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4 Ansar Dine in Mali: Between Tuareg Nationalism and Islamism

Introduction

When Captain Amadou Sanogo staged his coup against Malian President Toure on 22 March 2012, one of the reasons he gave for his actions was that Toure did not supply the Malian armed forces with sufficient heavy and new weapons to take on the Tuareg rebellion in the north. Little did Captain Sanogo realise that his coup and the resultant power vacuum in the capital, Bamako, would result in the Tuareg Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) seizing control of northern Mali and the important towns of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.1 The secular and Tuareg nationalist MNLA was soon displaced by Iyad Ag Ghali’s Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) Islamist fighters and their allies, AQIM.

The hapless captain was not the only person surprised. Many Western policy-makers also had egg on their faces. A 2002 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) study referred to Mali as a ‘poster child’ for good governance.2 Indeed, as Benjamin Soares noted, ‘since the early 1990s both US and EU policy makers have seen Mali with its long borders with Mauritania and Algeria, in the words of the Economist Intelligence Unit, “as a bulwark against radical Islam in Africa”. Mali received praise on the international stage as a model of toleration and for its commitment to secularism and after 11 September 2001 was held up as the sole exemplar of freedom in a majority-Muslim country in the world.’3

So how did this poster child of good governance, secularism, tolerance and bulwark against radical Islam suddenly transform into the Afghanistan of West Africa? Understanding the reasons for this transformation in Mali could provide the necessary insights to frame a suitable response to the current crisis in this blighted country.

Three interrelated sources of insecurity

The first point would be to realise that there was no sudden transformation in Mali from an oasis of moderate Islam and good governance to a Mali divided along ethnic and religious fault lines. To understand why a terrorist enclave developed in northern Mali, we need to understand three interrelated factors: Tuareg nationalism, the rise of Islamism and the nature of Mali’s post-independence state. The fact that policy-makers chose to ignore these factors while seeking to conjure an African success story does not mean that these tectonic forces did not exist – threatening to shred Malian society at every turn.

The call for a separate Tuareg homeland – Azawad – is not new and can be traced back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. On 28 December 1893, French troops entered Timbuktu and claimed this desert town as a French possession. The indigenous Tuareg did not accept their subjugation lightly and resistance to French rule continued until 1917, when Tuareg chiefs reluctantly surrendered following a series of bloody defeats.4 These Tuaregs were eventually incorporated into the state of Mali, which achieved its independence from France in 1960. The Malian Tuaregs resented the fact that they were separated from their Tuareg kin in countries like Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Libya and Mauritania.5 More importantly, the Tuareg saw themselves as different and superior from other Malians. They viewed themselves as Arab and not African,6 and saw their nomadic way of life as superior to the sedentary life of the townsfolk, crop farmers and settled villagers in the south.7 The racial and general attitude of the Tuareg to their fellow citizens in the south of the country is best reflected in a statement by a Tuareg chief following Malian independence in 1960, ‘What can blacks rule over when they are only good to be slaves?’8

These negative stereotypes existed on both sides of the north–-south divide. Many Malians in the south viewed the Tuareg as ‘a bunch of white, feudal, racist, pro-slavery, bellicose and lazy savage nomads’.9 Tuaregs were also aggrieved by the policies of modernisation and sedentarisation pursued by successive governments in Bamako.10 The Tuaregs sense of marginalisation was based on a stark reality: pastoral nomadism hardly provides one with the necessary skill sets to partake in a modern economy. Thus, while the average poverty rate in Mali is 64 per cent, it is much higher in the Tuareg-dominated north. Timbuktu has a poverty rate of 77 per cent. For Gao the figure is 78.7 per cent and for Kidal, it is a staggering 92 per cent. By 2002, the unemployment rate among the youth in Gao was 80 per cent.11 Unsurprisingly, Ansar Dine mobilised popular support by calling for an end to poverty. Sanad Ould Bouamama, an Ansar Dine spokesman, demanded the right for every citizen in northern Mali to live with dignity, and that economic development was crucial to attaining that dignity.12

Small wonder then that Tuaregs rebelled four times since independence: 1963–64, 1990–96, 2006–09 and since January 2012.13 Ansar Dine’s current leader, Iyad Ag Ghali, led the 1990–96 rebellion against Bamako.14 As a result of the Malian military’s counter-insurgency operations during these uprisings, as well as recurrent drought, scores of young Tuaregs left Mali altogether to search for opportunities in neighbouring countries. Many were lured with lucrative financial rewards into joining Muammar Gaddafi’s military forces and his ‘Islamic Legion’. Tuareg members of this legion found themselves in Lebanon, Palestine and Afghanistan.15 They not only acquired considerable combat experience in the Middle East and South Asia, but were also exposed to Islamist extremist thought.

