having been beaten almost to death by a mob sponsored by the military junta: maybe a second coup attempt? (Poulton and Tonegutti, 2016: 106)
As jihadists massed to capture Mopti, Ségou, and Bamako, French President François Hollande launched air strikes on January 11, 2013, against the jihadists and sent in the French Foreign Legion to drive them out of Mali as Opération Serval. Two thousand Chadian troops swiftly joined the French, bringing their experience of desert fighting. In August 2014, France created an alliance of neighbours, the so-called G5 Sahel States (Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania,) and a French-led Opération Barkhane with 3,000 troops to foil future jihadist takeover of the Sahel countries. (French Ministry of Defense, 2016)
Elections led to Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK), a former prime minister, being sworn in as Malian Head of State on September 4, 2013. (Poulton and Tonegutti, 2016: Chapter 4) IBK was respected for his firm leadership as prime minister during the 1990s, and for his habit of frank speech. But IBK’s first prime minister resigned after 8 months of frustration. The new president was attacked for nepotism, wasting money on luxury planes and vehicles, and for dubious commercial contracting. Meanwhile, negotiations with the North Mali armed groups dragged on, terrorist attacks became more frequent and more deadly, an increasingly fragile peace depended on the heavy presence of French and UN troops. In April 2017, IBK appointed his fourth prime minister in 44 months; in December 2017, he appointed his fifth. Not only have the governments been unable to rule the North, but now the Centre of Mali is destabilized by jihadists. Mali in 2018 is an increasingly divided State seeking to reconcile the diverging parts of its divided Nation.
A peace agreement emerged from the drawn-out Algiers mediation process - signed on June 20th 2015 between the government and the non-terrorist armed groups, mainly the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) based in Kidal. But who do the MNLA elites represent? A Tuareg class-struggle complicates war between criminal corporations encouraged by foreigners. Mali’s jihadist threat feeds on the anger of impoverished young Africans, funded by subversive by Arab States, kidnapping and drug smuggling. Previous agreements in North Mali – like the Tamanrasset accords of 1991, the National Pact of 1992, and the Algiers agreement of 2006 – failed due to mistrust of Bamako, delayed investments and unfulfilled promises.
Mali is divided in many directions. The army is split, and civilians have no confidence in soldiers. Northerners reject an army that abandoned them to the jihadists. Jihadists are despised by most Malians for their behaviour and their ignorance of religion. Southerners blame North Mali for jihad and separatism, yet most Northerners reject both jihad and the independence ambitions of the MNLA. The civilian population has little respect for the administration, and none at all for the political classes; the Bamako elite is distrusted by Mali’s rural population, as the divisions between the urban rich and the rural and urban poor deepen each year.
From centralized negative peace to decentralized self-determination
Africa has known much unrest since Ghana became the first independent nation in 1957. Mali gained independence in 1960, together with most French African colonies. What people did not understand at that time was that the country existed in a state of “negative peace,” a term created by Johan Galtung (1996,) the Norwegian “Father of Peace Studies.” Malians were oppressed for 80 years under French occupation and then until democracy arrived in 1992. Little changed after independence: under Mali’s first president, Modibo Keita, the same soldiers in North Mali behaved in the same way, even though their officers were now black. Soldiers acted with impunity like an army of occupation: their job was to keep a colonized population quiescent. A peaceful economy thrives on “positive peace” that allows people to project themselves into the future.
Negative peace is a state of mere survival; there may be no shooting, but people live in perpetual anxiety or fear. In such an atmosphere, how could citizens of the new Malian State feel engagement or loyalty to their new ‘Nation’? No one asked them whether they wanted to become independent ‘Malians’ instead of living under French colonial rule; and when they found themselves still under military occupation, it is unsurprising that the citizens of North Mali felt very loyalty to Bamako. There was no paved road to the capital, no television and only rudimentary telephone connections. In fact North Mali was so remote from Bamako in every sense, that its citizens had more economic and social interaction with Niger, Algeria and even with Mauritania.
Traditional Malian governance was decentralized. From time immemorial the most important political leader was the selected village chief, advised by a democratic village council representing every family in the community. The Mali Empire, founded in the year 1235 by Sunjata Keita – the original Lion King -- expanded less by conquest than through a spreading system of alliances. Decentralized democratic governance was disturbed by the arrival during the late 1800s of the French. For 120 years since the French conquest, the Songoy, Fulani, Tuareg, and Arab populations of North Mali lived under a centralized military occupation they hated.
Many of the French troops came from Senegal or southern Mali and were “foreigners” to the people of the North. When the French left in 1960, very few Tuaregs or Arabs were recruited into the army. In Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, Malian soldiers - mostly from the South – were now in charge, perceived as (and behaving as) “foreigners” in North Mali. Bamako never tried to convince the northern populations that the Malian army was “their” army. When Tuaregs challenged his regime in 1963, Modibo Keita’s army and air force crushed the revolt with great brutality. “This revolt is locally known as Alfellaga and its narrative history is about the contested meanings of decolonisation, independence, and nationalism in the desert part of the Republic of Mali,” explains Baz Lecocq (2010: 1). In 2015, these “contested meanings” were still a part of the Algiers negotiations between Mali and the armed rebel movements: while Bamako speaks of the “indivisibility” of the Nation, many Africans (not just Tuaregs in Mali) question the legitimacy of the post-colonial Nation State. Captain Djiby Silas Diarra, Modibo Keita’s brutal commandant in Kidal during the 1960s, is remembered with horror throughout the region, and yet he is still sometimes cited with approval in Bamako. This shows how difficult reconciliation may be.
Mali has seen a lot of violence. Modibo Keita imposed his will on Mali’s people using brutal youth militias. Modibo was overthrown in 1968 by a group of army officers led by Lt. Moussa Traore. Moussa survived by being ruthless, sending his political enemies – including Modibo Keita - to die in prisons in the Sahara desert. Moussa’s 23 years of national stagnation and military corruption ended in March 1991 with a popular revolution in Bamako that began with an armed Tuareg attack against the gendarmerie base in Menaka in June 1990.
The insurrection was led by Iyad Ag Ghaly from Kidal, who had been trained in the Libyan army after his family was forced into exile during the drought crisis of the 1970s. He and his ijumar soldiers (from the French ‘chomeur’ meaning ‘unemployed’) may have been born in Mali, but Mali had done nothing for them. During the drought, Moussa Traore’s colonels had stolen the food aid meant for North Mali, and sold it to build private houses in Bamako. Tuareg women and children died of starvation, while colonels got rich in Bamako. The revolt begun by Iyad became a revolution in Bamako when students, workers, lawyers and grandmothers marched in the street. More than 300 were killed by the army. It was only when Moussa Traore ordered his planes to bomb the demonstrating crowds in Bamako, that the violence finally stopped: Moussa was arrested by his bodyguards, led by Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT). He would later be tried and condemned to death (quickly commuted to a prison term, and later to forgiveness).
