Thursday, January 24, 2013

Timbuktu is Closer Than You Think

For many of us, Timbuktu is a symbol of exotic remoteness, a synonym for “the ends of the earth.”  If you say “Tuareg,’ some Americans will think of the VW Touareg SUV while others might conjure up fierce desert nomads swathed in distinctive deep purple robes.   And “Mali” is likely to be misheard and evoke images of aunt, niece or sister Molly or Molly Pitcher of song and legend. 

“What,” almost all of us are likely to say, “does any of this have to do with air strikes by French jets, 2,000 French soldiers in armored vehicles already fighting on the ground and more being flown in on U.S. aircraft?” 

Much of the answer has to do with powerful political dynamics within the country of Mali and part with the impact of external events on the main actors in the Malian political drama.

All Politics is Local

The real estate agent’s “location, location, location” mantra is a good place to start to understand Mali.  Northern Mali is deep in the Sahara desert, home to a sparse population of fiercely independent nomads.  Southern Mali is almost entirely in the Sahel, the transition zone between the desert and more fertile and temperate land to the south.  The Sahel is flat, rolling terrain with just enough rainfall to support sparse grass and scrubby brush.  Several centuries ago the Sahel was wetter and greener and from the 10th to 17th centuries supported a series of large kingdoms.  Timbuktu was developed as a major staging area for caravans carrying salt, slaves, ivory and gold from southern Africa to North Africa and on to Europe in enormous camel caravans.  It also served as a center of Islamic leaning and culture, from which missionaries spread Islam throughout West Africa.

Around the world, nomads like the Tuareg of the Sahara and the more settled small farmers and herders of the Sahel tend to live in an uneasy equilibrium.  They depend on trade with each other for goods they cannot produce themselves but they fear and distrust each other.  As the Sahel becomes drier and the Sahara desert creeps south, pasture land grows more scarce and conflicts between nomads and settled people are exacerbated. 

This is a central dimension in the current conflict. 

Like so many African countries, Mali’s borders were drawn for the administrative convenience of colonial powers at the end of the 19th Century.  What is now Mali was part of the larger entity of French Sudan which became independent in 1960 as the Mali Federation.  Within two months Senegal withdrew from the federation, leaving Mali landlocked and, aside from some gold deposits and a small area of fertile land along the Niger river, bereft of natural resources.  Over time tourism, especially from France, has become a significant factor in the economy.  At least it was until violence erupted in the north and tourists were taken hostage.

In the more settled areas of the Sahel making the distinction that this village is in Mali, that one is in Senegal, Niger, or Burkina Faso makes some sense, especially some 50 years after Mali gained independence from France.  But for nomads in the Sahara, borders are merely marks in the sand that the wind blows away.

Leaders of the several Tuareg clans resisted French attempts to control their movement and interfere with their profitable trading and smuggling.  As the French withdrew from their African colonies, Tuareg leaders called for the creation of an autonomous Tuareg homeland.  Instead Tuaregs were included in the Saharan desert portions of the new nations of Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Senegal. Around 15% of the population of Mali is classified as Tuareg or a related group.

The tension between political, economic and social development in Mali and Tuareg aspirations for autonomy has waxed and waned over time, but some level of political conflict has always been present.  The conflict escalated to significant violence in early 2012.

Some Politics are More Local Than Others


The conflict in Mali became a violent threat to the survival of the country last year because the long standing balance of political and military power was upset by three major developments:

1) Over the past two decades the ancient trans Sahara trade routes have been revived as one of the major avenues for smuggling drugs shipped from South America to the coast of West Africa and then overland to North Africa and Europe.  The Sahara trade routes are also a major artery for the movement of economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and on into Europe.  Tuareg clans have made some money as caravan guides but even more by charging smugglers protection fees ... so their operations will not be attacked by Tuaregs.

2) A significant number of young Tuareg men were recruited into elite units of the Libyan army.  When rebels toppled Qadhafi, Libya became a dangerous place for non-Libyans who had fought the rebel militias and the Tuaregs left with their weapons.  Not only were there now hundreds of young Tuaregs with military training but they had brought large numbers of sophisticated infantry weapons with them.

3) Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other militant groups grew rapidly from relatively obscure remnants of the brutal civil war between the Algerian military and Islamist militants.  Fueled by money from drug smuggling and hostage ransoms, the turmoil in Libya and the weakness of Libya’s Saharan neighbors, the region has become a magnet for disaffected youth from neighboring countries and combat veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. 

A Sense of Crisis

The conflict in Mali became a major international concern after the capture of the town of Aguelhok by insurgent fores in January 2012.  Ninety-seven Malian soldiers surrendered after they ran out of ammunition and were summarily executed, along with an unknown number of civilians.  The perceived failures of the government to support the army in its fight against the insurgents led to a coup by junior officers in March.

Mali’s neighbors in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) negotiated an end to the coup and immediate restoration of civilian rule and also promised economic and military support, which, however, has been slow in coming.  The insurgents have continued making major gains in northen Mali, capturing several towns and underlining the weakness of the Malian armed forces.  While the insurgents are a loose coalition of tractional Tuareg groups, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other Islamist groups, it has been the most radical elements who have taken control of captured towns and imposed a particularly harsh and rigid interpretation of Islamic law on the citizens.  There is widespread evidence of beatings and executions, as well as destruction of local religious sites and historical monuments.

In October 2012 the UN Security Council unanimously voted to direct ECOWAS and the African Union to develop a plan for intervention to support the government of Mali.  But the situation continued to deteriorate and when it seemed there was little standing between rebel forces and the capital of Bamako, Mali asked France to intervene last week.  The initial rapid response drew from French assets already on the ground in Chad and Côte d’Ivoire with additional troops being flown in on U.S. Air Force transports.

As of this writing the French seem to be making steady progress but are meeting stiffer resistance than expected. 

What’s the Point?


As fascinating as the history of Timbuktu maybe, it is still a long way from much of anywhere.  So why all the excitement?

For the government of Mali the stakes are obvious: the insurgency has already seriously destabilized the regime and a successful assault on the capital Bamako would spell the death of a relatively open, relatively democratic regime. 

For the large majority of the people of Mali, the violence and behavior of the insurgents when they have taken a town are extremely threatening.  Before the fighting began, Mali was one of the 25 poorest countries in the world.  The collapse of tourism has made things worse. 
The Muslim missionaries who moved across the Sahara from North Africa in the 10th and 11th centuries were predominantly Sufi.  The Sufi movement within Sunni Islam puts more emphasis on emotional expression, integrating music and dance into prayers, and less emphasis on formal obedience to behavioral laws.  Islam in West Africa has adopted and adapted many local customs and beliefs and is typically described as “more relaxed” in practice than, for example, Saudi Arabia.  But Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and similar groups have been inspired by the rigid, puritanical version of Islam originating in Saudi Arabia and spread by Saudi funded religious schools throughout the region.  It is overly simplistic but not completely wrong to say there is a real fear of fierce desert nomads seizing control and imposing a harsh and repressive regime which is likely to regard Sufi-influenced Malians as not “real” Muslims.

For France the fate of Mali is tied to the fate of its neighbors, all of whom are former French colonies who have maintained strong economic and military ties with France.  The attack on the Amenas oil field in Algeria by a group associated with the Islamist forces in Mali is a pointed example of how the presence of several thousand heavily armed militants can threaten important economic assets throughout the northern Sahara. 

Mali’s neighbors are not only concerned with attacks on their own territory but also about the reported tens of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting and the brutal regimes established in captured towns.  The Italian willingness to provide some trainers and logistical support to the Mali army reflects the same concern about refugee flows from North Africa to Europe.

For the United States, the dominant perspective in the response to the Mali situation is the concern that the Sahara desert will become the newest base for al Qaeda and al Qaeda-like organizations to train terrorists. 

The End Game

The pessimistic scenario sees French forces getting bogged down in a protracted battle to liberate the towns taken by the insurgents and a corresponding failure to bolster the military and political capabilities of Mali’s neighbors.  The optimistic scenario sees the French succeeding relatively quickly in pushing the fighters back into the desert and relieving the pressure on the government of Mali, then working with an African Union/ECOWAS force to stabilize the region.  Optimists might point to the situation in Somalia where an AU force supported by the U.S. and other western powers has prevented the radical al Shabaab group from seizing control of Mogadishu and gone a long way to neutralize them throughout the countryside.