Mali’s coup—first thoughts
March 23, 2012 By 4 Comments
Gregory Mann, associate professor of history at Columbia University in New York City,* writes a guest post for Africa is a Country on the coup in Mali:
They say no press is bad press. False. When Mali makes the papers, it’s usually for the best reasons — Oumou Sangaré, Tinariwen, or Amadou and Miriam are coming to town. Lately, it’s for the worst — rebel attacks in the North, a mutiny, and now a coup.
The dust hasn’t settled yet, and no one knows which way the wind is really blowing, but a few things are worth saying about the mutiny and the coup that rocked Bamako over the last few days. Even in a hazy moment, a few things can be clear.
First, don’t believe the hype. The junta says they want to restore democracy. Bogus. Democracy in Mali is in pretty good shape, all things considered (i.e., bearing in mind that the central government has effectively no control over the northern half of the country). Presidential elections were planned for next month, and everyone expected them to go forward.
The coup was not intended to secure democracy, but to prevent it. If the people were to go to the polls in April and elect a new president, whoever won would be seen as legitimate, both at home and abroad. If there was going to be a coup, it had to be now. Better (and easier) to topple an increasingly unpopular incumbent than a newly elected president. They were running out of time. That’s why in addition to members of the current government, the junta locked up some of the candidates.
There is a rumor that ATT (Amadou Toumani Touré) — the popularly elected incumbent — was going to stage a ‘coup from above’ and hang on to office in spite of the fact that his constitutionally mandated second term was up. That rumor has been around since before “Barack Obama” became a household name. It’s categorically false. ATT has been ready to go for some time now — both his critics and his partisans recognize that he’s tired, and he has already given up power once, in 1992, before being elected in 2002.
Second, don’t believe the other hype. The Foreign Minister of France, the former colonial power, came out early to condemn the coup and to call for rapid elections. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except the elections were already scheduled and the campaign underway. The coup on the other hand, was not yet settled — so why treat it as a fait accompli? France — which will take the lead in the European response — is no neutral actor here, even if it’s hard to know what game it is playing. The more cautious African Union and American responses — condemning violence, seeking consultation — are deliberately tepid, but justified, and they don’t impose a conclusion where one doesn’t exist.
All that said, there are questions, too.
First, where is ATT? The word on the street in Mali — what I hear when I call people there — is that he’s in the American embassy. False, say the Americans. He’s at the paratroopers’ base, someone in his entourage apparently told RFI. That’s possible, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the embassy and the base are practically next door to each other. And the Americans generally like ATT, even if they wish he were more willing to take the fight to those in the North who claim al Qaeda links or Salafist inclinations.
Second, what’s the link with the rebellion in the North? Some have already said that the Tuareg nationalist rebels in the North — the MNLA — wanted to forestall national elections, or at least to preclude the possibility of elections being held in the Sahara, in order to bolster their argument that they are excluded from national political life. Like the fractured and venerable Tuareg nationalist movement from which it emerged, the MNLA is more attentive to its image than a prom queen. France is said to be a suitor, with the idea that courting Tuareg nationalists will draw them away from the Salafist splinter group (Iyad ag Ghali’s Ansar Dine) that emerged alongside them in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s fall. ATT’s northern strategy of avoiding a fight even when it was brought to him would seem to partake of the same logic — better to split the movement by negotiating than to unite it by fighting it. If that was indeed his strategy, it relied on the slow expenditure of two resources he didn’t really have: time (either to let events unfold or to hand over power in May) and other people’s patience.
The undeniable link with the Northern rebellion is that the army was fed up with being told not to fight. To the shock of the soldiers, several garrisons in the North were lost to MNLA attacks, and some were given up without a fight. To their horror, in Anguelhoc defeated soldiers were massacred, their throats slit after being taken prisoner. This atrocity is disputed — some deny it occurred, others argue over who committed it. But the army believes it, and the soldiers’ wives and widows who marched in protest last month surely played a major role in pushing their husbands — or their late husbands’ comrades — to take the fight to the government if the government wouldn’t let them take it to the Tuareg. This is not new, only more dramatic. In 2009, in an earlier episode, Bamako was abuzz with rumors that the soldiers wanted ATT to be more aggressive in the North. Some were clearly holding him responsible for the deaths of the comrades in the North — thus the popular ring tone, recorded from a radio call-in show “ATT ye faforoden,” which translates loosely as “ATT is his father’s balls.”
