Communities in northern Mali are in need of humanitarian intervention. Pictured here are civilians in Niono, northern Mali. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Emmanuel Haddad
NIAMEY, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

When northern Malian refugees fled their country for Niger in 2012, they expected they would be able to return home shortly afterwards. But despite the armed intervention by the French army in the West African nation, few of the 50,000 Niger-based refugees are ready to leave for home just yet.

“Have you watched the news? Do you honestly think we can go home under these conditions?” asked Omar*, the vice-president of the Association for Malian Refugee Families in Niamey, the Nigerien capital.

Omar and thousands of others spilled across the border into neighboring countries in the months following the occupation of the country’s north by armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda back in April 2012.

Comprising a mix of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine, the rebels were able to hold on the territory until a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north last month.

Omar’s hometown, Gao, however, continues to be a scene of heavy fighting and suicide bombings ever since French and Malian troops took back the town last month.

Safety is not the only issue that’s keeping Omar from returning. “I am a civil servant in Gao and have no job to return to until the public service is back on its feet,” he said.

Yearning for home

Seydou*, a physical science teacher who fled Ansongo in eastern Mali in May last year, does not think it foolhardy to return home.

“All of us are thinking about going back,” he told IPS in the Nouveau Marché suburb of Niamey. “To be honest, I am longing to see Gao again. In fact, it’s an obsession. What’s more, my close relatives call me each week to encourage me to come home.”

But like Omar, he is concerned about how he will earn a living.

“I can’t go back to my teaching job if the schools have not reopened. In any event, there has been no bus service from Niamey to Mali since the French army began its military campaign in January.”

But Moussa*, the owner of a clothing store in the centre of Gao, has no such concerns and plans to make his way back home soon. “I am getting ready to leave. I have already started sending merchandise ahead to Gao.”

He is undeterred by the threat of the mines along the road to Gao or attacks by gangs of robbers.

“Things will calm down,” he said, citing reports of the army making house-to-house searches for members of MUJWA (the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), one of the militant groups.

“The militants would rather hand themselves in than risk the safety of the families who have sheltered them,” he believed.

Aminata*, the president of the Association of Refugee Families, lives in a home sheltering six Malian families. But she does not plan to return home while MUJWA is still in Gao.

“The Islamists want women to be like furniture in the house, to stop us from going outside without a veil, from living. So we left.”

Many “light skinned” refugees, in particular, worry that they will be the target of reprisals, she said, if they are identified with Ansar Dine Islamists or Members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg group that led a rebellion in the north shortly before the Islamists moved in early last year.

Pastoralists caught in the crossfire

But Mali’s rural pastoralists will be most at risk when they return home, according to Dodo Boureïma, the general secretary of the Association for the Development of Livestock Breeders.

“In northern Mali, pastoralists are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, armed robbers prey on them. On the other, the army accuses them of being a cover for the rebels to cross the border,” Boureïma told IPS.

“I even heard recently that a herder was shot by soldiers and his herd was set loose.”

Unlike urban refugees, the pastoralists might be forced to leave Niger at the start of the rainy season, he said. The organisation now has to plan how pastoralist will return to Bankilaré, in the northeast of Tillabéri on the Malian border.

“When the rains come in May or June, Nigerien farmers are likely to want them to leave, because the livestock might damage their crops and compromise their food security.”

“The pastoralists know they must be ready to move back anytime, but for now, both the Nigerien authorities and citizens understand the difficulties facing the people of northern Mali,” Boureïma continued.

*The names of Malian refugees have been changed at their request for their safety.

Communities in northern Mali are in need of humanitarian intervention. Pictured here are civilians in Niono, northern Mali. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Emmanuel Haddad
NIAMEY, Feb 5 2013 (IPS)

Communities in northern Mali are in need of humanitarian intervention following the recent military operations in Gao and Timbuktu, leading non-governmental organisations to call for deliveries of food aid, fuel and even currency notes.

“Since last year, Malians have had to face a triple crisis: firstly, drought and poor harvests; then a political crisis and finally open conflict when radical Islamist groups took control of the north,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commissioner responsible for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response during her visit to the capital Bamako, Jan. 22.

The European Commission has announced that it will release emergency aid worth 20 million euros for the West African country. 

The funds are highly needed, as residents of Gao and Timbuktu, the two largest cities of the north, are struggling to keep food on the table as supplies dry up.

“As French and Malian forces advanced on the Islamist militia…many of the key suppliers of food and fuel fled the area, especially in Gao,” international NGO Oxfam International said on Monday.

“There have been no food supplies in Gao for the past two weeks,” according to  Lucile Grosjean, the spokesperson for the international humanitarian organisation Action Against Hunger (ACF).

Since April 2012, northern Mali has been taunted by a coalition of armed groups composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and Ansar Dine, an Islamist group among Mali’s Tuareg population that live across the country’s southeast.

“Because of the occupation by the Jihadist groups, farmers have not had the support they normally receive from the Ministry of Agriculture to improve rice production on plantations on the banks of the Niger River,” Grosjean expained. “So the harvest has been much lower than in previous years.”

In addition, “many of the livestock markets are closed as movement between Algeria and Niger is difficult and the prices are not good.”

A spree of animal thefts has locals fearing for their livestock, according to Grosjean, while looting adds to the insecurity that still characterises the overall situation in Gao and the surrounding countryside, which suffered the brunt of the occupation by the MUJAO forces.

