Recent news reports concerning the coup in Mali two days ago reflect the western journalistic trend to lightly – and ignorantly – brand native peoples as terrorists – especially if some government merely asserts it is so. For those of you who missed the news, a military coup took place in the western African nation of Mali two days ago. The coup was staged by army members who thought the government was too ‘soft’ in fighting Tuareg separatists in the northern parts of the country. And, as the pattern mentioned above suggests, those responsible for the coup have wasted no time in branding the Tuaregs as terrorists and in league with al Qaeda, in an effort to garner western support. And, true to form, much of the mainstream media have simply repeated what has been asserted without any sense of history of the area or context.
And so, a bit of that history is in order.
The Tuareg are a nomadic people, made famous by their indigo-colored clothing which often stains their skin, earning them the name “the Blue Men of the Sahara” by 20th Century writers. Numbering between 5 and 6 million, they inhabit the interior and most inhospitable parts of the Sahara Desert, traditionally serving as caravan guides and security, trading in salt and supplies across the Sahara between the Mediterranean north and the ‘greener and wetter’ lands to the south, and herding goats. Ethnically they are Berbers, not Arabs, and, though nominally Muslim, their religion is a syncretistic combination of Islam, animist and even Christian elements. As is necessary to their survival in the Saharan environment, they are a pragmatic rather than a theologically-driven people.
The Tuareg are well-known for their highly elaborate silver crosses which have become fairly common as western jewelry in recent years; the men, not the women, wear the traditional veil in this society. And Tuareg women own the family tents, the most prized form of property in the society.
When European powers carved up Africa, France took control of much of their homelands, calling the territory “French West Africa.” When this territory was carved up into the nations that make up the modern map of Africa in the 1960s, the Tuareg found their traditional homeland – “the Agadez” - divided between Mali, Niger, and Algeria. A smaller number of Tuareg were drawn into Libya as well.
Modern nations don’t like nomadic peoples. Nomads don’t pay taxes and are difficult to control. The Tuareg have endured ethnic discrimination and marginalization ever since the Agadez was carved up. In some places their language, Tamashek, was outlawed. The Arabs to the north look down on the Tuaregs as primitive people who have little affection for law and order, and see their religious belief system as apostate. To the south, the Black-African majority states have sought to shut out the light-skinned Tuaregs from both government and business. In Niger, for example, the government chose to invite Chinese workers to operate a uranium mine in the Agadez, leaving the local Tuaregs without jobs and saddled with pollution of their land and limited water supplies.
Draw new political lines. Fence them in. Outlaw their language. Discriminate based on ethnicity. Dominate with Military Force.
Isn’t this a story we’ve seen time and time again? The story of the Native Americans? The Gaelic-speaking Irish? Palestinians?
And so, lacking jobs and an ability to engage in their traditional lifestyles, the Tuareg – particularly in Mali – have been seeking their own homeland in an on-again, off-again rebellion for the last half-century.
Meanwhile, in Libya, Colonel Gaddhafi seized the opportunity to hire thousands of Tuaregs into his private militia. When the Gaddhafi regime fell, these trained – and armed - Tuareg returned to the Agadez. The number of returning Tuareg fighters range somewhere between 800 and 4,000. While all journalistic and political eyes were focused on the events in Libya, the returning warriors joined other independence-minded Tuareg and formed the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (Mouvement National de Liberation de l'Azawad) or MNLA. And the MNLA had some immediate success.
In January of this year, the MNLA routed the Malian army, which lost complete control of the Azawad region to the Tuareg. More than 1,000 Malian troops were killed, and their defeat was accompanied by the humiliation of having run out of ammunition. The MNLA issued a press release stating that it aimed "to free the people of Azawad from the illegal occupation of its territory by Mali". As indicated earlier, the Azawad region covers not only northern Mali, but northern Niger and southern Algeria as well. Suddenly, multiple African states - and the west - have become attentive and nervous. Within the last few weeks, the MNLA has been reinforced by Tuareg deserting the Malian army and young recruits from within the region. Estimates put the former as high as 1,500 and the latter at 500. The accompanying map shows Tuareg gains in the last 3 months.
In the wake of the success by the Tuareg, remaining members of the Malian army, bitter over their stunning defeat, turned their wrath on their own government, ousting Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and his cabinet and installing a military junta openly hostile to the Tuareg.
Which brings me to the most important part of this Blogpost.
Governments around the world are beginning to issue cautious statements about the overall situation. Journalists unfamiliar with the region are reaching for any quote they can get. And the new junta in Mali is issuing statements pleading for legitimacy. In all of this flurry, the Tuareg are being called everything from Islamicists to Al Qaeda allies.
They are neither.
They are, like so many indigenous people, asserting their right to their own homeland, one not drawn up by colonial powers and imposed on them.
One journalist who knows the situation well is Ben Barber, who has written about the developing world since 1980 for Newsday, the London Observer, the Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Times and USA TODAY. Yesterday, he was a bright spot in an otherwise foggy and murky reporting flurry, when he wrote:
“The United States, which has sent special forces, trainers and other troops to Mali and the region to fight Al Qaida, should lead diplomatic efforts to bring the Tuareg and the governments of Mali, Niger and Algeria, to the table with concrete proposals.
The Tuareg should have some say in the administration of resources in the desert. They should get access to land with water as they move their flocks away from a drought-affected region. They should be invited to join local governments, police and armies as equal citizens of their home countries. And a pan-Tuareg cultural or trade union could be formed to facilitate their nomadic journeys and preserve their unique lifestyle.”
Any effort to ignore the legitimate demands of the Tuareg can only become a self-fulfilling prophecy: at best, the 60-year old instability will continue to rock the region; but at worst, an ill-informed anti-Tuareg western response may drive yet another indigenous people right into the arms of the terrorists that we insist we are trying to defeat.
(For a similar story regarding the Sahwari people, see Morocco's Occupation of the Sahwari People... on this Blog)
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