Third, who’s playing whom? Some researchers claim that at least one of the major political parties is backing the junta (one of the minor gadfly parties has already announced its support). Hard to know, and harder to parse. But the soldiers will need civilians willing to work with them, in whatever form they hope to run the country. Khaki is out of fashion, and the soldiers will need civilian faces to present to the world. So, who is whose beard? The answer to this question will play out in the weeks and months to come.
A couple of final comments.
Mali’s a poor country, and its internal inequalities are becoming ever more profound. The coup is not going to help, not only because the usual suspects (France, EU, World Bank…) have announced a suspension of aid. Mali in the last ten years has begun to be able to fill the role of a regional economic hub that its geography and history would suggest is a natural one. I don’t only mean the investments from South Africa, Canada, and Asia. I mean the money from Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal and the steady investments from Mali’s diaspora in Europe, the U.S., Congo, and so many other places. That’s the money you don’t want to scare away. Anyone on the Left who thinks that the coup will clean up political life or re-orient Mali’s neoliberal path needs to step back a bit. Every junta speaks a populist language — it’s the only one available to them. But in circumstances like these, soldiers don’t take orders from civilians.
Last, watch out for Monday. There has been a lot of talk of “democracy” in relation to this coup, but precious little time or place for the people. A moment is coming. On March 26, 1991, as a young lieutenant colonel, ATT arrested Mali’s president, General Moussa Traore, and put an end to days of terror in which soldiers had shot hundreds of protestors in the streets. ATT was Mali’s hero then, and when he organized elections and handed over power, he became a hero across the continent and beyond. Twenty-one years is a long time, but the anniversary of ATT’s coup is a national holiday. Who will march this year?
* Mann is a historian of francophone West Africa. He is currently working on a book project entitled ‘The End of the Road: Nongovernmentality in the West African Sahel’. His award-winning book ‘Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the 20th century’ was published by Duke University Press in 2006.
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Pentagon Trained
Mali Coup Leader
March 23, 2012
The leader of an attempted military coup in Mali was trained to be an officer in the United States by the Pentagon, U.S. News & World Report has learned.
Capt. Amadou Sanogo completed his basic officer training on U.S. soil, and participated in "several" other Washington-funded international military education programs, Patrick Barnes, a U.S. Africa command spokesman says. U.S. military personnel conducted Sanogo's basic officer training courses, Barnes confirms.
The Pentagon has suspended "any planned military equipment or training programs to the Malian military" while defense officials wait and see how the coup attempt plays out, Barnes says.
[Senate Measure Urges U.S. Help in Effort to Nab Joseph Kony]
A senior Defense Department official said that all U.S. special operations forces in Mali are safe amid an attempt by Sanogo's rogue military forces to topple the east African nation's civilian government.
"We do have SOF personnel in country and they've ceased all activity," says a senior Pentagon official. "I don't know if they've departed, but as of [Thursday], they had not. Additionally, all were accounted for."
U.S. officials have condemned the coup and called for the restoration of Mali's civilian government.
>via: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/dotmil/2012/03/23/pentagon-trained-mali-coup...
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QADDAFI AND AL QAEDA:
WHAT’S BEHIND
THE COUP IN MALI?
Residents of Bamako, the capital of Mali, say that they didn’t see the coup coming. After a long night of gunfire in a battle between young, low-ranking government soldiers (most under the rank of captain) who had staged a mutiny and Presidential palace guards, the country underwent a radical regime change without anyone being completely aware of what had happened. Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure disappeared. In his place was a new military leadership, now in control of the state television channel, an unruly-looking bunch broadcasting a message to citizens: they had put an end to the “incompetent regime” of Toure. The soldiers, who call themselves the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State, said they’d let Malians know when it was safe for them to turn over rule to a democratic leader. The whereabouts of President Toure are still unknown, and the allegiances of more senior military officers are unclear.
To people who know little to nothing about Mali—south of Algeria, west of Niger, with about fifteen million people—news of the coup there is probably confusing. To people who have been to the nation and know more about its politics, the recent events are still confusing—and haunting.