A military-civilian transition of 14 months, led by ATT, produced a new Constitution, organized legislative and presidential elections, and signed a National Pact that was supposed to bring peace, development and decentralized democratic governance in North Mali. Mali’s first elected president, Dr. Alpha Oumar Konaré (AOK, historian and former leader of the teachers’ union) was sworn in on June 6, 1992. His first act was promoting ATT to the rank of general.
Konaré led a democratic government through two terms of five years, putting in place the institutions of a democratic State; and he succeeded in avoiding a new military takeover. Despite entrenched opposition from Bamako’s administration, he established decentralized governance with elected commune leaders and regional assemblies. For the first time, Malians felt they had some say in decisions that affected their daily lives, and began to see the fruits of “development.” The 1996 Flame of Peace in Timbuktu finally brought an end to conflict in North Mali: 3000 arms were burned and the armed movements were dissolved, providing a powerful symbol in the quest for peace. (Poulton and Ag Youssouf, 1998.) The road north to Gao was paved, and a bridge would soon be built across the Niger at Gao. Television reached Timbuktu: for the first time, citizens of Timbuktu were able to see pictures of Bamako, their capital city, and the national television station began to broadcast programs that were not just ministers talking at the screen. Kidal had a non-military governor for the first time, and he was Tuareg. It was still too soon for the citizens of North Mali to feel part of a Malian Nation, but at least they no longer felt as though they were living under foreign military occupation.
The decentralization program was slow to begin, the new democratic institutions were still fragile, there were very few financial resources in the countryside, but at least locally-elected officials were now making decisions about development processes affecting their own communities. Roads were newly paved, banking services were finally reaching Mali’s rural population, peace had come to North Mali and corruption seemed to be under control. A new Médiateur de la République was looking into complaints of theft and abuse, and justice began to become visible. The feeling that “positive peace” was arriving in Mali was difficult to avoid. When new elections took place in 2002 to replace President Konaré, Mali seemed to be moving forward toward democratic prosperity.
Failure of decentralization and of the 1992 National Pact
Konaré’s elected successor was retired general Amadou Toumani Touré, who campaigned as an independent. ATT was building a personal legend as a great Malian hero: ATT claimed he had overthrown a dictator and handed power to civilians. He had ushered in Mali’s democracy. He was a philanthropist with a Foundation for children. He was former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s friend and partner in the eradication of guinea worm. He had run a U.N. peace operation in Central Africa for Kofi Annan. The legend was so beguiling, that ATT had begun to believe in it. His big mistake was failing to understand that military skills are quite different from political skills. ATT gave orders; he would not debate ideas, and he avoided discussion with people more intelligent than he was. “He may have a karate black belt,” a military governor warned us before the election, “but ATT graduated near the bottom of his year at military college. He does not have the intellectual capacity to run a country.” (personal conversation.) Some Malians were convinced that no military man should become Head of State, but they were in no position to stop Amadou Toumani Touré from being elected president of Mali.
During ATT’s two disastrous five-year terms 2002-2012, the institutions of democratic governance were undermined. ATT and a clique of cronies ran the country as a personal fiefdom. Communes were deprived of financial resources, frustrating decentralized decision-making. Ministers became increasingly powerless, their decisions reversed by the palace. Unable to stem the flow of Colombian cocaine across the Sahara desert to Europe (mainly to London via Algeria), ATT watched Mali become a narco-State as the trans-Saharan trade from Guinea Bissau made his colonels and generals and children millionaires. (Winter 2007.) Criminals under the banner of AQIM made money from kidnapping Europeans for ransom. Involved as a mediator in the liberation of hostages, the government ran a high risk of exposure to corruption. Iyad Ag Ghaly, one of President ATT’s personal envoys for negotiating with the kidnappers, extended his contacts among the soon-to-be terrorists of the Sahara and took a percentage of all the ransoms he negotiated. (Daniel 2012, Associated Press July 2012, Associated Press Dec 2012.)
Unable to control smugglers and kidnappers who were demanding the withdrawal of the Malian army from the North, and well aware that his army was incapable of imposing order, ATT resorted to the creation of semi-private militias, run by army officers and Arab drug runners. The president was accused of protecting (and even arming) drug militias connected to his wife who had kinship ties among those Arabs. (Daniel 2014.)
One political mistake in Bamako was perhaps the dissolution of the Commissariat au Nord, specifically created in 1992 to oversee the implementation of the National Pact. For several years, this was a building buzzing with activity. Tuaregs and Arabs, Songoy, Bella, Bambara and Fulani businessmen and politicians passed through the Commissariat au Nord to talk politics and lobby for ideas, complain about land rights, discuss investment opportunities, and drink tea. Northern politicians had short line to the palace through this Commissariat. Many complaints were settled before they turned into grudges. ATT, the soldier, grew tired of the political bickering between the cliques of Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal. After the Commissariat was closed, northern disputes degenerated into violence. Regional Governors were disempowered. No mechanism remained for government officials or political rivals to appeal or complain. (Private communication with a former senior administrator in Kidal.)
Peace had come to Mali after the revolution of 1991, partly thanks to the National Pact signed in 1992 between the rebels and the State. Following a long period of civil society negotiation across the North, disarmament took place, and some 11,000 rebels benefitted from “re-integration” into the national uniformed forces or else, with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) assistance, into civilian life. The National Pact introduced decentralization and allowed Tuaregs and Arabs for the first time to occupy high positions in the army and the administration: under under the two preceding regimes, there were no more than a handful of Tuareg and Arab low level officers, who were not allowed to rise above the rank of captain. Now Mali had Tuareg governors and colonels.
Under ATT, apart from his Arab relatives and drug smugglers, Northerners felt neglected once more. Promised investments were not made, and the new Kidal Region was especially annoyed. Vast sums of money flowing from corruption and the drug trade disrupted the economy of North Mali, having a negative impact on governance and prices, as well as social capital. Livestock prices rose as the newly-rich colonels and cocaine kings bought herds of sheep, camels, and cattle beyond the grazing capacity of the arid ranges and at the expense of traditional mechanisms of access to the resources. Palaces were built in Gao (of which one district was soon named “Cocaine City”). In Kidal, cocaine kings inside their new palaces were suspected of concealing stocks of illegal weapons bought in Libya. The ten years of democratic government under president Konaré had opened a brief window on positive peace. Under president Touré, a new era of insecurity had begun in North Mali, ushering back into people’s lives the insecurities of negative peace: there was not much shooting, but no one from North Mali felt safe in a land dominated by militias, kidnappings and cocaine convoys. (Private conversations with citizens of Gao and Timbuktu.)
