Howard W French writes: Pundits who bang on about the events in Mali on television today speculate glibly about the possible linkup of militant Islamic movements in places like Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, and northern Nigeria, potentially constituting a vast sea of Muslim radicalism and hostility to the West. They would do better to understand that such currents are inherent to the politics and culture of this region and are in no way a recent import. Rejection of borders and of the European drawn states is as old as the borders themselves, and Islam has always played a central role in this, as intellectual base, religious justification and rallying catalyst. These currents have been given added force and coherence by the age-old movement of peoples and ideas via pastoralism, overland pilgrimage to Mecca and the existence of large, sprawling and aggrieved transnational ethnic groups — like the Tuareg, Hausa, and Fulani, to name three — whose interests were never considered by the imperial mapmakers.

Most of those who write on today’s crisis seem to ignore that the Tuareg, who are a key to events in Mali, have been sporadically fighting for decades against the country of that name we see on the map. During a visit I made to Timbuktu in the 1990s, Tuareg rebels fired mortars into the town that landed within meters of my hotel with no prior warning, scrambling tourists and creating a state of emergency.

As for other rebel groups in the region, their general pattern has been to raise tensions like this, forcing the government, in effect, to sue for peace by offering money, talks about greater autonomy, or other concessions. What was new this time had less to do with the presence in the equation of an al Qaeda spinoff than with the fact that there has been no government worthy of the name in the capital, Bamako, since a military coup overthrew the elected president last March.

Before we start breaking out hammers in search of nails, this crisis should serve as a powerful reminder of the necessity of much stronger preventive diplomacy in Africa in general, a thread that runs through major crises in Rwanda, the Congo and most recently Côte d’Ivoire. When I spent time in Mali in the summer of 2011, Western diplomats seemed scantily informed and almost blasé about the situation there; this at a time when the political cognoscenti was already warning of an advanced state of rot that involved mounting corruption, drug trafficking, and high-level dawdling over rising Islamic militancy.

However, even the best diplomacy, which we clearly haven’t had in Africa, won’t change the fact that the Sahel is in for a period of extended unrest and uncertainty. Its vastness contains some of the most sparsely inhabited real estate anywhere, peppered here and there by far-flung population centers with little economic viability or connection to the outside world. Places like these are easy to attack and hard to hold, and the militants’ game of blackmail for greater resources is extremely tempting.

Whatever the political or religious labels of the militants, however, the biggest driver of turmoil in this region in the future will be population. The peoples of the arid Sahel have some of the highest birth rates in the world, and there is little prospect that they will be able to accommodate the quadrupling or more of their populations, as projected by the U.N., before century’s end. Under such scenarios, Mali will go from 16 million or so today to 75 million people. Even poorer Niger, next door, will surge from today’s similar population base to 125 million.

Explosions like these will make a mockery of the political map of Africa that is familiar today, as major ethnic clusters outstrip the claims of the present-day states to govern them. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb surely must be dealt with now, but over time it will be the least of our worries.

In an extract from his forthcoming book, Andy Morgan writes about ties that are claimed to have been secretly formed between the Malian government and Al Qaida in recent years. “There are facts about Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that are reassuringly hard and verifiable. The organisation exists. It’s run by Algerian Arabs. It’s made a home from home in the north east of Mali… It earns millions and millions of euros from kidnapping westerners.”

With a couple of rare if significant exceptions, AQIM have never actually kidnapped their victims on Malian soil. They’ve only brought them back to Mali for safe-keeping. And with the equally rare exception of a major clash north of Timbuktu in July 2009, in which 28 soldiers were killed, the Malian army have never actually lead a full frontal assault on Al Qaida.

