Ramatou Wallet Madouya (r) and her sister Fatma (l) in Goudebo camp, Burkina Faso on February 14th 2013. They are many Malians who fled the fighting in their country and will not be able to vote in Sunday's Jul. 28 presidential election. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO , Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

An increasing number of Mali’s political groups have warned of widespread fraud ahead of the presidential election on Sunday Jul. 28.

Reports of intimidation by the army, interference by religious authorities, and claims that there are almost two million extra biometric voters’ cards, have led to uncertainty whether the elections will be free and fair.

“We want the future president of Mali to be chosen through the polls and not through manipulation by non-political actors,” Amadou Koïta, political secretary of the Front for Democracy and the Republic (FDR), told journalists here on Tuesday, Jul. 23. The FDR opposed the Mar. 22, 2012 military coup that overthrew former president Amadou Toumani Touré.

The military had been unhappy with the government’s handling of a Tuareg rebellion in the north of this West African nation. The rebellion saw the Tuareg take over nearly two-thirds of the country for a short time until April 2012. A coalition of armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda took control of the territory.

This created a human rights crisis in the north. Human Rights Watch said that the rebels engaged in extensive looting, pillage, recruitment of child soldiers and rape of women and young girls.

On Jan. 11, at the request of interim President Dioncounda Traoré, France launched a military intervention that drove the extremists out and paved the way for the Jul. 28 elections. But it appears peace is still a far off dream for Malians. There are an estimated 6.9 million eligible voters but more than 467,000 people – around a third of the population in the north – are currently displaced.

“We have to fight through democratic means, not throught intimidation. That will not work. They tried to intimidate us with weapons after the coup but FDR resisted,” Koïta said. He believes that a faction of the army is openly campaigning for a candidate whom he declined to name.

Members of the FDR also condemned political interference by religious authorities. “Religious leaders are campaigning for a particular candidate, who has paid some of them to campaign for him,” Ibrahima N’Diaye, FDR vice-president told IPS.

The use of biometric cards, which all parties had supported, has also became a source of contention.

“Approximately 1.9 million voter registration cards without photos are in the Ministry for Decentralisation. We still don’t know what the minister is planning to do with them,” Fatoumata Ciré Diakite, a women’s rights activist and FDR member, told the press.

FDR believes that 4,500 voter registration cards were handed over to followers of a religious leader in Nioro du Sahel, a town in northeastern Mali near Mauritania. The town itself has less than 4,500 inhabitants and the religious leader is said to be a supporter of one of the 27 presidential candidates.

There are two leading candidates, former prime minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and former minister of finance Soumaïla Cissé.

On Jul. 20, armed men abducted five electoral agents and a local official in Tessalit, near the northern town Kidal. Many fear that rebels may disrupt the elections.

“We mustn’t forget that there are still security concerns in the Kidal region. Even if six hostages were freed, there is a danger that violence will upset the polling process in that area,” Oumar Touré, a lawyer based in Bamako told IPS.

“The interim president took measures to restore calm by meeting representatives of the rebel Tuaregs and by cancelling arrest warrants against others. The arrangement is provided for in the Ouagadougou agreements, but one can only hope that this will be enough,” Touré said.

Amid this discordant atmosphere, Malian women hope that the future president will promote their rights. There has been an increase in campaigns to raise political awareness among women, who constitute the majority of voters.

“We are hoping that these will strengthen our ability as female leaders to defend peaceful elections,” Nana Sissako, a member of a multi-party watchdog group of women politicians who are calling for non-violent and fair elections in Mali told IPS.

Women represent 52 percent of Mali’s of 15. 8 million people, but have low political representation.

According to the 2009 statistical bulletin of the National Documentation and Information Centre on Women and Children, only 15 out of 147 members of parliament are women. Out of 703 mayors, only eight are women, and there are only 927 women among 10,774 municipal councillors.