President Toure, a former paratrooper, was planning to step down in mere weeks, after Mali’s Presidential election—a rare move on the continent, where too many leaders overstay their terms in office. He was elected in 2002, and was hardly known as a Muammar Qaddafi-type dictator. In 1991, he had seized power by force from a military dictator; a year later, he handed over power to a democratically elected president. Toure did have problems. The Tuareg, nomadic Saharan herders, dissatisfied with their land, political, and cultural rights, have fought for independence from Mali since the nineteen-sixties. The conflict has forced two hundred thousand people to leave their homes. Toure accuses the Tuareg of fighting alongside the North African branch of Al Qaeda, a claim they deny. Recently, Tuareg soldiers who fought for Qaddafi returned to Mali with more arms and a renewed sense of frustration.
Government soldiers were also frustrated. They complained of a lack of sufficient weapons and direction, as well as of being abandoned by Toure on the front lines as a Tuareg rebel group, the Azawad National Liberation Movement, repeatedly hit the Army in several northern towns. The United States has helped train the Malian Army as part of their wider offensive on Al Qaeda on the continent. And in a Brutus-esque turn of fate, those same U.S.-trained soldiers turned on a man who was one of the U.S.’s strongest allies in the region.
Al Qaeda-affiliated factions are a growing concern in West Africa; they are thought to be hiding in the empty deserts of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Algeria. The allegedly Al Qaeda-linked Boko Haram, in northern Nigeria, is a militant Islamist group avowedly against Western cultural influences and the southern Christian government. While I was there a few weeks ago, two European hostages were killed by a possible splinter cell of Boko Haram during a failed attempt by Nigerian and Britain troops to free them. Days later, Nigerians opened newspapers blasting fears of more Boko Haram attacks to find President Goodluck Jonathan urging them “not to despair” because his government is “winning the war against terror.” However, since Jonathan was elected, in 2011, Boko Haram’s campaign has only intensified.
But the Malian coup may have backfired. The soldiers claim that their reasons for mutiny lie in their desire to quell the rebellion in the vast, anarchic north. But as the soldiers try to complete their takeover and stamp out remaining support for the President, Tuareg rebels are advancing southward, taking over posts vacated by the coup-occupied army.
Photograph by Malin Palm/Reuters.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/03/tuareg-fighters-mali.html#ixzz1q08b5MGt
>via: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/03/tuareg-fighters-mali.html
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Africa’s Sahel Region:
Beyond the Mali Coup
The Sahel is fast becoming an international hotspot. A combination of Al-Qaeda bases, a Tuareg rebellion, and abundant resources have turned the region into a ticking time bomb.
Algiers – The military coup which overthrew the President of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure, reflects the fragile and tense situation in the Sahel region of Africa, which is increasingly heading into lawlessness.
This is the third in a series of violent leadership changes in the last four years in the Sahel. The first was a coup that overthrew President Sidi Mohamed Ould al-Sheikh Abdullah in Mauritania in the summer of 2008, the second coup overthrew Mamadou Tandja in Niger in February 2010, and of course there was the Libyan uprising which overthrew Muammar Gaddafi’s regime after eight months of war.
Experts on the African Sahel region believe it is one of the most volatile regions in the world.
Observers are predicting that that the area will likely be drawn into a prolonged conflict, because of its geographical and social character, its ethnic and religious makeup, and its many vital resources that are so attractive to regional and international powers.
For many decades, the region has witnessed continuous violent conflicts between the regimes in Mali and Niger, on the one hand, and armed Tuareg groups, on the other.
The Tuareg are inhabitants of the great Sahara desert. They are made up mainly of Berbers and constitute a minority in both countries.
Al-Qaeda found a natural refuge in the harsh terrain of the area, and set up training camps in northern Mali.The Tuareg are spread over at least seven countries in the region. At the beginning of the 1960s, when France withdrew from Mali and Niger, it left behind ticking time bombs by marginalizing the Tuareg.Left with no stake in the post-colonial system, the Tuareg have been vying for a role in the areas they live in for the last 50 years.
In addition, there was the rapid spread of Al-Qaeda in the area, after its activities in Afghanistan were curtailed.
Al-Qaeda found a natural refuge in the harsh terrain of the area, and set up training camps in northern Mali, launching tens of operations, mostly involving kidnapping foreigners for ransom.
Al-Qaeda’s activities were enough for several large European countries, most prominently France, Britain, Spain, and Italy to raise the banner of the “war on terror” in the region.