These two facts alone have lead many conspiracy theorists and almost the entire Touareg intelligentsia at home and abroad, to conclude that Al Qaida were invited on to Malian soil by the Malian government in order to the discredit the Touareg nationalist movement and mask the illegal trafficking going on in the north, from which a number of middle-ranking and senior Malian officials were drawing hefty amounts of black cash. In the atmosphere of anti-Islamist paranoia that seized the world following the 9/11 attacks, it was expedient for any government to twist the international image of a recalcitrant separatist movement and pass it off as an Islamist terror one instead. The strategy masked the true nature of the separatist struggle, confused international opinion and secured almost immediate benefits in the form of better diplomatic and security ties with the USA and Europe, more military aid, both in money and in kind. That’s what happened in Mali in the years following 2003.

The problem with the theory of collusion between AQIM and the Malian government is that no firm evidence has ever been produced to back it up. No one has actually photographed or recorded a Malian army officer or secret service agent chatting with an Al Qaida emir, or taking possession of a fat brown envelope full of narco-cash in some distant corner of the northern deserts. Of course, that’s the nature of this shadowy world. Nothing is ever written down. Dirty deals are done behind closed doors, or on an impossibly remote sand dune right in the middle of nowhere. The north of Mali has been closed to outsiders, especially journalists, for years. AQIM money is carefully laundered through various banks and legitimate businesses in Mali, Niger, Mauritania and further afield. Or it’s used to buy huge herds that chomp happily on the pastures of the north, away from the prying eyes of the world. There are no witnesses on record because there has never been any proper investigation. And even if there had been, who would risk their skin to expose skullduggery at such high levels. Fully uncovering the matrix of villainy that has been choking Tinariwen’s homeland since the beginning of the millennium presents a journalistic challenge that would make Watergate look like an episode of Miss Marple.

At the moment, all it can ever boil down to is one enormous hunch, a devil’s choice between a damning and a marginally less damning scenario. At best, finding AQIM on their territory, the Malian government just left them there to fester, knowing full well that their presence would putrefy the social fabric of the northern deserts. They did this because they didn’t want to risk Malian lives by taking fight to the terrorists, and / or because there were Northern Arabs in the Malian army and secret services who had strong family and cultural ties to AQIM and encouraged its presence on Malian soil because it provided an effective screen behind which they could continue with their high-stakes smuggling. Furthermore, AQIM’s presence in the north east would sully the Touareg independence cause with the taint of Islamic terrorism, an especially apt consideration following the Touareg rebellion of May 23rd 2006. At worst, all of the above is true, except that instead of waking up one morning and finding them there, the Malians actually invited AQIM to come and establish their iniquitous presence on this once open and welcoming land. That Malian policy towards AQIM should have been quite so cynical might come as quite a surprise to many. Diplomats at the US Embassy in Bamako were certainly quit taken aback when, in October 2006, a key official in the Malian Ministry of Territorial Administration told them that hostilities between the GSPC and the latest in a long line of Touareg rebel movements, the ADC, worked to the government of Mali’s advantage. Following clashes between the Touareg rebels and the GSPC, the terrorists had vowed to wipe out the ADC leadership. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” stated the Malian politician. Exactly how friendly, he refused to say.

Last August, Bruce Whitehouse wrote: The cracks in Mali’s democracy were present before the latest Tuareg rebellion [which began in January 2012]. The 1992 constitution, the free press and regular elections obscured long-standing anti-democratic practices. Western governments, glad to see the formal trappings of democracy anywhere in the region, tolerated these abuses. [Amadou Toumani] Touré’s presidency had begun under a cloud. Although international observers noted irregularities during the 2002 election, they declared it free and fair. Many in Mali and elsewhere believe Touré won only because the scales were tipped in his favour: the constitutional court annulled half a million votes, roughly a quarter of the ballots cast in the first round. Konaré, the incumbent, had chosen Touré as his successor and had acted to ensure his victory. Touré has been accused of orchestrating an ‘electoral hold-up’ for his 2007 re-election. Turnout for Mali’s elections throughout the decade was the lowest in West Africa. Recently Laurent Bigot, a French foreign ministry official, succinctly described Mali as a ‘sham democracy’.

Former President Amadou Toumani Touré (top) and Captain Amadou Sanogo, the leader of the March 2012 coup.

