Mali, France, and chickens

As in: come home to roost

Conn Hallinan

Pambazuka News
2013-01-23, Issue 614

It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts.’ -- Charlie Marlow from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The vision that Conrad's character Marlow describes is of a French frigate firing broadsides into a vast African jungle, in essence, bombarding a continent. That image came to mind this week when French Mirages and helicopter gunships went into action against a motley army of Islamic insurgents in Mali.

That there is a surge of instability in that land-locked and largely desert country should hardly come as a surprise to the French: they and their allies are largely the cause. And they were warned.

HISTORY IS IMPERATIVE

A little history. On 17 March 2011, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1973 to ‘protect civilians’ in the Libyan civil war. Two days later, French Mirages began bombing runs on Muammar Gaddafi's armoured forces and airfields, thus igniting direct intervention by Britain, along with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Resolution 1973 did not authorize NATO and its allies to choose sides in the Libyan civil war, just to protect civilians, and many of those who signed on-including Russia and China-assumed that Security Council action would follow standard practice and begin by first exploring a political solution. But the only kind of ‘solution’ that the anti-Gaddafi alliance was interested in was the kind delivered by 500-lb laser-guided bombs.

WESTERN ARROGANCE SIDESTEPS AU

The day after the French attack, the African Union (AU) held an emergency session in Mauritania in an effort to stop the fighting. The AU was deeply worried that, if Libya collapsed without a post- Gaddafi plan in place, it might destabilize other countries in the region. They were particularly concerned that Libya's vast arms storehouse might end up fuelling local wars in other parts of Africa.

However, no one in Washington, Paris or London paid the AU any mind, and seven months after France launched its attacks, Libya imploded into its current status as a failed state. Within two months, Tuaregs-armed with Gaddafi's weapons cache-rose up and drove the corrupt and ineffectual Malian army out of Northern Mali.

The Tuaregs are desert people, related to the Berbers that populate North Africa's Atlas mountain range. They have fought four wars with the Malian government since the country was freed from France in 1960, and many Tuaregs want to form their own country, ‘Azawad.’ But the simmering discontent in northern Mali is not limited to the Tuaregs. Other ethnic groups are angered over the south's studied neglect of all the people in the country's north. The Tuaregs are also currently fighting the French over uranium mining in Niger.

The Gaddafi government had long supported the Tuaregs’ demands for greater self-rule, and many Tuaregs served in the Libyan army. Is anyone surprised that those Tuaregs looted Libyan arms depots when the central government collapsed? And, once they had all that fancy fire power that they would put it to use in an effort to carve out a country of their own?

To continue reading...