When NATO destroyed Colonel Muammar Gaddafy’s Libya in 2011, the Malian Tuaregs serving in the Southern Brigade of the Libyan army decided to return home. Soldiers who returned to Niger or Chad were disarmed, because the French were protective of their oil wells and uranium mines. Many more Malian Tuaregs kept their arms: ATT’s army had no means of disarming them, and the French offered no support. ATT had refused to approve President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan for forcible repatriation of Malians living in France, and the French government abandoned him to his fate. Camped north of Kidal, Mali now had an army hundreds strong and well equipped, led by Tuareg officers but comprising Arab and Songoy soldiers as well. ATT did his best to divide them or pay them off, keeping them quiet until he could implement the EU-funded investment program known as PSPSDN, at least until the elections of April 2012 when he could hand over the government to a successor. As it turned out, he kept them quiet only until January 2012, when the rebels, weary of Malian army troops traveling northwards into the Adagh and making threats, started to attack military garrisons in North Mali. On January 24th the garrison at Aguelhok ran out of ammunition after three days of fighting, and Malian soldiers were slaughtered (78 is a commonly-cited number). Two months later the army mutinied, and ATT fled, replaced by a junta led by a certain Captain Haya Sanogo. (Poulton & Tonegutti p 74).
The Aguelhok massacre set the scene for the mutiny of March 21st 2012. Pictures of dead soldiers were apparently sent to to cell phones of military families in Kati barracks near Bamako, while the government maintained an inexplicable silence. Some pictures of dead soldiers posted on the internet had been copied from a previous Boko Haram atrocity in Nigeria, so their value as evidence is doubtful. But there was a massacre. Conspiracy theories abound. Despite denials, the most likely killers remain those who were involved in the battle: fighters allied with MNLA, Ansar Dine and Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.) MUJAO fighters (Mouvement pour l’unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest – which translates as Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) were probably not there. MUJAO was founded in November 2011 by Malian Arabs mainly from west of Timbuktu, who were running the cocaine route in partnership with AQIM and Algerian military intelligence.
The coup of March 2012 and the division(s) of a Nation
President Touré wanted to hand power to an elected (or selected) successor, and perpetuate the legend of ATT the great democrat. His image was destroyed by the coup d’état. Four elements brought it about: bad governance by the ATT regime and his corrupt generals all in Bamako; the breakdown of law and order in ATT’s northern narco-State; armed attacks by the rebels leading to the January 24 massacre at Aguelhok and defeat for the Malian army; and a very obvious political plot to overthrow ATT and block the April 2012 elections. This plot involved the creation of semi-fictitious youth groups calling for ATT to resign, mainly in news sheets and private radio stations associated with Dr. Oumar Mariko, a politician who had risen to prominence during the 1991 revolution as a student leader. As soon as the military coup took place, Mariko created a series of political alliances supporting Captain Sanogo and (as Mariko admitted in an interview with Radio France Internationale) seeking to create a military-based government with Mariko as prime minister. (Barra 2013.) This Bamako politicking further alienated northerners, who felt uninvolved.
The bad governance was ATT’s fault. Having inherited an army with six generals, he promoted 55 of his cronies to the rank of general: they disempowered the ministries, ran the cocaine regime, and many became wealthy. The rest of the army was run down, poorly equipped and poorly led. ATT and his wife sent their relatives to the recruiting office: Madame Touré’s list included one man who was lame, and who could not even march! Many young officers and NCOs supported the coup d’état from frustration at the poor quality of ATT’s decrepit army and its corrupt recruitment process. (Poulton and Tonegutti p 53.)
Colonel Mohamed Ag Najim from Libya agreed with the family of Amenokal Intalla, leader of the Iforas Tuaregs in Kidal, to integrate his soldiers into a new political movement known in French as Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad. (MNLA). Iyad Ag Ghaly demanded and was denied the leadership of the new political movement, and he therefore created his own: Ansar Dine (“supporters of religion”), which is unconnected to the charismatic Ançar Deen religious movement founded in 1991 by Cherif Ousmane Madani Haidara. (Holder 2012.) Iyad had ambitions to lead a Malian Islamic Republic, and sought the collaboration of AQIM. He was well-funded and able to offer high wages; soon Iyad had more fighters than the MNLA. Iyad had been one of ATT’s advisors, and Bamako officials seemed more at ease with his wealthy Salafist jihadist group, than discussing with MNLA and its limited ambitions of autonomy for North Mali. Rumours of collusion abounded.
Meanwhile in Bamako, army elements began to whip up anti-northern racism. On February 1st 2012 a mob of Kati military cadets and wives marched on the palace, taking care along the way to destroy the houses and business premises of a dozen innocent Tuareg citizens. (Personal discussions with numerous witnesses in Kati.) There was spontaneous anger, certainly, but it is clear with hindsight that someone was also encouraging racism and fanning the flames of a coup d’état against President Touré. Witnesses in the Kalaban district of Bamako watched the pillaging of three corner-shops owned by Moors, while the fourth – belonging to a black Soninké trader – remained intact. Policemen stood by and did nothing. (Private communication from a Malian journalist.)
There were police road-blocks on the hill leading to Koulouba, and the National Guard should have closed the road to the palace. Yet no one impeded the women of Kati, who raced up the hill to rattle the gates and humiliate the President. With no one between him and the grieving widows, ATT was forced to defend himself for two hours on national television. A President defending himself on national TV is a fatally wounded beast. The widows’ tears left eloquent images on the national conscience.
On March 21st 2012, at the end of a speech to troops in the Kati barracks near Bamako by General Sadio Gassama, the soldierly and very un-political Minister of Defense, stones were thrown .… launching a mutiny against army incompetence and the corruption of generals. A Junta emerged on television that evening, and its leader Captain Sanogo announced the suspension of elections and the Malian Constitution. Members of the Malian Armed Forces stationed in Gao and Timbuktu and Mopti, immediately commandeered vehicles and drove to Bamako to celebrate their new power. In effect, the army withdrew from North Mali. Armed Tuaregs immediately moved to occupy Gao and Timbuktu, seized the northern regions, and on April 6th the MNLA declared an independent Azawad. Mali was now divided North and South.
By July 2012, jihadists led by foreigners (Algerians, Mauritanians, Tunisians, Pakistanis, fighters from the Polisario in Western Sahara) had chased the MNLA out of Gao and Timbuktu, Al Qaida was in the ascendant, and young Malian men with no incomes were joining the jihadists, who established sharia rule and destroyed historic relics in Timbuktu. Meanwhile in May 2013, army units (red berets and green berets) were killing each other in Bamako. (Poulton & Tonegutti, p135)
The “international community” expressed dismay, and imposed financial sanctions that soon forced Sanogo and his junta to compromise - when the army could no longer pay its soldiers. With ECOWAS mediation, the Speaker of Parliament became interim president, more-or-less in accordance with the 1992 Constitution, and a new civilian government was formed. But Sanogo and his political allies wanted more. In what must be counted as an attempted new coup d’état, an army-sponsored mob broke into the palace offices and beat up Interim President Dioncounda Traoré in his office. A YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oaW3BVGNqM shows how they left the unarmed 72-year-old former teacher for dead. He was flown out to a Parisian hospital, where he was treated for two months and survived. Mali was now a divided State with several warring armed entities, of which the weakest were those in Malian army uniforms who were shooting each other. The extrajudicial massacre of “red beret” paratroops, and the murder of other soldiers suspected of disloyalty, are among the crimes for which Sanogo is expected to stand trial. Even if Mali still meets certain definitions of a functioning State, it cannot – on the evidence of 2012 - be said to have a functional army.
