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Africa North

Mali Tuareg Rebels Appoint Town Chief in Show of Strength

2013-03-29

[An Nahar] A rebel group seeking independence in northern Mali said on Thursday it had appointed an "administrator" to Kidal in a show of strength after French-led troops liberated the town from an Islamist occupation. The Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA) told Agence La Belle France Presse that Mohamed Ali Ag Albessaty, previously a local government functionary, would serve as its top official for Kidal. "We have appointed an administrator to manage the city of Kidal," Mohamed Ag Mamoud, an MNLA leader, told AFP from the town of Tessalit, near the Algerian border. The MNLA captured Kidal, 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) northeast of the capital Bamako, on March 30 last year as part of a Tuareg rebellion for the independence of northern Mali, which they call Azawad. The movement then took the towns of Gao and Timbuktu, declaring the independence of Azawad from Mali, but they quickly lost control to Islamist militias who had formerly been their allies. French and Chadian forces moved into the town to bring it back under government control at the end of January and it serves as a base for French and Chadian troops fighting Islamists holed up in the region's Ifoghas mountains. The appointment will be seen by the government as an act of defiance by the MNLA, which has said it would oppose any move into Kidal by the Malian army, accused by the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... of rights abuses against Tuareg and Arab communities, often confused with jihadists. The Islamic Movement of Azawad (MIA), a Tuareg group which broke away from Ansar Dine, one of the three armed Islamist groups which occupied northern Mali for several months in 2012, told AFP it had agreed to the appointment.

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Africa North

Thousands March in Mali to Urge Armed Intervention against Islamists

2012-10-12

[An Nahar] Several thousand people marched Thursday in Mali's capital Bamako to call for armed intervention by a west African force to help wrest back the vast north from armed Islamist groups. The demonstrators carried banners and placards expressing support for the Malian army, Prime Minister Cheick Modibo Diarra and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is preparing to send troops if it gets the backing of the United Nations ...what started out as a a diplomatic initiative, now trying to edge its way into legislative, judicial, and executive areas... and western countries. One of the banners read: "Captain Sanogo, all soldiers to the front." Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo was behind a March 22 coup that toppled president Amadou Toumani Toumani Toure and caused chaos, opening the way for the Islamists, including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who are applying hardline Islamic sharia law in northern cities under their control. Sanago stepped down from power last April, but remains influential in Bamako, where his men are accused of many human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... abuses. Other slogans and banners targeted Tuareg rebels of the separatist National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA), which launched an offensive in the north in January. At first allied to the Islamists, the MNLA was swiftly overpowered and sidelined by them. A draft resolution drawn up by La Belle France and its partners on the U.N. Security Council urges ECOWAS and the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... to make clear within 30 days what means they would use to reconquer the north of Mali.

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Africa North

Tauregs declare independence

2012-04-07

BAMAKO: Mali's Tuareg rebels, who have seized control of the country's distant north in the chaotic aftermath of a military coup in the capital, declared independence yesterday of their Azawad nation. "We, the people of the Azawad," they said in a statement published on the rebel website, "proclaim the irrevocable independence of the state of the Azawad starting from this day, yesterday, April 6, 2012." Thanks to the once-Nazi sponsored Volkswagon motorwerks, the Tuaregs already have a namesake luxury/performance SUV! Why not a country too? The military chiefs of 13 of Mali's neighbors met Thursday in Ivory Coast to hash out plans for a military intervention to push back the rebels in the north, as well as to restore constitutional rule after disgruntled soldiers last month stormed the presidential palace and sent the democratically elected leader into hiding. The confusion in the capital created an opening for the rebels in the north, who have been attempting to claim independence for more than 50 years. France, which earlier said it is willing to offer logistical support for a military invasion, announced yesterday that it does not recognize the new Tuareg state. The new 2012 VW Touareg Rebel edition, in Afrika Korps green. "A unilateral declaration of independence that is not recognized by African states means nothing for us," said French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet. The European Union concurred. "We will certainly not accept this declaration. It's out of the question," said Richard Zinc, the head of the European Union delegation in Bamako. Two tuts... The traditionally nomadic Tuareg people have been fighting for independence for the northern half of Mali since at least 1958, when Tuareg elders wrote a letter addressed to the French president asking their colonial rulers to carve out a separate homeland called "Azawad" in their language. Instead the north, where the lighter-skinned Tuareg people live, was made part of the same country as the south, where the dark-skinned ethnic groups controlled the capital and the nation's finances. The Tuaregs accuse the southerners of marginalizing the north and of concentrating development, including lucrative aid projects, in the south. They fought numerous rebellions attempting to wrestle the north free, but it wasn't until a March 21 coup in Bamako toppled the nation's elected government that the fighters were able to make significant gains. In a three-day period last week they seized the three largest cities in the north as soldiers dumped their uniforms and retreated. Their independence declaration cited 50 years of misrule by the country's southern-based administration and was issued by the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, whose army is led by a Tuareg senior commander who fought in the late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's military. The group is secular and its stated aim is creating Azawad. However, they were helped by a hard-line faction, Ansar Dine. They are now attempting to apply Islamic law to Mali's moderate north, including in the fabled tourist destination of Timbuktu, where women have been told to wear veils and not be seen in public with males who are not relatives. In all three of the major cities in the north, residents say they do not know which of the two factions has the upper hand. In the city of Gao, from where the NMLA declaration of independence was written, a resident said that it appeared that the Islamist faction was in control, not the NMLA. "I heard the declaration but I'm telling you the situation on the ground. We barely see the NMLA. The people we see are the Salafis," said the young man, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. "I can't tell which group they are exactly, but we know they are the hard-liners because of their beards. They are the people in control of Gao. I'm right near the Algerian consulate right now which they have taken control of and they are here. They are armed and other are in the back of their pickup trucks," he said.