This rise of Islamism is the second factor to consider in understanding the current situation. Islam has been practised in Mali for over a thousand years.16 While much has been made of tolerant Sufi Islam, which has historically been practised in Mali,17 the reality is that Sufism has come under threat in recent decades from Islamist, more radical interpretations of the Qur’an. Radical Islamist preachers from Pakistan (Dawa al Tabligh) and Saudi Arabia (Wahhabis) have been making tremendous inroads amongst Malian Muslims – building new mosques and madrassahs, engaging in community projects and sending young Malian Muslims to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for additional theological training. Although there are theological differences between Tablighis and Wahhabis, both groups are committed to transforming Mali into a fundamentalist theocracy.18 Iyad Ag Ghali was heavily influenced by Pakistani preachers, who also encouraged his ideological affinity towards Al Qaeda.19 It should come as no surprise that when Ghali established Ansar Dine in November 2011, its ideological position was heavily influenced by radical Islamist thought.20

The rise of Islamism in northern Mali also facilitated closer ties with others in the region who shared a similar ideological propensity – notably the Algerian-based GSPC, which later morphed into AQIM. By February 2003, the GSPC had already established a rear-base in northern Mali.21 The connection between the GSPC and fellow Malian Islamists was, however, not simply religious, but also commercial. The GSPC and AQIM have rightly been labelled ‘gangster-jihadists’22 for their proclivity for engaging in organised crime, from the kidnapping of Western hostages to narco-trafficking. The latter included the movement of Latin American cocaine and Afghan heroin to Europe via West Africa.23

Residents of economically depressed northern Mali have benefited from the GSPC’s illicit activities. When the GSPC captured a group of Western tourists in Algeria, they were released in Mali after the German government paid a multimillion-dollar ransom. Soon thereafter, residents of northern Mali were paid huge sums of money by the GSPC for supplying food and gasoline, as well as for doing menial tasks like driving GSPC commanders.24 Currently, AQIM pays local residents US$3,000 to move cocaine from one location to another and, in northern Mali, families are paid US$600 for each new fighter enlisting with AQIM, in addition to a monthly stipend of US$400.25

The rise of Islamism was self-evident in the 1990s, with Muslim radio stations like Radio Islamique railing against un-Islamic practices and pushing for a more purist Islam. Muslims also mobilised against the opening of a casino and the introduction of more sexually explicit publications and films.26 The rise of Islamism coincided with the dwindling credibility of more moderate Muslim leaders. Living Sufi saints (marabouts) often had close ties with high-ranking government officials.27 Indeed, these marabouts had initially been co-opted by French colonisers. This co-option was best reflected in the figure of Seydou Nourou Tall, a prominent Muslim cleric who travelled the length and breadth of West Africa on behalf of successive colonial administrations. He exhorted Muslims to be loyal to the French, to work on colonial projects, to pay taxes and not to strike.28 The post-colonial Malian state continued this practice of co-option. At a time when the state was increasingly viewed as predatory by ordinary Malians, these co-opted marabouts lost all credibility among long-suffering citizens. Islamists, with their own brand of liberation theology, had greater resonance on the streets of Bamako, and especially Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal where poverty was at its worst.

This leads to the third source of insecurity: the nature of Mali’s post-colonial state. To all intents and purposes, Mali should be a successful polity. Mali is Africa’s third biggest gold producer after South Africa and Ghana – producing 52.4 tonnes in 2010.29 Moreover, the country posted a steady annual economic growth of 5.8 per cent30 for much of the past decade. Mali also attracted significant international donor support. Between 2000 and 2010, aid commitments to Mali totalled US$5.6 billion.31 This was a substantial figure for a country with just 15 million inhabitants.32

Despite the phenomenal growth and donor injections, the living standards of ordinary Malians continued to deteriorate since 1994 when the CFA-franc currency was devalued by 50 per cent – in line with neoliberal prescriptions.33 Government economic policies, meanwhile, increasingly worked for the rich connected to the ruling political elites as opposed to the poor. The poor’s access to land and water was increasingly threatened by the government of President Amadou Toumani Toure’s intent to give these to agro-investors connected to members of the ruling political party.34 Given this, it was unsurprising that in 2008, an Afrobarometer poll noted that 74 per cent of Malians agreed with the statement that ‘the government’s economic policies have hurt most people and only benefited a few’.35

To compound matters, corruption under the Toure government increasingly became institutionalised. One facet of this corruption relates to the military. Recruitment into the armed forces required a relative at the level of a colonel or a general.36 Skill sets or the necessary discipline did not seem to matter. Under the circumstances, should we be surprised that the Malian armed forces crumbled so spectacularly in 2012 at the beginning of the Tuareg insurgency? A second facet of this corruption relates to growing evidence of collusion of high-level government officials in narco-trafficking.37

One of the most egregious examples of corruption occurred in 2010 when it was found that US$4 million dollars had been stolen from project funds from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.38 The fact that such corruption was taking place at a time when economic conditions were deteriorating for ordinary citizens was particularly galling. Northern Mali, as mentioned earlier, bore the brunt of poverty. The Toure regime further alienated Tuaregs in the north by not keeping promises to develop northern Mali made at the end of the last Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s. While an agency was established with donor money to develop the north, it disbursed little funds and was primarily used by Toure as a vehicle to co-opt northern political elites.39