People in North Mali now felt totally abandoned by Bamako, less and less involved in the Malian nation-State. The Malian army had abandoned them to a Tuareg (essentially a Kidal) takeover, and this had been replaced by jihadi rule under Pakistani commanders. The peaceful Sufi traditions of Timbuktu, one of Islam’s most famous centres of Islamic humanist scholarship, were brushed aside by illiterate street fighters who defined Islam by the length of your trousers and the length of your beard. Many women were raped; public beatings were frequent; amputations were practised in public. North Mali was suffering, while politicians and soldiers in Bamako were bickering. The end of jihadi rule in North Mali came only when president François Hollande sent French soldiers and airmen on January 11th 2013, to disperse the jihadi hordes preparing to capture Mopti, Ségou and Bamako.
Can reconciliation move Mali from violence to a democratic future?
An honest look at Mali’s history reveals that almost a century of “negative peace” under French colonial and military rule, continued after Independence in 1960 with a population living under the stress of political repression. In February 2014, Mali’s National Assembly held a debate in Bamako on the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The Malian government proposed that the TRC should consider the history of Mali since 1960. Members of Modibo Keita’s political party US-RDA objected, perhaps remembering how Modibo Keita’s political opponents were sent to die in Kidal, how he had razed to the ground the village of Sakoiba near Ségou that opposed his will. Modibo himself died as a prisoner in 1976, probably poisoned. In his book Ma Vie de Soldat, Soungalo Samaké who claims he physically arrested the president Modibo Keita, describes his participation in the collective rape of women in Djikoroni village near Bamako, by soldiers taking revenge for the humiliation of one of their number. Samaké’s book was published by Amadou Traoré, whom Samaké had personally tortured in prison. Samaké himself was later imprisoned in Taoudeni for plotting a coup d’état. (Samaké 2008.)
Moussa Traoré’s political opponents were tortured and often starved to death in the salt mines of Taoudeni, north of Timbuktu. Some 349 “martyrs” died in Bamako during the revolution of 1991 that overthrew the Moussa Traoré dictatorship. Under all four Malian successive regimes (including the 1991-92 Transition), innocent Tuareg and Arab civilians died from Malian army bullets, in so-called reprisals against the rebels. Mali has many political deaths to explain during the 60 violent years of existence to 2020. To establish new and stronger foundations – indeed to create the ‘Nation’ that has never been nurtured and matured - Malians must stop ignoring or denying the violence that permeates the history of their young State.
Exclusion and isolation from the Malian State have exacerbated the violence in North Mali. Gao had no bridge across the Niger River until the new century. In 2016 there was still no paved road to Kidal or Timbuktu. For the first quarter-century after Independence, Gao felt closer to Niamey, in Niger than to Bamako. For more than a quarter century, the fuel and sugar sold in Kidal and throughout in all Northern Mali came from Algeria (often in the same truck, which is why the sugar sometimes tasted of diesel). Mali as a State ignored its northern zones, except for the army garrisons. Infrastructure and employment need to become priorities for integrating the North into the Malian State. Until the arrival of cell phones, a posting for administrators and technicians to Gao or Timbuktu felt like exile. A posting to Kidal was synonymous with the gulag: another source of resentment in North Mali, since local people everywhere are proud of their town or village and the Iforas Tuaregs were angry that their city of Kidal was ill-famed.
Most other rural areas of Mali are just as neglected as Kidal, but the Tuaregs do not know that. ChildFund International (known in Mali by its Danish name BORNEfonden) has found 88% malnutrition rates in the Sikasso and Koulikoro Regions of southern Mali. UNICEF in its 2013 statistics cited the number of 660,000 children under five in Mali with moderate or acute malnutrition: but these are “official” statistics that underestimate its extent. After the coup of 2012 (and irrespective of the fact that Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was elected president n September 2013), the situation of Malians grew more desperate. “In 2018, almost one third of Mali’s population were living in areas that were affected by conflict. Children and young people, especially girls, continue to suffer disproportionately from the effects of the ongoing crisis. Every day, children and young people miss out on basic social and protection services and risk displacement, separation from their loved ones and exposure to abuse, exploitation and sexual & gender-based violence.” (UNICEF 2018.)
Although decentralization has been Mali’s theory of governance since the 1990s, in reality the President’s office and ministries suck economic resources into Bamako. The urban elite flourishes while peasants suffer. Mali needs smaller ministerial cabinets with fewer government vehicles, allocating more resources to rural communes and towns where most Malians live.
The National Pact of 1992 was a peace accord that provided a blueprint for decentralization. The model put in place by President Konaré and his minister Ousmane Sy was both too complex, and too timid. The governor in each région, and the préfet of each cercle (often military officers.) are appointed and take their orders from Bamako. Mali needs to abandon its para-military administration, and allow the people to elect their governors. And then Bamako must give them freedom to administer and resources to invest in socio-economic activities and infrastructure.
The failure of decentralization, together with the Tuareg-Arab rebellion in the North, forces Malians to redefine their relationship with the State. Analysis of conflict and development worldwide points towards a “social contract model of post-conflict development whereby states provide core services … to their people in a functioning government and administration. The other side of the contract is that people need to be able to hold their governments to account and to engage as citizens in the post-conflict state. This requires the strengthening of civil society organizations and state-civil relations, as well as civilian oversight of governmental processes and institutions.” (O’Gorman 2001: 128)
Mali’s former Prime minister Moussa Mara said something similar in 2012, calling for a “new social contract that gives meaning to our decision to live together, so that all Malians can find well-being and … no one is left on the side of the road.” Mara wants to “transform Mali into a ‘real State’ that reconciles Malians with their administrators.” (Mara 2012: Introduction) It is such a social contract that Mme Sy Kadiatou Sow of the Alliance pour la démocratie au Mali (ADEMA association) evoked in January 2015, when she said: “…every Malian needs to be involved in the reorganization of our country … so that each person feels at home in their home district with the chance to develop their community using the human, material and financial resources that the State will accept to give them. All Malians need to agree on this question.” (Le Républicain 2015)
In fact, Mali is a State in search of a Nation: all Malians need to recognize that the national motto Un Peuple, Un But, Une Foi (One People, One Purpose, One Faith) is not a fait accompli and to become convinced that it is a goal which Malians should strive to achieve. For that, Malians need accountable local leaders who have a popular mandate and access to funds, and who will lead a campaign for grass-roots development and youth employment in every region.
Democracy and legitimacy in Mali and in Africa
Many African States suffer from deep questions of legitimacy, dating from their founding. The “enclosure” borders inherited from the colonial period do not provide the required legitimacy. Western style elections confer legitimacy, when the population is literate, participation higher than 30% and when they are not rigged. Those conditions rarely obtain in West Africa. Like other African States, the Malian elite must face up to the current deficit of legitimacy: indigenous mechanisms of controlling leaders must be recognized and developed. Elders, women, griots, youth should all play important roles in these mechanisms, as they have done for centuries.