Touré wasn’t a member of any political party, but most of Mali’s established parties joined a coalition in support of his policies. He was able to push sweeping legislation through the National Assembly with little or no debate. In 2009, after the Assembly passed a progressive bill to reform Mali’s 1962 laws governing women’s rights and families by 117 votes to 5, Islamic groups stirred up vociferous opposition, and parliamentarians had to distance themselves from a bill few of them had actually read. The law was never enacted. Touré’s ‘rule by consensus’ became a euphemism for the suppression of political debate and a trend towards absolutism. Checks and balances existed only on paper. Journalists were afraid to challenge the president’s agenda, especially after five of their colleagues were arrested in 2007 for writing about a teacher in Bamako who got his students to comment on a short story about a girl made pregnant thanks to the ‘carnal escapades’ of an African head of state. In Mali’s restive northern regions, ‘rule by consensus’ invited more problems. When a group of Tuareg rebels – seen in the south as gangsters involved in the region’s drug smuggling – rose up in 2006, Touré negotiated a controversial peace accord and withdrew the army from much of the north.

‘A fish rots from the head,’ Malians say. To keep the aid money flowing, Touré maintained a veneer of progress. His government at first boosted the number of children enrolled at school, which pleased donors, but never invested adequately in the country’s dilapidated education system. Only 12 per cent of students passed the high school leaving exams this year, the lowest rate ever recorded. Touré purchased a temporary peace in the north but never made good on promises to reduce the acute poverty there. He accepted millions of dollars of US military aid, which was supposed to be used to drive out al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, but he never actually went after the group’s encampments. The military itself was racked by nepotism, and officers often skimmed off their soldiers’ ammunition and pay.

In 2010, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria suspended aid to Mali after it found that officials had pocketed millions of dollars of its grants. This fraud was noteworthy only because some of its perpetrators were held to account: Touré’s health minister is awaiting trial for embezzlement. The perception that corruption went unchecked at the highest levels of the state cost the president much of his legitimacy at home. At best, Malians felt he had turned a blind eye to the problem; at worst, they accused him and his wife of being directly involved.

As Touré’s second term approached its end, Malians had also lost faith in the rule of law. On the outskirts of Bamako, residents saw their property seized by members of the president’s inner circle, and were powerless to seek redress through the courts. Few Malians felt protected by the police, who were busy extorting bribes from motorists. Judges sold favourable verdicts to the highest bidders. There was the revival of a practice known as Article 320, first seen in the lawless days after Moussa Traoré’s fall: accused thieves were doused with petrol and set alight. (The name comes from the price of a litre of petrol and a box of matches, which in 1991 totalled 320 local francs.) At least seven such vigilante killings were reported in Bamako in the first two months of this year, and it seems likely that many more have taken place since.

The putschists capitalised on the popular disappointment with bogus democracy and weak government, using it to justify their actions. Hours after taking over, [Captain Amadou] Sanogo spoke of his men’s desire for reform: ‘not of the army, of the state’. The junta duly called itself the National Committee for Recovering Democracy and Restoring the State. Sanogo described Mali’s democratic edifice under Touré as a sagging wall that he and his men would knock down and rebuild. The coup had not derailed Mali’s democracy, he claimed, but had been necessary to save it. ‘When at a high level of state responsibility,’ he said in a televised interview in May, ‘you allow yourself to look a citizen in the eyes and lie to him, when you allow yourself to rig elections, to buy elections … is that what you call democracy?’

Whether Sanogo intended to save Mali’s democracy or confiscate it is an open question. But he and his men could never have hoped to overthrow Touré, and win support among Malians, had the country’s core institutions – the police, the courts and the electoral process – been sound. The soldiers who stormed the presidential palace on 21 March knew that Touré no longer had any legitimacy for the Malian people. So did Touré himself: hence his swift and silent departure. He resurfaced weeks later to sign a letter of resignation before the television cameras, then flew into exile in Senegal. [Continue reading…]

Robin Denselow writes: Nowhere does music have a greater social and political importance than in the vast desert state of Mali. It is shocking, therefore, that it has been banned across much of the two-thirds of Mali currently controlled by Islamic rebel groups.