Beyond the economic, Toure’s so-called consensus style of government essentially brought further divisions among Malians. He appointed friends and relatives from his own ethnic group into senior positions of power while co-opting others.40 Under Toure’s leadership, it is fair to say Malians were never more aware of their respective ethnicity: Songhai, Maure, Bozo, Fulani and Tuareg.41 The politics of co-option also served to undermine cohesion in the military. Under Toure’s ‘consensus’ style of government, many of the senior military officers were co-opted into the ruling party, becoming part of a vast patronage network where they were deployed as ‘senior civil servants’ in different ministries.42 Lower ranks of the military were excluded from Toure’s largesse while, at the same time, being starved of funds and the requisite military hardware. It should have come as no surprise that these lower ranks opted to stage the coup that toppled Toure in March 2012.

Toure’s ‘consensus’ style of government effectively served to stifle all legal opposition to his rule. As time wore on, he became increasingly autocratic. Nicolas van de Walle powerfully argues that ‘the biggest impediment to democracy in Mali in recent years had been the non-accountability of the president and the executive branch, and it makes sense to believe that democratic consolidation hinged in no small manner on the development of institutions of vertical and in particular horizontal accountability’.43

With the effective closure of legal avenues of political redress, opposition to Toure’s regime increasingly took on an Islamist flavour. As early as Mali’s 2002 presidential elections, Muslim clerics expressed criticism of the manner in which Mali’s secular state was run.44 As the Toure regime became more authoritarian and corrupt, moderate Sufi marabouts became discredited amongst Malian Muslims because of their proximity to the government. This opened the path for radical Islamists to occupy the political space with their rhetoric of social justice and their critique of secularism. The Islamists engaged in charity work, building clinics and schools and providing food parcels, which stood in stark contrast to an uncaring and rapacious state. This had particular resonance in the deeply impoverished north, where the Tuaregs were deeply alienated from Bamako.

The catalyst

While these sources of insecurity coexisted and intensified over the years, it needed a spark or catalyst to bring about a conflagration that was to engulf the whole of West Africa. The catalyst was Libya. One French diplomat noted, ‘Those who took the decision to bombard Libya, did not have the least idea of the consequences it could have for the south.’45 For decades, Gaddafi supported the Tuareg rebel cause. More importantly, many occupied key positions within his military. Still others were battle-hardened veterans of his Islamic Legion.

With the toppling of Gaddafi, many of these Tuaregs returned home to Mali in October 2011 where, given the broken promises of previous peace initiatives, they formed the MNLA to take up the Tuareg cause again.46 Indeed Mohammed Ag Najim, the leader of the MNLA, was an officer in Gaddafi’s armed forces and the majority of the MNLA were Tuaregs who served in Gaddafi’s army.47 The secular MNLA also struck a marriage of convenience with the Islamist Ansar al Din led by Iyad Ag Ghali.48

During the course of November and December 2011, demonstrations calling for the independence of northern Mali – known to the Tuaregs as Azawad – began in several northern towns beginning with Menaka. By January 2012, the Tuaregs launched a full-scale military offensive. The Malian military rapidly lost control of the towns of Menaka, Anderamboukane and Kidal and the Tuaregs captured scores of Malian soldiers in the process.49 Photographs of the dead and mutilated bodies of these soldiers were soon circulating on the Internet, prompting their angry spouses to march on Toure’s presidential palace. Here they accused him of collaborating with the Tuareg rebels.50

This was not the first time that such accusations had been levelled against the president. In 2003, when an Al-Qaeda-linked terror cell first established itself in northern Mali, leaked diplomatic cables suggest that Toure took no action. Instead, it appears that he entered into a non-aggression pact with the terrorists. Essentially, in return for these terrorists not striking the capital, Bamako, he would turn a blind eye to their activities in northern Mali.51 Iyad Ag Ghali, the 1990–96 Tuareg rebel leader turned radical Islamist, and current Ansar Dine leader, was also appointed as President Toure’s adviser to Mali’s consulate in Saudi Arabia.52 In 2009, Mali’s armed forces were angered when Toure allowed Gaddafi to meet Tuareg rebels near Timbuktu, alone, without any official Malian presence and despite the fact that Toure knew full well that Gaddafi was supporting the Tuareg rebellion. Rumours circulated in the armed forces that Toure and Gaddafi had forged a secret deal over the future of northern Mali.53

Toure’s dismissive and arrogant attitude towards the dead soldiers’ spouses angered the rank-and-file of the Malian army and, on 22 March 2012, Captain Sanogo staged his coup. Perhaps the most telling indictment of Toure’s regime is that following the coup, hardly any of Mali’s 15 million citizens sought to defend their democracy.54 With the collapse of the central government, the Tuaregs took the opportunity to consolidate their military gains and on 6 April 2012, declared Azawad’s independence from Mali55 – a territory the size of France.56