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Africa North

Mali rebels declare cease-fire after seizing north

2012-04-06

Long story but more detail, including another rebel faction run by al-Qaeda sympathizers. BAMAKO, Mali: The rebel group that recently seized control of Mali's remote north in a maneuver that effectively partitioned the country in two announced a cease-fire Thursday, saying they had reached their military goal. Moussa Ag Assarid, a spokesman for the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, said the group was declaring the cease-fire to allow humanitarian aid to resume in the north, where shops were looted. In Ivory Coast, the military chiefs of the nations bordering Mali met Thursday to hash out their plan for a military intervention. Deputy Ivorian Defense Minister Paul Koffi Koffi said military action is being considered both to reverse the coup that deposed Mali's president last month, as well as to preserve Mali's territorial integrity after the rebel advance in the north. He instructed the army chiefs of the 15 nations in West Africa to draft a detailed plan, including how many troops each intends to send, how quickly they could ready them and what logistical means they plan to contribute. There's a plan that will die quietly... In Paris, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France is ready to help African forces on a logistical level. The chief of staff of the French army, Adm. Edouard Guillaud, traveled Thursday to Burkina Faso to discuss details with the president. The rebels launched their insurgency in January, saying they wanted to establish an independent Tuareg homeland in the north, known as the Azawad. You boys definitely need a new name for your homeland... They only succeeded in taking small towns until March 21, when disgruntled soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the distant capital of Bamako, overthrowing the democratically elected president. In the confusion that followed the coup, the rebels launched a new offensive and succeeded in taking the capitals of the three main northern provinces, including Kidal, which fell last Friday, Gao on Saturday and Timbuktu on Sunday. "The NMLA has reached the end of its military operations for the liberation of the territory of the Azawad," said Assarid, speaking by telephone from Paris. "Since the day before yesterday when our units reached Douentza which we consider to be the frontier of the Azawad," he said, referring to a town some 600 kilometers (375 miles) from Bamako, "the military offensive is declared over." Assarid's group is the largest rebel group involved in the offensive, but it is not the only one, and in the three main towns in the north, local officials say they cannot be sure which of the rebel armies has the upper hand. Western observers have expressed concern over the presence of an Islamist faction called Ansar Dine, which planted its ominous black flag in all three of the provincial capitals. This week, the group announced it was imposing Sharia law in the ancient city of Timbuktu. The mayor of Timbuktu said nearly all of the estimated 300 Christians based in the city fled after Ansar Dine's spiritual chief Iyad Ag Ghali gave an interview on local radio outlining the tenets of Sharia law: Women are to be covered at all times, thieves will have their hands cut off and adulterers will be stoned. "The problem for us is that we don't know who is the master of our town," said the mayor, Ousmane Halle, who explained that the Islamist faction had taken over the city's military camp, while the secular rebels were stationed at the airport. "What I deplore is the departure of the Christian community," he said. The city has been honored as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its collection of ancient Islamic manuscripts, propagating a moderate interpretation of the religion. "Many said to me that they are obliged to leave," he said. "And they are right. I cannot guarantee their safety. And these are people that have lived side by side with us for centuries." Once a diplomat assigned to Mali's consulate in Saudi Arabia, ah-ha... the Islamist leader Ag Ghali used to be in regular contact with the United States Embassy in Bamako, according to diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. For years, he was a Tuareg rebel leader and acted as a go-between when foreigners were kidnapped by a branch of Al-Qaeda based in the north of Mali. Although he is believed to be in touch with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, there is no evidence that he himself has taken part in terrorist activities. The imposition of Sharia has worried analysts and country watchers. Besides Timbuktu, the Ansar Dine faction is accused of destroying bars in Gao and Kidal, and of forcing shopkeepers there to take down pictures of unveiled women. On Thursday, gunmen seized seven workers from Algeria's consulate in Gao. Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told the state news agency Thursday the group was forced to leave the consulate and taken to an unknown location. He added that the government was mobilized to ensure their release as soon as possible. In Abidjan, where the military chiefs were meeting, the head of Ivory Coast's army said that the possible link between the rebels and terrorism is reason enough for a possible military intervention. "The advance of the National Liberation Movement of Azawad, associated with terrorist groups like AQIM and Ansar Dine and others, gives sufficient reason to the entire region to be put on notice," said Gen. Soumaila Bakayoko.

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