In 2006, the Malian National Assembly voted against a draft law for equal representation in parliament but it ratified several regional and international texts and conventions, including the United Nations Convention to Eliminate all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Bintou Coulibaly from local NGO the Association for the Protection of Women’s Rights, hopes that the country will apply CEDAW provisions.

“In this way, we could achieve the 30 percent quota for female representation at all decision-making levels that we have been calling for for a long time,” she told IPS.

Togolese Soldiers line up on the tarmac after arriving at Bamako Senou International Airport in Mali in early February, 2013. The soldiers are a small part of the African-led International Support Mission to Mali. Credit: Thomas Martinez/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO , Feb 13 2013 (IPS)

Soldiers belonging to the African-led International Support Mission to Mali continue to stream into this West African nation, as several hundred troops have already been deployed to secure towns across the country.

Troops from Benin, Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal – representing the Community of West African States (ECOWAS) contingent of AFISMA – are among the recent arrivals in Bamako. According to a source close to the Malian Ministry of Defence, over 5,000 West African soldiers will be stationed in Mali before the end of February and about half of these have already arrived.

The central Malian town of Markala is currently host to 600 troops from Burkina Faso.

“We have felt safer since the arrival of the Burkinabé soldiers. They are based at the military school and have not given anyone any problems,” Markala Mayor Demba Diallo told IPS.

“Hardly five minutes go by without seeing Burkinabé soldiers on patrol. They have secured the town and surrounding areas,” Diallo added.

In the nearby town of Ségou, 250 Nigerian soldiers are stationed, while Togolese forces are stationed in San, a town a little further to the north. Troops arrived directly from Niamey and Niger to their base in Gao, one of the largest cities of northern Mali,  which was recently liberated from Islamist occupation by French troops.

France launched a military intervention in Mali on Jan. 11 at the request of the country’s interim President Dioncounda Traoré after extremists advanced on the town of Konna, 60 kilometres northeast of Mopti. Since April 2012 about two-thirds of the country had been occupied by Islamist rebels. Following the successful intervention, France now plans to pull its troops out by the end of March.

Negotiations have begun to place ECOWAS troops under United Nations command. However, the BBC reported that United Nations official Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson Tuesday, Feb. 12, said that the Malian government was “hesitant” to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force in the country.

“To date, between 65 to 70 percent of the AFISMA contingent is now in Mali,” Colonel Yao Adjoumani, the AFISMA spokesperson, told a press conference in Bamako on Feb. 6.

Adjoumani also announced that Guinean troops had crossed the Malian border, adding that the AFISMA mission will be fully deployed by mid-February. However, he declined to reveal the total number of troops, their stations and the deployment timetable, citing security reasons.

Meanwhile, senior government officials have called for unity among the Malian army.

Internal clashes rocked the Malian capital, Bamako, last Friday, Feb. 8, when gun battles erupted between the Red Beret units who support deposed President Amadou Toumani Touré, and the Green Berets who back the March 2012 coup leaders. The Malian army ousted the democratically elected civilian government last March.

Hospital sources have reported that two teenagers were killed and 13 people sustained gunshot wounds during the fighting.

Mahamane Cissé, a senior official in Gao, told IPS via telephone: “Right now, Mali needs a united army. We have to focus on the country’s total liberation. Once that is achieved, the army can work out its differences.”

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has resumed the distribution of food aid to the north of the country. The organisation had stopped food aid deliveries following the outbreak of fighting in January.

“Food deliveries to northern towns like Timbuktu, Goundam and Niafunké have started by boat,” the WFP communications chief, Daouda Guirou, told IPS.

The opening of the Sevar-Douentza highway has made it possible to deliver food to Gao. “Food distribution to residents will begin shortly,” Guirou confirmed.

Malians are donating money to their military’s costly war against armed Islamic groups that have occupied the north of this impoverished nation. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO , Feb 1 2013 (IPS)

Malians, including students and businesses owners, are donating money to their military’s costly war against armed Islamic groups that have occupied the north of this impoverished West African country and committed atrocities against local populations.