On the path to the creation of a terrorist enclave in West Africa

Despite a signed agreement between the MNLA and Ansar Dine on 26 May 2012 to form the Council of the Islamic State of Azawad,57 theirs was always a strained marriage of convenience. The ideological visions of the two organisations were incompatible. The Tuareg nationalist MNLA spoke of a ‘moderate and tolerant Islam’ whereas Ansar Dine’s puritanical interpretation, together with its increasingly internationalist bent, was anathema to the MNLA leadership.58 The ideological distance between the two Tuareg organisations also widened given the increased influence of AQIM and its regional offshoot, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), over Ansar Dine.59

The strong regional ties between West Africa’s Islamists were best demonstrated when Ghali entered Timbuktu flanked by the three senior emirs of AQIM: Abou Zeid, Mokhtar ben Mokhtar and Abou Hamame.60 Indeed, it is clear that Ansar Dine would never have made the military gains it did without the support of AQIM. It was AQIM who played a key role in the capture of the towns of Aguehok on 24 January 2014, Tessalit on 10 March 2012, Gao and Kidal on 30 March 2012 and Timbuktu on 1 April 201261 – whilst allowing Ansar Dine to claim the credit for it. This was clearly a strategic move on the part of AQIM not to attract attention to themselves while allowing Ansar Dine to be the face of militant Islam in northern Mali. In a recent letter written by AQIM’s emir, Abdelmalek Droukdel, to his fighters he urged them to ‘mask their operations and pretend to be a domestic movement so as not draw international attention and intervention. Ansar Dine was to be the local face of the jihadist movement, while AQIM established training camps for external jihadist operations.’62

It became clear that Ansar Dine’s supposed emir, Iyad ag Ghali, was increasingly subordinate to AQIM. The UN revealed that he received 400,000 Euros from the leader of the Tariq ibn Ziyad Brigade of AQIM.63 AQIM’s influence over Ansar Dine is also reflected in the fact that the latter increasingly jettisoned its earlier articulation of concerns of the marginalised and impoverished Tuaregs and reflected AQIM’s universal jihadist ideology. In May 2012, for instance, Ansar Dine issued a statement where they threatened to attack four Spanish cities: Granada, Valencia, Seville and Cordoba. According to the statements these cities were once ruled by Muslims and Ansar Dine seeks to free these cities from Christian rule and restore the old Muslim caliphate of Al-Andalus.64

The growing foreign influence over Ansar Dine, meanwhile, resulted in unhappiness amongst Ghali’s own Ifoghas tribe among the Tuaregs.65 Soon Ghali was facing a crisis when a senior member of Ansar Dine from his own tribe, Alghabass Ag Intallah, broke away to establish the Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA), which not only distanced itself from AQIM, but also sought a negotiated solution to the conflict.66 Soon Ansar Dine started to haemorrhage members to MIA, a process that gathered pace with the French and West African intervention discussed below.

With the Malian armed forces having retreated from the north, fighting soon began between the MNLA and its erstwhile allies Ansar Dine. Given the latter’s relationship with AQIM and MUJAO, it had the military upper hand and the MNLA were soon forced out of all the major population centres in the north: Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu.67 A strict Salafist interpretation of shari’a law was applied to the entire north of the country. Worship at Sufi shrines was deemed idolatrous and the shrines were destroyed by Ansar Dine militias – raising parallels with the 2001 destruction of ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan by the Taliban.68 Music and smoking have been banned while bars, hotels and other establishments associated with alcohol consumption have been razed, raising parallels with the Al Shabaab-controlled areas of Somalia.69 Public schools have been converted into Qur’anic schools, male–female interaction has been outlawed and football is forbidden. Christian churches, bible schools and a Christian radio station have all been pillaged and there has been a mass exodus of the region’s Christian population.70

Meanwhile, the local Muslim population have been terrorised with public floggings, amputations and stoning to death rituals taking place across the north.71 There was, however, also popular resistance to this ultra-conservative Islamist stance in a society known for its strong Sufi traditions. Consequently, one Ansar Dine commander, Mohamed Ag Aharib, suggested that the movement was prepared to apply shari’a in a less harsh manner.72 Clearly, Ansar Dine was struggling to maintain its ideological purity while at the same time seeking to retain some sort of popular support. What is clear is that they have largely failed on both counts.