By what right, then, do rulers hold office? By what natural right, even, should the force of numbers (demography equals democracy) justify domination by any one political or language group? Democracy has many shapes, and tyranny of the majority is one of many democratic risks. For millennia, before the arrival of centralized colonial rule, West Africa was organized through democratic governance. The village chief, the land chief, the heads of the initiation societies gained legitimacy through community selection (the wisest qualified member of the founding family; the best and wiliest initiated hunter; the oldest and wisest woman.) A bad chief could be replaced by a brother or cousin (since inheritance and seniority in Mali pass along the generation, and not from father to son). Because community decisions were participative, women and men have always shared decisions.
Like the “Nation State” and the revealed religions (Islam and Christianity), Western democracy is an unnatural import to Africa, which is still working out ways to adapt democracy to African cultures and traditions. Meanwhile Muslim and Christian religious leaders confer power upon themselves, and in Liberia a group of English-speaking “American Congo” families monopolized power. A few countries won freedom through a war of liberation (in the Portuguese colonies and in Zimbabwe), but most Independence leaders – West Africa’s heroes like Kwame Nkrumah, Modibo Keita, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Léopold Senghor, Milton Margai, David Kairaba Jawara – really gained power through their cozy relationship with colonial education and language. Leaders of the British colonies sometimes spent time in prison, but in the end a colonial partnership brought them power.
West Africa’s new leaders were immediately in competition with African indigenous leadership structures that had gained legitimacy through centuries of unwritten history. The new political leaders abolished chieftainship structures, and nationalized land to undermine village elders. The politicians enfeebled their rivals, but did not gain “legitimacy” for themselves. The most important question was left unasked: were their citizens happy to belong to these new Nation States with Western institutions and laws written in a colonial language, inside frontiers drawn on a map in Paris or London? The colonizer never asked them, nor did soldiers who seized power across Africa: taking power because repressive security forces were the only institutions that the colonial powers firmly established. With his Rainbow Nation, Nelson Mandela tried to provide an answer for South Africa to the question of belonging. Elsewhere, failure to ask this question brought the Biafra war to Nigeria, 40 years of strife between north and souths Sudan, bloody civil wars during the 1990s in Angola, Algeria, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo DRC, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast. We saw many cruel incidents in Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe; any number of military coups across the continent; and, more recently, the implosion of the so-called Failed States of Somalia, Central African Republic, Guinea Bissau, and now Mali and Libya.
French colonizers built just one strong Malian institution: the army. For most of Mali’s history since 1960, the army was in charge. Army legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun. Elections gained traction in Africa after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ended the Cold-War standoff in Africa, but electoral legality is not the same as political legitimacy. The World Bank has seen how Western Nation State models pose problems for Africa. The central message of its 2011 World Development Report was that strengthening legitimate institutions and governance is needed to break cycles of violence.
Elections engage political parties, whose legitimacy is doubtful. In 2013 Mali had some 150 political parties, each built around the ambitions of a single man (not yet a woman!). An African political party exists to gain power for the founder and his family. Supporters expect the leader to provide benefits in exchange for their support. In Mali few parties have produced a coherent political platform. The two exceptions were US-RDA (the successors of Modibo Keita) and Adema-PASJ, each of which offered a form of African socialism. Both imploded during the 1990s over the personal ambitions of competing leaders. Commitment to political ideas vanished as individuals rushed to grab fame and personal wealth. Any number of Mali’s new parties are splinter groups from Adema, a clandestine party created in the 1970s in opposition to Mali’s military dictatorship.
Most lawyers and political theorists would say the Malian State has gained legitimacy, after 60 years of uncontested existence (if not unity) and post-colonial rule. Most Malians would agree. President I. B. Keita inherited this constitutional legitimacy through his 2013 election as Head of State. But has Mali become a Nation?
The MNLA’s demand for autonomy (they quickly withdrew demands for an independent Azawad) is a challenge to the unity and legitimacy of the Nation State. But what legitimacy has the MNLA? What right do armed movements have to throw down such a challenge, and to “negotiate” with the government? Tuaregs have leaders (clan chiefs, family heads, religious leaders, elected representatives in parliament,) and they need no warlords. Above all, most Tuareg, Songoy, Fulani, Arab and other people of North Mali reject the claim of Ifoghas Tuaregs from Kidal to speak for them.
The government in June 2015 signed the Accord d’Alger with members of La Coordination des Mouvements de l’Azawad: HCUA, MNLA, MAA, CPA. This Accord conferred some legitimacy on the signatory ‘alphabet soup’ of parties, because they were recognized by the government ….. except that it is not clear whether tey all recognize the government as legitimate.
The nebulous group of nations and institutions known collectively as ‘the international community’ classifies foreign Arabs as “terrorists” but this description does not apply to Malians with a political agenda, namely Tuareg leaders of La Coordination and the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA).
If Mali seeks to achieve a peaceful result, a much broader negotiation is needed involving leaders of women and merchants and spiritual groups - though we cannot ignore the men with guns, we cannot rely on them to create peace. The armed groups from Kidal may be peripheral in terms of Mali’s geography and of questionable political legitimacy, but they are central in terms of security in the north, and in terms of their capacity to paralyze the State.
The Sahara has dried out over the past 3,000 years, making life increasingly difficult for Tuaregs and Arabs in North Mali. Mali cannot defend its vast desert frontiers, and Mali’s tiny economy will never be able to accommodate the ambitions of all northern youths. A redistribution of power and money is demanded within Mali. Subsidies may be the best solution for North Mali, both to buy peace and to redress previous injustices. Bamako must show realism and flexibility. (Scheele 2012)
A State without a Nation: Mali must face its multiple crises
The international community ignored the Sahara cocaine route, and fiddled while the jihadi crisis ignited. African troops were called for, but the African Union had no army to send. With hindsight, it seems that the 2012 calls for African troops was a smokescreen to cover French military preparations for an invasion to protect its interests in Mali (including uranium). On January 11th 2013, as jihadists massing in the towns of Konna in the east and Diabaly in the west prepared to move on Mopti, Ségou, and Bamako, President François Hollande launched Opération Serval, ordering air strikes and sending in the French Foreign Legion. Two thousand Chadian troops joined the French two weeks later, with orders to drive the foreign jihadists out of Mali. (Notin 2014.)
A senior French officer in Opération Serval described AQIM exploding like a ball of mercury: scores of small units (katibas) were scattered across the Sahara, creating a crisis of terrorism. (Personal confidential conversation.) AQIM followed a classic modern terror strategy, using rocket fire against French and UN troops, planting road-side bombs, and launching attacks against soft targets like restaurants, hotels and NGOs. Peace remained uncertain, poverty and malnutrition remained prevalent, development remained a mirage. The UN peacekeeping operation (MINUSMA) and the post-Serval French-led Opération Barkhane hoped to stabilize the Sahara, but perhaps they only held down the lid on a pressure-cooker. Either way, these military operations fed a “war economy” that diverted resources away from investment in the long-term “peace economy” needed to address Malian poverty. The crisis of poverty and malnutrition never left Mali.
The refugee crisis was perhaps the worst: refugees who fled the jihadists or the fighting or the Malian army with its reputation for murder and massacre were abandoned in camps, with no hope of restoration to their lands, their herds, their property. When Mali’s Tuareg population fled, they vacated farming and pastoral lands that others then occupied. How will Mali restore the refugees to their livelihoods, without creating new conflicts? Many refugee families are headed by women: if the man is not dead, he has travelled to seek work. The refugee crisis for women and children has been largely ignored by Mali’s government.
There were divisions and crises throughout Mali. The Bamako media hyped a North-South division, but the horizontal cleavages are much deeper. The army was split between Red and Green berets, poorly led and incompetent. The crisis of confidence between the army and the people remains since the army abandoned the North: of the seven armies in Mali in 2012, the national army was the weakest. Divisions in North Mali divided Kidal from the rest: Arabs, Songoy, Bellas, Fulanis and also other Tuaregs, flirted with ethnic militias to protect themselves from the gun-toters and from the Malian army (and the insecurity crisis then spread to Central Mali where Dogon hunter militias armed by the Malian army have been robbing Fulani groups of their cattle). Foreigners (Algerians, Pakistanis, Tunisians, Saudis) and other mercenary fighters affiliated with Ansar Dine, MUJAO, Al Qaida, or became tempted by the rhetoric of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)…. And these armed groups are now crossing the frontiers of Niger and Burkina Faso, attacking Fulani and Dogon villages in Central Mali from all sides. Successive governments appointed by IBK appeared unable to stop the violence.
Disillusioned by a secular constitution that promotes elitism, poverty and laïcité, a French form of secularism, Mali’s neglected poor are ready to listen to alternatives. If there is less and less loyalty to ‘Mali,’ people will adhere more strongly to their linguistic identity and perhaps to their religious affiliation. Here is the root of a Malian existential Islamic crisis, the deepest cleavage of them all, provoked by the venality of the Bamako political and urban elite. Malians are intensely spiritual, and they could be tempted by a religious leader promising a better world both now and in the hereafter. When politics and religion become entwined, they become a potent and volatile mixture. Very few Malians may be interested in the idea of an Islamic Umma without borders; but how many are committed to rebuilding the post-colonial, secular, Malian Nation State? Abaandoned by the administration, by the army, by the Bamako politicians in their bubble of self-interest, how many people still believe in a Malian ‘Nation’?
A plethora of conspiracy theories
Who is responsible for this disintegration of Mali? Algerian and Libyan corporate interests were certainly complicit in the smuggling and in the politics of ATT’s Mali, but how much did they contribute to Mali’s collapse in the face of Tuareg rebellion and the Aguelhok massacre, the army coup d’état, and the jihadist invasion? Were army (Sanogo) and jihadist (Iyad) conspirators plotting to divide Mali, as many Malians believed, affirming that Iyad Ag Ghali and Captain Haya Sanogo had a secret agreement? Were army elements plotting to kill Tuareg soldiers? Were oil corporations plotting to seize control of the mythical oil and gas riches of Mali’s Sahara Desert? And if so, which corporations? Who was conspiring to dominate the cocaine and cigarette trade? Were Arabs conspiring with Tuaregs to block the racial supremacy of dark-skinned over light-skinned Malians, or to establish a domination of light-skinned over dark-skinned Malians? Were there secret agreements of Malian politicians with Arabs or Europeans or Americans?
No one doubts there were conspiracies. No one loves conspiracy theories more than groups of Malian men sitting around their ataya tea ceremony in the early evening, playing checkers and imagining dark scenarios; while everybody in the group complains about all the political leaders. Malians are conspiracy-lovers par excellence. But when there are so many international outsiders involved in the political process, who can blame them? People accused of being “conspiracy theorists” are often simply offering alternative interpretations to the conspiracy theory currently being promoted by Western governments and their captive media.
As is so often the case, the nineteenth century author and wit Oscar Wilde had the insight that explains the conundrum: “I don’t believe in conspiracies except those that are true…”
The idea that Mali’s crises are the fault of Malians themselves does not please the Malian general public. It is more comfortable to blame outsiders. Much evidence points to foreigners contributing to collapse of the Malian State – Colombian drug mafias, Algerian intelligence agents, Arab-funded jihadists, and NATO politicians who destroyed Libya are all obvious candidates. Yet it was fundamental flaws inside the Malian State, venal Malian officials and feeble Malian institutions that allowed external influences to pry open the cracks, until the whole edifice collapsed.
It is important for the Malian government to move beyond discussions with warlords, to promote a national dialogue. The women of Mali were conspicuously absent from Ouagadougou and Algiers where male politicians negotiated with armed groups. Should we speak about a conspiracy of male armed warriors keeping the conflicts alive? For women played a major peace-making role in the Mali peace negotiations of the 1990s – just as they did in ending civil war in Liberia and in Sierra Leone. The Mali Model of 1996 shows the better way towards peace, when civil society leaders replaced armed warriors to negotiate peace and disarmament.
Peace talks and national reconciliation need to involve economic actors from every region of Mali, as well as women and youth organizations: the same mobilization of civil society that allowed Mali to find A Peace of Timbuktu in 1996. This is an African peace model that has already proved successful. A recent study of armed militias around Douentza says, “…. the road towards peace and reconciliation will take much more than the current policy bias towards security sector reforms and peace negotiations involving only the leaders of the most visible belligerent parties. Redistribution and representation, especially of those with a longstanding history of marginalization and social exclusion in (national) public affairs (nomads, women, youth, former slave groups), [are] key for any stabilization effort to succeed.” (Pelckmans and Sangaré 2015, p 44.)
Jihad and Terrorism: a conflict of religious corporations
Jihadists, mainly foreigners, chased the Tuaregs out of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu in July 2012 and imposed a very Saudi type of Islam on Malians who have been Sufi Muslims for 1200 years. Malians despised these semi-literate strangers and the local illiterate riff-raff they hired as enforcers in Gao and Timbuktu. Unemployed youths and frustrated cobblers were happy to be paid as Islamic policemen, having the power to beat up people who previously ignored or despised them. Violent jihad, a political project dressed up as religion, grows where the terrain is fertile. Jihad can be defeated only with jobs, infrastructure investments and the belief that democratic governance is a better option.
The message of Jihad was promoted by a number of religious corporations, notably the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), Saudi Wahhabists, and the Tablighi Jamaat who in Mali are called Dawa’a (meaning “call” in the missionary sense of a call to believe, a summons to pray, or an invitation to join a movement). MB was founded to resist British colonial rule in Egypt; in 2016 MB wielded power in Turkey and with Qatari support was seeking to control Libya and Syria; and then MB hit a wall when governments they were leading fell in Egypt and Tunisia. Wahhabists aggressively promoted the Salafist ideology of Saudi Arabia, the great rival of the Qatari regime. Tablighi preached non-violent “jihad of internal struggle” against sin (Alexiev 2005), but their message is similar to Wahhabism, and easily convertible to violent jihad. (Mali actualités 2014.) For 20 years in the Sahara, Tablighi preachers, often Pakistanis with Saudi funding, have attacked the teachings of the Sufi mystics. In place of Sufis’ spiritual search for “truth” they offer harsh certainties based on their own literal interpretation of 7th -century Islam. This simplistic message may be seductive in a world of poverty and uncertainty, due to poor education, intellectual impoverishment and the political confusion of “democracy”.
There is no evidence in the recent history of Mali for a clash of civilizations: Europeans, Arabs, Berbers, and black Africans have shared Mediterranean economic spaces for centuries. There is, however, evidence to suggest the Sahara is victim to a Clash of Corporations: criminal, economic and religious. Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is not religious, even if the religious label is useful for publicity and fundraising. This Al Qaida franchise is run by organized crime syndicates rich from smuggling cocaine and cigarettes from Latin America, cannabis from Morocco and with sidelines in kidnapping and people-smuggling. AQIM collaborates with organized mafia corporations in Colombia, Libya, Algeria and in Europe. Many of the AQIM leadership have been identified by independent Western analysts as being agents Algerian military intelligence. (Keenan, Schindler, Chauprade.)
The economic corporations are mainly extractive, interested in Saharan oil, gas and uranium; there is also gold, but that is in the forested part of Mali 1000 Km south of the Sahara. The French military intervention of January 11th 2013 served French national and corporate interests by assuring control of uranium oil and gas in the Sahara, as well as protecting the 5,000 French residents of Mali and preventing jihadists from taking them as hostages – the same jihadists who wanted to establish an Islamic Jihadist Republic that would pose an obvious security threat in Europe’s back garden.
Of the three types of corporations we highlight, the clash of religious corporations is perhaps the least understood. The Koran clearly stipulates that there can be no constraint in religion, that the Prophet’s role is limited to delivering the message from God. “Striving” or “jihad” in the path of God primarily means fighting one’s personal moral weaknesses. The Prophet Mohamed insisted he was not a king, that other men knew more than him about their worldly matters. So-called religious wars are eminently secular: political and economic factors play a much more important role than “faith” and these political and economic factors have been with us for the last two centuries: colonization, competition for dwindling resources, lack of education and other government services, bad governance, inequity, corruption, poverty, in various specific time and place mixes.
Mali has a centuries-old tradition with the three Malikite Sunni Sufi brotherhoods: Quadriyya, Tijaniyya, Hamalliyya. Some Malian Sunnis reject Sufi doctrine and call themselves "ahl al-Sunna" or the people of the Sunna, often adopting black clothing and face covering for women which Malians describe as "Wahhabi" behavior. In fact mostly the Malians follow the Malekite tradition, and in fact are not people following the Hanbali Wahhibism from Saudi Arabia that has been gaining followers in Mali’s urban centers during the past forty years.
Sufis seek ways to reach the Divine, through study and philosophical academic research for which the Sankoré University in Timbuktu gained international reputation from the 1100s until the destruction of the Songoy Empire in 1591. Unlike Saudi Salafists and Wahhabists who are certain of the Literal Truth and follow the 18th century preachings of Abdul Wahhab, Sufis seek hidden meanings inside the teachings of the Koran and 1300 years of Islamic scholarship. (Bakhtiar 1976.)
This clash between religious corporations erupted inside the very political Haut Conseil Islamique du Mali (HCIM) previously led by Wahhabist Imam Mahmoud Dicko, and his Malekite deputy and successor as HCIM president Cherif Madani Haidara. They disagree over the role of religion in politics, for Haidara says he believes in a secular State; and over Dicko’s reluctance to criticize the jihadist destruction of Sufi tombs in Timbuktu. The Malian government announced on July 20th 2015 that eight Sufi tombs have been rebuilt in Timbuktu under UNESCO guidance.
Conflict transformation, rehabilitation and migration
The challenge of Tuareg dissidence and jihadist calls for an Islamic State in Mali, raise a major question: “What is the alternative, secular solution for Mali?” …. for a State that is seeking a Nation. Managing conflict will not be enough, for this means repeated insurgencies and turmoil. Reconciliation can only come about through conflict transformation: sidestepping intractable issues to focus on things that opponents can agree upon. Like rehabilitation of the economy, and of Mali’s shabby infrastructure. But after 60 years of Western neglect, perhaps the Chinese will invest in this rehabilitation.
You can rebuild mutual confidence and respect, if you channel the energies of former antagonists into common projects that will bring benefits to all sides: pasture regeneration, environmental protection, employment creation, craft apprenticeships and improved youth education, infrastructure creation, promoting credit and commerce, adding value to Malian primary products and livestock, working with neighboring states to develop the wealth of frontier zones, investing in a national and regional peace economy.
Conflict transformation encourages groups to exploit available resources in common, to use or preserve them according to rules that are defined collectively. Mali is a land of extensive livestock rearing, where many families are semi-nomadic. Government officials tend to apply rigid laws designed by sedentary administrators, whereas natural resource management requires flexible methods, agreed upon by all users. Water is Mali’s most precious resource. Whether the water comes from a well, a lake, or a river, its use must be negotiated among all those who have specific seasonal needs for water use: not just government irrigation projects, but also fishermen who follow the fish, farmers whose crops require irrigation, livestock owners who need to feed and water their animals, children who need clean drinking water, women who cultivate dry-season vegetable gardens.
Similar rules should apply in frontier areas: the artificial lines drawn on colonial maps separate communities who exploit the same natural resources. Instead of creating (porous) barriers, how can these spaces be developed in common to provide border security, and also to provide livelihoods for communities, wealth for families, and employment for young people? The question of how to make frontiers into safe and profitable “common spaces” is being debated all over Africa; it is key for tackling problems of terrorism, uncontrolled migration and cross-border criminal gangs. Building border crossings is barely relevant where frontiers meander for thousands of miles through the desert. Reinforcing national armies and customs forces that are seen by the local population as corrupt and illegitimate, will not improve border security or discourage youth from seeking employment elsewhere. Imaginary barriers will not solve the problem of migration. For the poorest people on our planet, many of them from traditionally nomadic cultures, moving across frontiers may be the only solution.
Apart from oil and gas dreams, jobs are created most easily in the social and agricultural economy. Mali’s public and private sectors are stagnant. In the North, everything needs to be rebuilt, every artisan needs to be re-tooled. Mali is landlocked and dependent on erratic Sahelian rains; yet the social economy is full of development successes like women’s mutual savings-and-credit unions. The Niger River is Africa’s third largest water source, and it can be exploited more carefully for local food production. Mali has potentially unlimited solar energy. The vast pastures of the North, if they can access better veterinary services, are suitable for meat production, leather, and livestock exports on a massive scale.
The rapid increase of urban populations brings new challenges. In 2006 Bamako was named the fastest-growing city in Africa. (https://answersafrica.com/the-fastest-growing-cities-list.html) Mali’s government must confront urban as well as rural poverty. It is perhaps why in April 2014, IBK chose Moussa Mara as prime minister, the young elected mayor of Bamako’s Commune IV. Although Mara moved on, his 2013 election manifesto offered a blueprint for change, proposing to create smaller regions and urban communes in order to “reconcile the people with their administration.” (Mara 2012) Mara has an exciting vision of decentralization, and donor money needs to follow the same path.