They demanded that Algeria, in particular, should carry out joint military operations with European forces to establish bases in places where the radical Islamist organization was active.
The Sahel countries rejected this offer and, in the summer of 2009, established the Joint Military Staff Committee of the Sahel Region, which included Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger.
It was made up of 75,000 soldiers with the guarantee of full aerial support by the Algerian air force.
The US gave its blessings to this move and offered aid to help launch it. This committee works in total coordination with Africom (the US Africa Command).
Intelligence reports have confirmed that large amounts of weapons from Gaddafi’s arsenal have fallen into the hands of Islamists and arms dealers.Washington gave Algeria the green light to do whatever it takes to limit Al-Qaeda activities in the region, including pursuing armed men into the territory of neighboring countries.Toure also asked Algeria to intervene directly in the north of Mali to establish security.
But to achieve this, the defensive nature of the Algerian army had to be changed, because it was legally prohibited from fighting outside its own territories.
It is likely that Algeria will make that change because it is the strongest regional power on every level.
It therefore must carry the largest burden in military terms to establish security and stability, particularly in light of the huge influx of weapons from Libya to Al-Qaeda in the revolution’s aftermath.
Intelligence reports have confirmed that large amounts of weapons from Gaddafi’s arsenal have fallen into the hands of Islamists and arms dealers.
They, in turn, have smuggled them into the north of Mali, where the main bases for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Sahara branch, are located.
To add to this explosive situation, the Sahel region of Africa is overflowing with resources that excite many different parties.
It posses large reserves of oil and gas (in Algeria, Libya, and Nigeria, for example), in addition to significant quantities of uranium and gold, not to mention one of the largest potential solar energy sources in the world.
Therefore, experts believe that the area will inevitably fall prey to regional and international competition that will only fuel local conflicts.
Although those who carried out the coup in Mali have justified their actions as an effort to establish security and stability in the country, experts believe that what happened is very much tied to increased regional and international meddling in the area.
Because of this, experts find it difficult to believe that what is happening in Bamako was not cleared by both Algiers and Paris – or at least one of them – because they are the biggest players on the ground at the moment.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
>via: http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/africa’s-sahel-region-beyond-mali-coup
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Coup in Mali:
The ‘Rats’ and ‘Dogs’
discussion continues
Another coup in Africa. Another decision by an elite group of citizens to take the fate of millions into their own hands. Another threat to peace and security on the African continent. Well here is the thing; it all begins with such events, a coup, a rebellion, a mutiny. Then it gets prolonged and for years we shall write about political instability in one or the other of the African countries affected.
In the beginning, as is the case with Mali, the UN or the AU or both will make statements about how terrible it is for something like this to happen then bide their time to see if the situation will calm down. The UN Security Council has called for the “immediate restoration of constitutional rule and the democratically elected government”. ECOWAS has said the soldiers’ behavior is reprehensible. The AU called it a’setback to the democratisation process in Mali.’
Then if the trouble continues for a while, the AU will suspend Mali’s membership and “continue to engage them to restore democratic governance.” And then the war with the rebels will continue and grow in intensity. One or such other Western powers will clandestinely give arms to the Touareg separatists to continue fighting the Malian government feeding their own economies on wars in Africa and then publicly condemn the protracted war and send peacekeepers to bring back sanity and ‘peace’ to the land of Mali. Then maybe the UN Security Council will meet to decide if they should pass a resolution for action, either to intervene-which is rare- or to send the perpetrators of crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court. And then China or Russia or the US will veto that decision. Civil society organizations will make a huge outcry and continue lobbying for action.
Meanwhile thousands will be losing their lives.Then if lucky, the conflict will abate. Then some young and inexperienced European and American citizens, in a KONY 2012 style, will come to Africa as ‘experts’ on Demobilisation, Disarmament and Repatriation, Transitional Justice and Peace building to Africa, paid huge sums of money because they are in ‘risk zones.’ They will purport to bring peace to Mali and the process and the cycle goes on and on and on.
That has happened before and it could happen again in Mali.
The reality is that for years, Africa has been riddled by these changes of government which are unconstitutional and chaotic. They chip away at any progress that could have been made in improving the governance patterns on our conflict and poverty ridden continent.
In this case, the coup by the military against the Malian government is said to have been started by the military’s anger and disgruntlement with the inadequacy of the government’s response to a rising separatist movement by Tuareg rebels in Northern Mali. This movement is alleged to have been boosted by the flow of arms remaining from the Libyan revolution. The rebellion began on 17 January. Many soldiers have been killed in the fighting and they claim that widows of the deceased have not been compensated.
Mali Coup-Credit Human Rights Watch
To refresh our memories a bit, in August 2011, when the Libyan- NATO assisted rebels took over Tripoli- Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi made a statement to the effect that the forces that defeated him were ‘rats’ and ‘dogs.’ I wrote an article questioning this statement and wondering who the real rats and dogs were. Now, Ghaddafi is dead. NATO has left Libya. The Transitional Council is in power and all should be well in Paradise park isn’t? But really no.
Why do I say so?
The story that began as just a Libyan story and a Libyan civil war has now become a real threat to peace and security in the whole Sahel region and the recent coup in Mali is evidence of that. On 19 March 2012, the African Conflict Prevention Programme of the Institute for Security Studies in their Daily Briefing gave a clear warning about the situation in Northern Mali and said;
“The demise of Gaddafi and the subsequent proliferation of arms in the region have fuelled rebellion and terrorist activities in West Africa and the Sahel region. One such negative outcome is the Touareg rebellion in Northern Mali, where the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) has launched an insurgency against the government in Bamako. It is believed that MNLA, made up of some 600 fighters, has been armed with sophisticated weapons acquired mainly from Libya or through the illicit arms proliferation channels that have emerged after the fall of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya… The rebellion has taken new threatening dimensions to the extent that MNLA is believed to have some territories under its control, as its fighters are well armed and better managed.”
Indeed their prediction was on point. However this coup has got me asking a lot of questions?
First, the warnings about the flow of arms from Libya to the Sahel region and warnings that this would lead to destabilisation of the region were widespread even before Gaddafi himself died and yet neither the NATO forces, the UN nor the AU Peace and Security Council took concrete steps to ensure the demilitarisation of this zone. Why was that?
Second, the irony of the coup having taken off immediately after an African Union Peace and Security Council Ministerial meeting, has got me wondering whether the African Union peace and security architecture is an effective tool for securing peace and security on the continent.
Third, the coup has got me wondering, how effective-if at all, are Declarations by the AU such as the one it made tow days ago noting that the Sahel region is faced with multiple challenges, linked to terrorism and transnational organised crime, proliferation of weapons, illicit trafficking and latent armed conflicts. The PSC noted that these challenges were compounded by the Libyan crisis, in particular the influx of hundreds of thousands of returnees, as well as the inflow of arms and ammunition from the Libyan arsenal, which provided a source of armament to terrorist and criminal groups in the region. But why did they wait until these arms were being used to actually do something?
Fourth, how much real and tangible change do the Communiques such as the one passed by the AU Peace and Security Council Ministerial meeting PSC/PR/COMM(CCCXI) bring to ensuring that the peace and security situation in Mali does not disintegrate further?
The coup itself is said to have been necessitated by the military’s wish to ‘defend the country’s security.’ Really? Can that be done? Can a coup restore the country’s security given Mali’s history?
A little history on Mali
* 19 November 1968, Moussa Traoré led a bloodless coup, organised elections and subsequently became President after winning 99% of the votes.
* Between 1979 and 1980, with Gen. Moussa Traoré in power there were 3 failed coups or coup attempts.
* 26 March 1991, Amadou Toumani Touré led a coup together with 17 other military officers, suspended the constitution, formed a transitional committee as its head and spearheaded the move towards a civilian government.
* 8 June 1992 Alpha Oumar Konaré won the election and became Mali’s third President
* Today, yesterday and for an uncertain period to come as the success or failure of the coup has not been determined President Amadou Toumani Touré is being ousted by the military.
I keep wondering and never get concrete answers. The complexities of this world, the global politics, the toll on human suffering all seem like one big maze where nothing is ever what it seems. And so the ‘rats’ and ‘dogs’ in the equation remain unclear. Is it NATO? Is it the UN? Is it the AU? Is it the rebels? Is it the government of Mali? Is it the Partitioners of Africa who gathered in Berlin centuries ago? Is it the drafters of neocolonialism? Is it it just us as African peoples? How will we ever have peace in Africa?