AQIM’s growing influence over Ansar Dine also raises concerns regionally and globally about the growing influence of Al Qaeda’s North African franchise. As in the case of both Afghanistan and Somalia, northern Mali has become a magnet for jihadists from around the world. Thousands of jihadists have flooded into the territory from Sudan, Western Sahara, Togo, Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Algeria and Pakistan.73 This ominous development prompted Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, to warn that ‘if northern Mali falls, then terrorist schools will be created there and then not only Mali and the region, the North African nations, will be threatened but also us in Europe’.74

Westerwelle’s dire prediction resonated loudly in Paris, where France experienced terrorist atrocities on its territory as a spillover of the war between the Algerian government and Islamists in the 1990s. A video statement emanating from a French jihadi made in Timbuktu confirmed France’s worst fears. In the video the French jihadi, speaking with a strong provincial accent, proclaimed his loyalty to Al Qaeda. Writing on this issue, Gregory Mann noted, ‘His statement only raised the stakes, since nothing gets the attention of anti-terrorism experts like jihadis with European passports.’75 Indeed in October 2012, police in Paris revealed that they had dismantled a terrorist group that was plotting attacks on various French targets.76

It is, however, not only Western countries that expressed disquiet regarding developments in northern Mali, regional leaders also expressed similar fears. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan urged for immediate collective action to resolve the crisis.77 President Jonathan’s position is understandable considering that at least 100 members of the Nigerian terrorist sect, Boko Haram, are being trained by MUJAO in jihadi camps in Gao.78 Morocco, too, has opted to prioritise ejecting Islamists from the north following reports that many jihadis from the Western Sahara were being trained in these camps.79 Mali’s Islamists have also served to aggravate these fears. Oumar Ould Hamaha, a MUJAO spokesman, threatened French President Francois Hollande with pictures of dead French hostages – a reference to the six French nationals still held by the Islamists after capturing northern Mali. Hamaha also warned that President Hollande ‘will not be able to count the bodies of French expatriates across West Africa and elsewhere’.80 This prompted fears in Paris, other European states and the US, that their embassies in West Africa may soon be targeted by terrorists. Credence was soon given to such fears in AQIM’s botched bombings of the French embassies in Nouakchott and Bamako.81 All Western embassies have been on high alert since then.

In response to these developments, the AU Commission Chair, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma stated, ‘This is a threat we cannot afford to take lightly, and the danger extends far beyond Africa. The sooner we deal with it, the better.’82 This call was echoed by Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore. Traore was the former speaker of the Malian parliament. Captain Sanogo handed over power to him after the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) exerted pressure on the military junta.83 This, in turn, raises the question of the form and nature of any intervention in Mali.

Reflecting on intervention in Mali: successes and failures

With the encouragement of Paris, the UN Security Council passed a resolution – UNSC Resolution 2071 – on 12 October 2012 calling on ECOWAS to prepare an international intervention force and giving them 45 days to lay out detailed plans.84 On 7 November, West African army chiefs adopted a plan to expel Islamists from northern Mali. The plan was that 3,000 West African troops would target the main population centres in northern Mali. Nigerian soldiers were to make up the bulk of the force while Senegal, Burkina Faso and Niger contributed 500 troops each.85 This military blueprint was subsequently passed by the ECOWAS regional heads of state. On 26 November 2012, this blueprint was formally presented to, and adopted by, the UN Security Council.86 France, meanwhile, undertook to provide ‘logistical aid’ to the ECOWAS force and began training the Malian armed forces with a view to retaking the north.87

While cumbersome diplomatic processes for authorisations and other necessities were taking place, Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO forces moved rapidly to capture the town of Konna – only a few hundred kilometres north of the capital Bamako. Worse was the fact that Islamists, having consolidated their position in Konna, began their advance on Mopti, the last major town before reaching the capital. Clearly processes need to be streamlined for sub-regional, regional and international responses to deal with jihadist threats sooner rather than later. Commenting on this issue, Bill Roggio88 noted that any ‘delay in taking action in northern Mali has given the jihadists an opportunity to indoctrinate, train, and organize recruits from the West African nations, and then send them home to establish networks there’.

On realising that if Mopti fell Bamako would be next, French President Francois Hollande decided to act by launching Operation Serval in January 2013. This began with aerial strikes of the Islamists’ positions in Konna by French helicopter gunships and Mirage jets of the French 4th Helicopter Combat Regiment of Pau, which were based in Burkina Faso.89 Meanwhile, French soldiers based in neighbouring Chad and the Ivory Coast moved in rapidly to protect Mopti while dislodging the Islamists from Konna and, eventually, Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.90

The pace of events clearly wrong-footed ECOWAS and the 15-member West African bloc had to scramble to send in a force to join the French. Eventually, with other countries like Benin pledging 300 soldiers, the ECOWAS force reached 4,000 and was deployed in northern Mali.91 As ECOWAS did not have a proper airlift capability, the British sent two military transport aircraft to transport the ECOWAS troops and equipment into Mali.92 If anything proves that the AU’s much vaunted Peace and Security Architecture is little more than a paper tiger, it is this Malian debacle.

The aim of the intervention force, according to the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, was to focus on the main cities in the north where the populations are concentrated.93 This, of course, was in keeping with the West African military blueprint alluded to earlier. Beginning with Konna, then Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, the Islamists were summarily ejected from these cities in northern Mali.