As “Manny” Ansar, the director of the country’s celebrated Festival in the Desert, which has now been forced out of the country, explained: “Music is important as a daily event. It’s not just a business, for it’s through our music that we know history and our own identity. Our elders gave us lessons through music. It’s through music that we declare love and get married – and we criticise and make comments on the people around us.”

Malian musicians have become household names in the west. The list is remarkable, from the late Ali Farka Touré to the soulful Salif Keita, from Toumani Diabaté, the world’s finest exponent of the kora, to the bravely experimental Rokia Traoré. Then there’s the rousing desert blues of Tinariwen, who have performed alongside the Rolling Stones.

There is the passionate social commentary of Oumou Sangaré, and the rousing, commercially successful African pop fusion of Amadou & Mariam.

These musicians, with varied, distinctive styles, have educated western audiences about Africa and their country’s ancient civilisation, and the way in which traditional families of musicians, the griots, had acted as advisers to the rulers and guardians of the country’s history, and kept alive an oral tradition for generation after generation.

And yet the Islamic rebel groups are trying to wipe out this ancient culture – and in the process have forced Malian musicians to examine the role they should now play.

Ansar said he was “ashamed at what has happened has happened – and it was provoked by people who call themselves Muslims, like me”.

When I met him at a censorship conference in Oslo, he said the militias were stopping the music “to impose their authority, so there’s nothing to threaten them”. He added: “That’s why they are attacking the traditional chiefs and musicians. And they’re using concepts of Islam that are 14 centuries old and have never been applied. I find it strange that these ideas are being imposed now. It’s as if they took a computer and wiped the hard drive, and then imposed their ideas instead.”

The situation is particularly painful for musicians from the north of Mali, for bands such as Tinariwen from the nomadic Touareg or Kel Tamashek people, whose international popularity has been helped for the last 12 years by the Festival in the Desert. [Continue reading…]

Music of Resistance, Al Jazeera, February, 2009:

Mokhtar Belmokhtar

Peter Beumont writes: For a man whose death in combat in the Malian city of Gao was announced last June, Mokhtar Belmokhtar – the Islamist militant allegedly behind the raid on the Ansema gas field in Algeria – has been surprisingly busy.

Since that raid – which saw the deaths of several foreign oil workers, including a Briton, and the kidnapping of 41 more – Belmokhtar has been described in journalistic shorthand as “al-Qaida”.

On Thursday, as it was reported that some 25 of those captives had escaped, the real motives behind Belmokhtar’s raid – and his relationships with other Islamist groups in the Sahel – began to emerge as far more complex than first reported.

The standard version of Belmokhtar’s career as an Islamist leader is easy to summarise. The man dubbed the Uncatchable, as well as Mr Marlboro for his involvement in cigarette smuggling, was born in Ghardaia, Algeria, in 1972, starting his jihadist activities early.

By his own account – given in an interview at a time he was trying to shore up his leadership credentials – Belmokhtar, also known as Khalid Abu al-Abbas, travelled aged 19 to Afghanistan, where he claimed he gained training and combat experience before returning to his homeland in 1992.

This launched him into a two-decade career of Islamic militancy, first as a member of Algeria’s Islamic Armed Group (GIA) in the country’s civil war, then as a joint founder of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which started extending its attacks against security forces into countries of the arid Sahel, which forms the southern fringe of the Sahara.

That group evolved into al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group as much interested in the financial benefits of kidnapping and smuggling as building an Islamic caliphate.

Despite the claims that Belmokhtar’s latest actions were carried out on behalf of AQIM in response to the French military action in Mali, his real agenda is likely to be more complicated and opaque. [Continue reading…]

Click on the image below to view an interactive map of the Ain Amenas gas field attack: