Rethinking the sahelo-saharan space

In light of current events in the Sahel, the international community is gradually becoming aware of the need for a comprehensive approach to security in the sub-region. We must therefore insistently remind it that this approach must necessarily involve the definitive resolution of the conflict that has pitted the populations of the regions concerned against the central states of Mali and Niger for fifty years.

The massive intervention hatched last year and made effective as of January 11, 2013, to reconquer Azawad and place it back under Mali’s authority is a strong political act that de facto places France at the heart of the antagonisms shaking the Sahelo-Saharan space. Long ignored by the international community, the conflict opposing these regions to the central states of Niger and Mali is beginning to arouse a certain interest thanks to the war declared against the jihadists established in the region for over ten years. Indeed, the opportunistic emergence of these groups obscures the understanding of ordinary tensions that unfortunately are at the origin of the current situation in Mali.

Since the creation by the French colonial administration of Niger and the territory that Modibo Keïta baptized Mali, the populations inhabiting the north of these two countries have never ceased to claim their right to be truly associated with the political and economic management of these states. This demand, which has always been considered completely incongruous, has allowed the central power to regularly organize terrible reprisals against civilian populations. This situation has left those who have carried it for decades no other choice than that of arms to make themselves heard.

Today, a geopolitical reconfiguration of this space seems inevitable in order to draw lessons from the failure of post-colonial systems and to face the current challenges of the sub-region. Stability and security in the Sahel inevitably go through the resolution of the Tuareg question in Mali and Niger.

Latest developments

France has therefore decided to commit its army to the Sahel in an attempt to contain the progression of jihadist ideology. This intervention is all the more spectacular because its theater is a region whose sufferings have long been ignored by the international community. France, after having drawn the current borders of Niger and present-day Mali, had set up political systems at the time it renounced its colonial pretensions, to which it transferred all powers. These new administrations were thus built around certain established bodies, in particular the army, which thus monopolized the institutions of the new states, totally excluding communities whose traditional territories had nevertheless been arbitrarily integrated into these new countries. Over time, we have had to admit that France had not seen fit, and had no intention of doing so, to organize follow-up and thus care about the interests of the populations and peoples whose future it had thereby and for a long time mortgaged. The colonial administration left behind states to be built whose populations had not freely chosen to share a common national project.

A trapped situation that the new Nigerien and Malian elites—created out of whole cloth at the time of these independences, and thus often not at all or barely rooted in the very terroir of the societies that were to compose these states—have never been able to defuse. The various Tuareg rebellions have been strong signs of this malaise. The malgovernance that has characterized these states has also largely prevented an awareness of these political elites, seemingly still in apprenticeship, from coming to light. The French umbrella has allowed Niger and Mali to stifle Tuareg demands by covering them up, notably on the international scene, even when massive human rights violations were committed by the armies of these countries against civilian populations.

Today, the birth of a new international jihadism and its arrival in the sub-region have changed the game and are disrupting through their consequences—which can no longer be hidden as they are so tragic—the very primary, and therefore very comfortable, frameworks elaborated by the official international community in order not to have to intervene. However, jihadist ideology remains an opportunistic phenomenon that poorly masks the political problems resulting from Mali’s inability to make its ethnocultural communities coexist in an equitable and peaceful manner, among other things.

Today, France’s return to its former colonies and the dimension taken by its commitment in the Sahel constitute a major event that will inevitably raise the question not only of its historical responsibility, but also of its role as a tutelary power over Mali and Niger.

However, the French intervention risks worsening the situation if it is not conducted with discernment and respect for local populations. Indeed, a military presence directed against the legitimate demands of the populations of Azawad risks precipitating the entire sub-region into a generalized conflict, from Chad to Mauritania. The abuses committed by the Malian army against Tuareg, Moor, and Peuhl civilian populations under the eyes of the French army risk giving rise to a certain distrust among these populations regarding French policy in the sub-region.

Proof has been made that the Malian and Nigerien armies are structurally incapable of securing the Sahelo-Saharan space. This is due to the very nature of their recruitment and the mismatch between these armies and the populations inhabiting the regions concerned. The experience of the past two decades has shown armies accustomed to behaving like occupying armies, and the populations still remember the massive massacres of the 1990s perpetrated in Mali and Niger.

Political uncertainties

If the Malian state has failed in its primary mission, which is to make the different peoples composing its population coexist in justice and equity, it is hard to see how it can legitimately rely on this failure to impose any solution on Azawad.

Consequently, the success of the French intervention can only be effective if the political problems that favored the emergence of armed groups in this region are genuinely taken into account. Traffickers of all kinds know that only the local Tuareg, Moor, Arab, Kountas, and Tubu communities can prevent them from engaging in their illicit activities. And, in the central part of this Sahelo-Saharan space, the Tuareg community is unavoidable in facing these threats that destabilize the sub-region.

Perspectives

Today, Mali and Niger must face facts and agree to question what has not worked for fifty years and to create the conditions for a fresh start in their governance system. This would put an end to cycles of violence and increase their capacity to face new challenges in terms of democracy, development, and security.

It is nevertheless curious to rejoice over the awakening of peoples through what has come to be called “the Arab springs” while blocking the expression of the peoples of the Sahel, who aspire to better governance and respect for their rights.

The international community would be well advised to accompany the increasingly numerous voices making themselves heard to place the rights of peoples at the center of an unavoidable geopolitical reconfiguration in this region. It would be illusory to want to stabilize the Sahelo-Saharan space without taking into account the legitimate aspirations of the peoples living there. Azawad is no exception to the rule.

The refoundation of the Malian state constitutes an absolute imperative to put an end to the instability that fosters insecurity and the proliferation of more or less mafiosi armed groups. The objective of this refoundation is the establishment of institutions adapted to the sociocultural realities of the country. Each community should feel at home in its traditional territory in a federal system or autonomy as broad as possible. This autonomy would take up the achievements of the National Pact to make explicit the special status and thus consecrate federalism in Mali or the autonomy of Azawad.

The dimension embodied by the MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) today is inescapable for the sustainable stabilization and securing of the Sahelo-Saharan space. Indeed, the legitimacy and reality of the demands carried by the MNLA cannot be diminished by the shortcomings and organizational problems this Movement currently encounters. Even if the latter were to disappear like others before it, this question will remain; other Tuaregs and Azawadvis will pick up the torch as long as the populations of this Sahelo-Saharan space are not recognized in their identities and in their rights over the lands of their ancestors. The MNLA is more representative of the entire Tuareg people than the Malian government is of all the communities composing the population of Azawad!

For the Tuareg movement, it is above all about shaking off the domination of the political system in force for over fifty years in Mali and Niger, which has failed to take into account the diversity and aspirations of the populations concerned.

If the Tuaregs continue to be marginalized and massacred amidst the general indifference of the international community, they will end up making a pact with the devil to exist and fight those they have identified as their true enemies. The Tuareg movement is in a position to weigh in on the sub-region and assume a major role in the stabilization and securing of this space. The Tuareg movement’s primary vocation is not to fight Islamism, but if this political current were to merge into violent groups wishing to impose by force an order contrary to the interests of the Tuareg people, then it must be fought.

The Tuareg people, through its emerging youth, is beginning to become aware of its interests and to take a more pragmatic look at the geopolitical evolutions of the sub-region. France, which at the time of decolonization allowed—doubtless more out of indifference, synonymous at this level with irresponsibility, than Machiavellianism—to sideline the Tuaregs from the political management of the new states into which it had integrated their territories, owes it to itself today to contribute to repairing this injustice. Should it persist in wanting only to reimpose by force the frameworks it had already put in place in the aftermath of independences, it would find itself out of step with the march of time and that which the Tuaregs refuse to abandon: their future!

Human rights violations

The Malian state and the leaders who currently illegitimately claim to take charge of it must answer before the ICC for crimes committed against Tuareg, Moor, and Peuhl populations for fifty years. This is one of the major conditions for any reconciliation between Azawad and Mali. Any arrangement that ignores this requirement is doomed to failure.

Proponents of “one and indivisible Mali” do not realize the absurdity of their slogan, while day by day they demonstrate their inability to denounce the massacres of Tuareg, Moor, and Peuhl civilian populations. The incapacity of the Malian political class is not even limited to the foregoing, which is already enormous; it also proves incapable of imagining, even on paper, a crisis exit that would be the fruit of consultation between the various communities of the country. In the absence of clearly identified institutions and state, the international community must assume its responsibilities and set up a neutral provisional administration capable of organizing the refoundation of the state and its institutions.

Let us recall that the use of a few Tuareg personalities by the Malian political system does not constitute a significant element in itself. This method has already been used extensively in a classic context of clientelism, opportunism, and fatalism inherent to any conflict of this type. These Tuaregs had chosen to blindly support a policy that was essentially directed against their community and of which they will in the long run be the biggest losers themselves.