Above all, civil society organizations must be funded and protected in a serious manner. Civil society is the second pillar of a secular State, after the Executive (Poulton & Tonegutti 2016: 207 & 279). Civil society alone can keep the Executive, Legislative, Judicial and Military pillars both effective and transparent. Government-Donor projects are ineffective when they fund civil servants to support urban poverty-sharing, which is a major driver of out-migration. Projects are useless if they cannot break the cycle of rural poverty and urban unemployment. Donor support for mega-agricultural development projects is often wasted. It is better and cheaper to reach food producers, artisans, and traders through the social economy, in ways that increase both food production and employment.
Civil society organizations (CSO) also ensure that within the development process, spaces are opened for women, including young women. CSOs need to be professional in their activities; they also need international funders who understand how the NGO community works. In the spirit of the Franco-Malian proverb “confidence does not exclude controls,” decentralization to community-based organizations (CBO) does not exclude having outside participation and guidance from professional CSOs. A successful social economy is based on partnerships, including audit, accountability, and evaluation functions that require outside participation.
A professional community development program in Mali costs a minimum of $100,000 per year, and it needs to be sustained for 7 years for impact to be measurable. This was the model used with success during the 1990s by USAID’s PVO co-Financing Project. One-year grants were excluded: they do not fit the African project cycle, and mostly encourage CSO dependency on foreign embassies. Donors should innovate and decentralize: sign a 15-year contract to fund CSO salaries and overhead costs, in exchange for the mobilization of comparable resources by the CSO in the field. The fact of such mobilization will, in and of itself, work to create jobs for young people and discourage them to become economic migrants. The value of such resources will include the value of community contributions, grants, credits and savings, proving that communities value the services of the CSO and are investing in their own development. In this was, CSOs will become bottom-up catalysts for change and prosperity, instead of acting as accountants for small donor grants, which is how the embassies are basically using local CSOs today.
The private sector can certainly be improved in Mali. The banking sector could, and should, be mobilized to offer credits that relaunch small enterprises and cooperatives in North Mali, for example, in exchange for employment and training through apprenticeships for young people who are currently unemployed. Bankers in Mali have traditionally been urban and remote, out of touch with farmers, herders, and artisans, and uninterested in their economic progress. This needs to change.
Mali’s resources will not be developed productively by the public sector waiting for a mineral bonanza. State institutions need deep and creative reform. Mali’s education system has been designed to produce francophone officials, not dynamic entrepreneurs. Malian officials raise roadblocks, and their power to block innovations may be strengthened if a war economy prevails in Mali. To counter this risk, the government needs to mobilize civil society, to stimulate thriving cooperatives and economic associations that offer space to women to create employment opportunities, to integrate ex-combatants, to create a peaceful society and remove firearms. For employing young men, Mali’s social economy offers the greatest potential.15
Building national reconciliation and a Nation in Mali
After any conflict, finding peace requires working together on common memories. Opposing stories maintain fears, and make it difficult for groups or individuals to think about the future together. Mali needs a new national conversation. “Conflict Transformation” is a process that side-steps irreconcilable narratives, in order to focus everyone’s attention on common interests that can bring shared advantages. In Mali’s case, a national consensus might be built around Mr. Mara’s radical ideas for democratic governance through a major rethink of the regions, in such a way that people can develop local autonomy and work in collaboration for the regeneration of natural resources, or to build strategies for universal food security. These are paths that can lead to reconciliation, creating new ways to identify joint resources that lead towards a common good. These are ways in which diverse groups and individuals who have felt excluded by Mali’s institutions and decision-making processes, could come to feel included in a new-purpose Malian Nation.
The Algiers Accord of June 2015 provided for a National Reconciliation Conference, but this needs to be the culmination of an inclusive national conversation initiated by people at the local level, supported by the government and donors in an intelligent, flexible manner. Reconciliation will not come from a few male politicians talking with armed rebels in foreign capitals. The conversation must involve the whole population at every level and in every region, and it needs to be led by women, the Mothers of Mali, who can influence the men with guns to bring them into the peace process. http://maliactu.net/mali-an-i-de-laccord-pour-la-paix-et-la-reconciliation-issu-du-processus-dalger-des-avancees-mais-le-mali-peut-mieux-faire/
The Algiers agreement offered a promise of change. The government -- as well as the northern Azawad Movements and the Coordination Platform who signed the Accord – have a responsibility to make it work. The signs are not good. Meetings were held in Anefis (Kidal region) during the second half of 2015 and discussions are still continuing years later. (http://www.maliweb.net/la-situation-politique-et-securitaire-au-nord/paix-reconciliation-mali-anefis-accueille-cma-plateforme-nouveau-protocole-daccord-2600302.html) If these meetings allow people to take part in local dialogue initiatives, it will be a positive step: after the signature of the National Pact in 1992, communities who were exhausted and bruised by the war entered into local dialogue and forged the real peace process in 1994-1996. (Lode and Ag Youssouf 2000, Poulton and Ag Youssouf 1998: 85-115) At the same time and as a parallel process, the government organized a series of regional meetings led by ministers: this “Concertation nationale” built a national consensus around the need for peace in North Mali, and the need to stop student protests so that schools could re-open. The lessons of 1992-1996 deserve to be analyzed, and shared with all the peoples of Mali. This a way forward towards conflict transformation, based on Malian historical precedent.
Only if trust can be rebuilt, will it be possible for the people of Mali to live together and to build a new phase of their history. Malians must invent new political forms incorporating pluralism. Every Malian has a regional attachment and a linguistic attachment, as well as his Malian identity. The name ‘Azawad’ sticks in the throat of some Bamako politicians who regard the name as a sign of separatism; but the debate would be transformed by reviving other traditional Malian regions, like Wassoulou, Birgo, Kenedougou, Macina, Khasso, Kaarta, Guidimaka, etc. People relate to their old kingdoms. Azawad is just one of many regions with names that Malians recognize in their hearts and in their history.
Replacing the post-colonial administrative structures with more traditional regions would bring the Malian Nation State closer to the people’s values. Former Prime Minister Moussa Mara’s book (2012) stresses the importance of government reform in order to “reconcile Malians with their State administration” -- a reminder that the roots of Mali’s collapse lie not in the North, but in failed State institutions.
Peace depends on Malians solving this deeper crisis. It is easy to blame outsiders, and there are plenty to blame: Colombian cocaine smugglers, Wahhabist extremists and NATO’s destruction of Libya have all contributed to the undermining of Mali’s institutions. But a political union of peoples cannot flourish on narrow nationalism. All Malians need to listen to the views of the others – including those who live in neighboring States - recognizing the multiple affiliations of individuals and groups, breaking down the barriers of incomprehension. To achieve peace, “frontier development” needs to replace “border security” as a regional priority. The whole of West Africa needs to be redesigned as an open space. A real African Union of local peoples would offer new recipes for peaceful coexistence, a second phase of decolonization.
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