Several factors worked to favour the French-led intervention force. First, the local population suffered terribly under the brutal rule of the Islamists. In August 2012, residents of Gao demonstrated against the ban on playing football and video games. The desecration of the tomb of Timbuktu’s most revered spiritual leaders, Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar, by Ansar Dine angered residents further and they took to the streets. These protests were brutally put down by the Islamists.94 Consequently, the residents of Gao welcomed the intervention force.

Second, the intervention force received a force multiplier in the form of the MNLA. Given the fact that they were constantly attacked by the Islamists, MNLA fighters started attacking Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO positions just before the arrival of the intervention force. Moreover, they have moderated their own political demands. They no longer demand an independent state but an autonomous one,95 one that separates religion and politics. This revised demand on the MNLA lends itself to a negotiated settlement on the vexing issue of the status of northern Mali.

Third, the Islamists in the north became increasingly deeply divided. In early September 2012, four months before the intervention force, one of AQIM’s senior leaders, Mokhtar ben Mokthar was injured in an attack between his gunmen and those of MUJAO. It seems that MUJAO wanted captured Algerian diplomats to be killed while Ben Mokhtar feared that if they were harmed then Algeria, a formidable military power in the region, would join the proposed ECOWAS intervention.96 In early November 2012, Hicham Bilal, the leader of a MUJAO katiba comprising 100 fighters defected with his troops and is currently residing in Burkina Faso. Bilal was the only black African commander of MUJAO and he complained about the racism he and his troops had to endure at the hands of the Arab members of MUJAO, AQIM and Ansar Dine.97 Another reason for his defection related to his horror at MUJAO’s involvement in narco-trafficking.98

Other problems also plagued the Islamists, which facilitated the military intervention. In October 2012, a letter written by AQIM ‘Emir’ Abdulmalek Droukdel was intercepted in which he lamented about the poor state of the organisation ‘in which foot soldiers no longer listened to their superiors, carrying out random and undisciplined operations, often for personal gain’.99 This, of course, is to be expected from an organisation that is involved in both establishing an Islamic caliphate and narco-trafficking! This served to undermine the cohesion, command and control of the Islamist factions.

However, it would be wrong to assume that the military intervention was a resounding success. In the first instance, with the exception of Konna, the Islamists contributed to the seizure of towns by choosing to leave the major towns in the north, realising that they were no match for a superior conventional force. Indeed, many of them have moved into the lawless regions of southern Libya and other nearby states where they have regrouped, rearmed and repeated attacks in neighbouring areas.100 The subsequent Islamist attack on the Amenas gas facility in Algeria101 demonstrates that the French-led intervention may have merely served to displace the terrorist threat into neighbouring states.102 In northern Mali, Islamists brazenly attacked a humanitarian convoy and kidnapped International Committee of the Red Cross workers in February 2014.103 Rather belatedly recognising the regional dimensions of the Islamists, the French launched Operation Berkhane in August 2014, which seeks to neutralise terrorist groups across the Sahel.104

Second, the intervention force suffered financial constraints from the beginning. This desire to eject Islamists in northern Mali ‘on the cheap’ has resulted in these forces regrouping and engaging in asymmetric warfare much like Al Shabaab in Somalia. Northern Mali is a vast territory consisting of 300,000 square miles.105 It is unforgivable for policy-makers to assume that a force of a mere 4,000 would be sufficient to neutralise the Islamists. UN Security Council Resolution 2100 of April 2013 did ‘re-hat’ the ECOWAS force into the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali or MINUMSA. However, the force fell well short of the authorised figure of 12,640 personnel. In August 2014, it was standing at 5,000 troops.

The lack of political will and the attendant lack of financial resources preventing the force from reaching its full strength is breathtakingly naïve, particularly as most countries accept the scale of the potential threat posed. While it is true that these 5,000 troops are supported by French troops from Operation Serval, it is also true that the French have been steadily reducing their forces in Mali. By 2014, these French troops numbered 1,000.106

Third, given the small size of the intervention force and the deplorable state of the Malian army, Bamako has sought to make use of various ethnic militia who have fought alongside the Malian army against the Islamists. The Ganda Koy (Masters of the Earth) is a Soghai ethnic militia while the Ganda Izo is a Fulani ethnic militia. These have already committed massacres against the Tuareg and, according to Human Rights Watch, they were targeting not just the Islamists but Tuaregs and Arabs generally.107 The involvement of these ethnic militia with the Malian army is making reconciliation and healing difficult while making a political settlement between northern Mali and Bamako all but impossible. The UN has already reported on communities turning on Arabs and Tuaregs, labelling all of them supporters of Ansar Dine, MUJAO and AQIM and looting and setting alight their homes. This, in turn, has resulted in MNLA fighters, who were allied to the intervention force against the Islamists, turning against the Malian army in Kidal.108

Beyond intervention

The ejection of the Islamists in northern Mali should, however, be seen as the first step towards a long-term strategy to bring about sustainable peace in this troubled country. This is the reason that UN deputy secretary-general, Jan Eliasson, urged that any military action support a coherent political strategy for the country’s reunification and address the structural reasons leading to the crisis in the first place.109 To this end, and in light of the insights of CTS, we need to address deeper issues if we do not wish to see a tragic repeat of the current crisis.

Some degree of autonomy needs to be worked out for the indigenous Tuareg in the north while, at the same time, such autonomy should not work against non-Tuareg people in the north – notably the Songhai and Fulani. Some analysts have argued for a policy of real political decentralisation. These tend to forget, however, that such a policy did begin in 1992 with the creation of locally elected communal councils that were specifically meant to assist in co-opting the rebellious Tuaregs. These local councils were in charge of tax collection and budgets in three core areas of responsibility: health, education and development.110 The policy of decentralisation, however, failed for several interconnected reasons. First, the 703 local entities or communes duly created in the 1990s were staffed with poorly trained civil servants who were unable to deliver services to their citizens. This made their resultant failure a foregone conclusion. Second and a concomitant of the first point, their inability to provide services while at the same time demanding taxes resulted in the population not being willing to pay such taxes to the local commune. Third, rising levels of corruption in local communes served to alienate the population further.111 Fourth, the national government’s consistent interference in the decisions of local communes resulted in a decline in popular participation.112 Fifth, the policies of decentralisation were not suitable for the pastoral nomadic communities of Tuaregs. Under this policy, villages would come together to form a commune consisting of a minimum of 10,000 inhabitants to manage their respective territory. While this policy worked well in southern Mali where the Bambara, Minyanka and Senoufo farmers dominate, since their territory is fairly well defined, it was simply not viable in northern Mali. Here is found the Tuareg, Fulani and Maure pastoralists as well as the Bozo fishing population along the Niger region, which means that there is no fixed territory. Bejaminsen113 has demonstrated that ‘Sahelian pastoralists follow opportunistic grazing strategies and need flexibility and mobility to utilize dispersed resources’. This, of course, does not mean that decentralisation should be abandoned; rather that its weaknesses need to be addressed. Effective decentralisation may well provide local communities in the north a stake in local governance and thereby obviate demands for an independent homeland.

Any long-term solution would also need to deal with the large numbers of weapons available in northern Mali and the existence of militias. Indeed in 2004 it was conservatively estimated that there were 320,000 weapons in northern Mali and a further 8 million weapons in West Africa114 outside the control of the states in the region. Ethnic and clan militias proliferate among the Kel Tamasheq (Tuareg) and the Songhai who have formed the Ganda Koy and Ganda Izo militias.115 Northern Mali, and Mali as a whole, needs to ensure that such weapons are taken out of circulation. Militias need to be disarmed and Mali’s security forces needs to earn the confidence and trust of the local population. The population should feel that there is no need for local militias as the national security forces of Mali will provide their security on an impartial basis. For the latter to take place, there is a need to ensure that the Malian security forces are properly trained and armed – a process in which both France and the US are already assisting.

Real economic development needs to be prioritised, with a special focus on providing the youth in the region with suitable skill sets to partake in a modern economy. The pressing issue of desertification, as we will see below, constitutes an existential threat to the pastoral Tuareg way of life and should also be tackled. Programmes aimed at countering violent extremism need to be intensified for the whole of Mali. Democracy needs to be consolidated with a special focus on real checks and balances on the executive, as well as ensuring proper civil–military relations. Such national initiatives, however, will fail if the regional context is not considered.

The regional dimensions of this problem cannot be ignored. The truth is that a regional conflict system exists throughout north-west Africa where national sources of insecurity transcend national borders and are mutually reinforcing. The first of these relates to the Tuareg population spread across several countries in the region – a situation akin to the Kurds in the Middle East who also desire a homeland of their own. It is often forgotten that in 2007, Tuaregs in both Mali and Niger rebelled against the state. Their rebellions took on what anthropologist Jeremy Keenan refers to as ‘Pan-Tuareg’ dimensions in that the Tuaregs were assisting their kinsmen across national borders to rebel against the political authorities in their respective artificial ‘nation-states’.116 These Pan-Tuareg attempts for a homeland of their own is also seen in the demand by Tuaregs in Niger for a Tuareg Republic of Toumoujagha, which would not only comprise the northern half of Niger but also north-east Mali, southern Algeria and south-west Libya.117

The demand for such a homeland, which comprises the traditional pre-colonial territories of the Tuaregs, underlines the important truism that the Westphalian state, the product of colonialism, is increasingly in trouble throughout the continent as older forms of nationalism and territory reassert themselves especially in the context of state failure or contraction. We have also witnessed this phenomenon in Somalia. In the case of northern Mali, for instance, the supposedly central government in Bamako effectively lost control over the region decades ago.

