Making sense of the mess in Mali

Ansar Dine rebels. AFP Picture

Mobhare Matinyi, Washington DC. The Citizen, Tanzania. Thursday, 25 October 2012 22:36Mali, once dubbed an Islamic democracy of West Africa, is now a big headache to the leaders and diplomats of the 15-member Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS), African Union (AU), the United Nations and concerned governments of the United States of America and France. Now the diplomatic talk is all about military intervention, a popular way of resolving conflicts in Africa nowadays.

But, what is the problem of this landlocked country in West Africa, covering an area of 1.24 million square kilometres? Apparently, this area is slightly more than the areas of Uganda, Senegal, Eritrea, Malawi, Benin, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, Guinea Bissau, Lesotho, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Rwanda, Djibouti, Swaziland, The Gambia, Cape Verde, Comoro, Mauritius, Sao Tome and Principe, and The Seychelles combined, which cover about 1.234 million square kilometers.

Clearly, Mali is a big country with 7,243 kilometers of borderline shared with Algeria, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Niger. The northern area where the armed conflict is concentrated covers an area of about 652,000 square kilometers, the size of Afghanistan.

Population-wise, the former French colony is inhabited by about 16.3 million people, which is more than the 15.5 million people of Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, Guinea Bissau, Gabon, Mauritius, Swaziland, Djibouti, Comoro, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, and The Seychelles, the 14 least populous countries on the continent. No doubt this is a big African country.

About 90 per cent of Malians are Muslims, and come from less than ten major ethnic groupings of West Africa namely the Mande, Bambara, Malinke and Sarakole which make up half of the population; then the Fulani making up 17 per cent, Voltaic constituting 12 per cent, Songhai accounting for 6 per cent, and the Tuareg who together with the Moor make up a tenth of the population. The remaining five per cent consists of a few smaller ethnic groups.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of impoverished Mali is about $10.6 billion, which means according to Forbes magazine there are at least 80 billionaires in the world each one making more than the nation of Mali, one of them Nigerian Aliko Dangote (55) with a net worth $11.2 billion.

Politically, Mali was becoming a stable democracy after a disappointing start just like other African countries. Economically, the country had already overtaken Tanzania as the third largest gold producer in Africa, assuming the reports about gold production in Tanzania are not tempered with. Things were not that much bad.

Then suddenly, in January, the Tuareg from all corners of the Sahara desert operating under the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) invaded the country. Within three months they had declared a secular independent state of Azawad, literally meaning “the Land of the Nomads.” Evidently, the Tuareg didn’t want an Islamic state.

The Tuareg invasion came from the fallout of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime which had secured the Tuareg for decades giving them the opportunity to serve in the Libyan armed forces. But before the formation of the unrecognized state of Azawad, the military junta overthrew the government in the capital Bamako in March, a month before presidential elections.

According to the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, as African governments were pressing the junta to give up power, which they succeeded, Iyad Ag Ghali, known as the “Lion of the Desert”, an Islamist commander who was trained by Gadhafi in the 1980s, formed Ansar Dine, a radical religious movement determined to turn Mali into a strict Islamic republic. Manned by sympathetic fighters from neighboring countries, Ansar Dine quickly fought off the Azawad fighters and occupied northern Mali.

The emergence of Ansar Dine, which means “Defenders of Faith”, was the beginning of the bigger problem as three sides, including the Bamako government and Azawad fighters, were now fighting for the control of an “Afghanistan” within Mali. As things became worse, ECOWAS began considering military intervention, an idea that received blessings from the AU immediately, though initially not well received by the UN and the global powers.

Now everyone is talking about the option of military intervention before things get completely out of hand as the Islamists have already set up a makeshift Islamic state destroying ancient historical sites, chopping-off people’s limbs for minor offences like petty theft, and sentencing unmarried couples to death. Northern Mali, the home of the Fulani and the Songhai ethnic groups now smells of blood.

France and the US have already promised to assist in every way except sending their troops, while the UN is waiting for the AU, ECOWAS and the weak Malian government to come up with a specific peace plan that will include elections. So far, according to the AU military intervention will occur within weeks, not months. Let us hope African states will again demonstrate a resolve the way they are doing in Somalia currently.