Since the Islamist groups took flight as a result of French air raids, Arab-owned stores were looted, leading Arab and Tuareg shop owners to close their doors and hide their stock till the situation improves, further adding to already limited food supplies.

“Goods have gone up 30 percent in general and 66 percent for fuel,” Grosjean said, adding that even if the supplies were there, there is simply no money left in Gao.

“After the closure of banks, traders went to Bamako to get cash to bring to the north, but since the start of the bombing, there has been nothing.”

The need for a political solution

In Timbuktu, the humanitarian situation is less alarming, but there is a great fear of reprisals. There, too, Arab- and Tuareg-owned businesses were looted on Jan. 29, following the arrival of French and Malian forces.

France has called for the rapid deployment of international observers to prevent inter-ethnic tensions from throwing northern Mali into chaos.

Meanwhile, the most urgent priority is to restore access to healthcare in northern Mali.

“We are waiting a day or two before we open the Gao health centre, as we are expecting a huge inflow of patients,” Grosjean said.

Aid to Mali, particularly from the European Union (EU), was suspended in March last year, when the Malian army ousted the democratically elected civilian government.

Following the onset of France’s so-far-successful offensive against the rebels, International governments, including the EU have pledged over 450 million dollars for Mali, as well as human resources to support the training of the country’s army.

Political leaders and international organizations are expected to meet in Brussels on Tuesday, Feb. 5 to discuss a political process that would lead to democratic elections and ways to strengthen development and human rights in Mali once political order has been restored, according to Reuters on Monday.

Malian Defense soldiers learn logistics with U.S. Army Special Forces. Credit: US Army Africa/CC-BY-2.0

By Emmanuel Haddad
NIAMEY, Jan 23 2013 (IPS)

A column of Chadian soldiers – members of the region’s most battle-hardened army – moved north from Niger’s capital Niamey on Tuesday to join French and African forces battling to free northern Mali from the grip of armed Islamic groups.

For the past year, the north of Mali – nearly two-thirds of the country – has been occupied by armed groups belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine. These groups have committed abuses against people in the region while strictly applying Islamic law.

“The Chadian army is the best army in Africa at the moment,” said an enthusiastic Boubacar Tidjani, a young Nigerien international relations student, as the arrival of the Chadian troops in Niamey was announced on Jan. 18. “It’s simple: they have always known war and more, they are proud. I admire them for that.”

The Chadian government will eventually deploy a total of 2,000 soldiers to support French and Malian troops fighting against the militant groups in northern Mali, and more soldiers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will eventually join the operation.

According to the Reuters news agency, Chad’s troops moved along the road to Ouallam, some 100 kilometres from the Malian border, on Tuesday, in order to enter the war zone without first passing through Mali’s capital Bamako.

Their participation has raised hopes of a quick end to the crisis in Mali, where the Chadians’ reputation as warriors precedes them.

The Chadian army has experience fighting in a desert climate, suppressing numerous internal rebellions in an arid environment identical to that of northern Mali. Chad also fought and won a border war with Libya between 1983 and 1987.

Its forces number 30,000 in total and have regularly taken part in stamping out insurgencies in neighbouring countries. The army’s most recent intervention was in December 2012, in support of the Central African Republic’s government against a threat by rebels from a coalition known as Seleka.

The Chadian armed forces could also potentially provide some air power, with six Sukhoi bombers and several Mi-17 and Mi-24 attack helicopters.

The deployment to Niamey was confirmed on Friday, Jan. 18, by a member of the Chadian army, who told Agence France Presse, “Our units left on three aircraft. Their tanks were transported by a C-130, their pickups in an Antonov and the troops flew in a Boeing belonging to the Toumai Air Tchad company.”

A new front?

During a Jan. 19 conference organised in Niamey by the civil society organisation Alternative Niger to consider the regional consequences of the military intervention in northern Mali, its secretary-general, Moussa Tchangari, raised the possibility of opening a second front in northern Niger, in order to trap the terrorist groups being hunted by the French and Malian armies.

Speaking at the conference, Olivier de Sardan, a researcher at the Niamey-based Laboratory for Studies and Research into Social Dynamics and Local Development (LASDEL), said that northern Mali and northern Niger are contiguous, “raising the fear that after Mali, the next country on the list of narco-terrorist groups will be Niger”.

The Nigerien army does not have the reputation or effectiveness of the Chadian army. Despite its frequent involvement in pushing fighters from AQIM and MUJWA back from its border with Mali, the Nigerien army expects to contribute only 500 soldiers to AFISMA, the African-led International Mission to Mali. The Chadian reinforcement will be welcome, analysts say.

Two concerns remain over Chadian participation. The first is linked to accusations, levelled against the armed forces, of abuses against civilians. Human Rights Watch has gathered testimony about such abuses committed during the Chadian intervention in the Central African Republic in 2008.

The second worry is over possible repercussions for Chad itself. Speaking to Germany’s Deutsche Welle Radio, political scientist Helga Dickow, from the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg, said, “Boko Haram has already indirectly threatened President (Idriss) Déby with the destabilisation of Chad, if Chadian troops are sent to Mali.” Boko Haram is the terrorist Islamist group currently active in the north of Nigeria and which has links with AQIM.

(END)