Closely related to this is the phenomenon of space. The Tuareg notion of space is not linked to the territory of the Westphalian state but is far more fluid and flexible a conception. According to Tor Benjaminsen,118 ‘The terms akal and hinzouzar are important in the conception of space among the Tuareg. The first term, which means “land”, refers to the area within which one lives. The second term means “places where one lives” (within the akal). In practice, this would be the migration route tying together the key resources (bourgou fields, wells, salt licks, depressions in the landscape where surface water is found (oueds), good pastures, areas where wild grains are collected).’ It hardly needs mentioning that such notions of space pay scant regard to state borders. Neither French colonial authorities nor the political elites of post-independent Mali could prevent the Tuaregs from moving across national frontiers as they follow grazing patterns of old.119

Other Tuareg traits also make their incorporation into artificial state structures highly problematic. While all Tuaregs share a common language (Tamasheq) and a common ethnicity, they are sharply divided by tribe and clan.120 As in Somalia, it is to the clan that individual Tuaregs owe their primary loyalty.121 Such characteristics militate against an overarching concept of citizenship finding much reciprocity among the fiercely independent Tuaregs. It is for this reason that greater decentralisation with the concomitant increased autonomy for local communities are proposed for northern Mali.

Any attempt, however, to grant greater autonomy to the Tuaregs in northern Mali without providing similar autonomy to Tuareg communities living in Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Mauritania or Burkina is bound to stimulate similar demands in these countries. The regional nature of Tuareg nationalism, therefore, needs regional solutions as opposed to short-term knee-jerk reactions that focus only on northern Mali.

The second aspect of the regional conflict system relates to the environment and, specifically, the desertification that negatively impacts on the pastoral way of life of the Tuaregs. Some level of the enormity of the challenged posed is seen in the declining levels of precipitation. In 1950, the average rainfall was 772.9 mm in Mali. By 2002, this figure dropped by 23 per cent to 594.6 mm.122 Some scholars are of the opinion that such environmental considerations played a key role in previous Tuareg rebellions – notably the 1990–96 rebellion. Kahl123 has noted how ‘the combination of population pressures, poor land use practices, and a fragile ecology has made soil erosion, desertification, and freshwater scarcity serious problems’. Indeed, according to the UN more than 16 million people in the Sahel region are currently affected by food shortages and malnutrition.124 This, coupled with issues of a lack of capacity within states in the region, a culture of neglect and corruption on the part of state elites towards their citizens, ethnocentric nationalism and religious fundamentalism creates the basis for a toxic and volatile mix. Regional strategies that focus on all states combating desertification with the assistance of the international community are essential.

The third aspect of the regional conflict system relates to weak and/or failing states with their concomitant ‘ungoverned spaces’, in which terrorists operate freely. Many countries in the region constitute weak or failing states, which in turn allow organisations like AQIM to operate with de facto impunity. In June 2004, a USAID study concluded that the Malian security forces had ‘limited reach’ in northern Mali.125 To be honest, Bamako’s control over northern Mali was lost years before.

These weak states also impact on security in other ways. In terms of the AU’s Peace and Security Architecture, sub-regional entities like ECOWAS have to take the lead in preserving peace and security in their respective sub-regions. However, the reality is that ECOWAS consists of many of these same weak and failing states. Thus, a coalition of such weak states translates into weak sub-regional structures. When the crisis began to unfold in Mali, ECOWAS was powerless to react. The international community from Washington to Paris had to assist its military chiefs, from drawing up the intervention plans to providing them with armaments, training, transport and intelligence. To make matters worse, stronger states like Mali’s neighbour, Algeria, are outside of the ECOWAS fold while Morocco, which also bore the brunt of AQIM terrorism, is not even a member of the AU. Clearly the AU Peace and Security Architecture needs to be re-examined in the light of the Malian experience.

But, international actors too should also share in this failure. In the last chapter of his book The Audacity of Hope, then-Senator Barack Obama eloquently argued that if ‘the United States is to serve out longer-term security interests – then we will have to [go] beyond a more prudent use of military force. We will have to align our policies to help reduce the spheres of insecurity, poverty and violence around the world, and give more people a stake in the global order that has served us so well.’126 I could not agree more with Obama’s sentiments. However, as president, Obama seemed to be more concerned about the rise of China, drone strikes in Pakistan and the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East than in dealing with the security challenges posed by ungoverned spaces. Africa scarcely featured in President Obama’s first term and he has scarcely given thought to issues of endemic poverty and violence – so forcefully reflected in his book – which serves to undermine African state structures further.127 Sustainable solutions are longer-term solutions that address the structural reasons for the crisis.

The fourth aspect of the regional conflict system relates to terrorism – and more specifically the regional (and indeed global) dimensions of AQIM and MUJAO. Ever since its formation in 2007 from the remnants of the Algerian-based GSPC, AQIM has been quite adept at developing its regional footprint. Clearly it has been greatly assisted by the fact that its criminal enterprises of drug-trafficking, human-trafficking and kidnapping for ransom had netted it an estimated US$130 million by June 2012.128