In an apparent drive to get citizens to open their wallets, the ruling Malian military announced on Jan. 23 that over 800,000 dollars had been received from private donors. The Malian army ousted the democratically elected civilian government last March. A deal was later brokered that allowed the head of the national assembly, Dioncounda Traoré, to be appointed as Mali’s interim president until new elections could be held.

Various fundraising drives have been underway across the country since Jan. 11 when Traoré launched a public appeal for financial support following the Islamists’ capture of Konna, a town in central Mali.

Since April 2012, northern Mali has been occupied by a coalition of armed groups composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine, a Tuareg Islamist group.

The capture of Konna, a key strategic point for the Malian forces, resulted in the French Air Force’s intervention at Traoré’s request. The air assault enabled the Malian army to halt the Islamists’ advance into the south of the country. Konna has since been liberated and is under control of the Malian army. The French-led offensive has driven out AQIM and its allies from two other key towns in northeastern Mali.

“The day Konna was captured Malian school children and students were up all night,” Ibrahim Traoré, secretary general of the Mali Association for Pupils and Students, known by its French acronym as AEEM, told IPS.

Some AEEM members volunteered for military service, but after several hours of discussion the leaders of the association decided to fundraise, instead. The students unanimously agreed that two dollars should be levied from the grant that each student receives from the state.

A further dollar would be levied from the government’s book subsidy. To date, students have collected about 800,000 dollars, matching the amount the state received from private donors.

“The money will be deposited directly into the Malian army’s account by the National University Office for Students Allocations,” Ibrahim Traoré said.

The war has broken out against the backdrop of Mali’s harsh economic climate, the country is among the poorest countries in the world. In 2011, Mali ranked 175^th out of 187 countries on the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index.

The economic situation worsened after the suspension of donor aid following the March 2012 coup d’état. But many say that Mali can count on the support of its people.

Kassim Traoré, secretary general of the Organisation of Young Malian Reporters, told IPS that local journalists had contributed to the fundraising effort. “Journalists who make donations get registered on an open list at the Press Association; people have shown interest and are coming forward.”

Mali’s large diaspora have also been contributing. On Jan. 18, Habib Sylla, the president of the High Council for Malians Living Abroad, handed a 200,000-dollar cheque to the government.

“This is only the start of contributions from expatriate Malians, who will respond positively to the interim president’s national appeal following the capture of Konna,” Sylla told local journalists.

Similarly, businesses are also supporting the military. The Mali Textile Development Company handed in a cheque for 120,000 dollars.

“The company has also agreed to make three four-wheel-drive vehicles available to the army and 3,500 workers will donate blood for war casualties,” Salif Cissokho, the president of the company, told IPS.

In the southern Senegal village of Kael Bessel, female genital mutilation is no longer a taboo subject. Sexagenarian Fatoumata Sabaly speaks freely about female circumcision and girls’ rights with her friends.

“We’ve found it necessary to abandon cutting – abandoning the practice has advantages for women,” she told IPS. “Female circumcision has consequences such as haemorrhaging and it can even lead to death.”

In Senegal, like other West African countries, grandmothers like Sabaly are generally the ones who decide girls should be circumcised. A 2008 survey in Vélingara, also in the south of Senegal, found nearly 60 percent of older women supported female genital mutilation. But a 2011 survey carried out by the Grandmother Project found fully 93 percent of the same group are now against FGM.

The Grandmother Project, an international non-governmental organisation which promotes community dialogue about cultural issues, has helped organise regular meetings in thirty-odd villages around Vélingara, to enable people to discuss questions relating to local traditions and values, particularly “koyan” – the rite of passage associated with FGM.

Religious leaders, traditional chiefs, local officials, youth and elders all take part. The public debates allow people to talk openly about the pros and cons of their cultural practices.

“Since excision has more disadvantages than advantages, people are slowly abandoning the practice,” said Falilou Cissé, a community development advisor at the Grandmother Project in Vélingara.

“People have stopped the practice themselves. We have never asked people to stop it,” she stressed.

The meetings emphasise the educational role of grandmothers in African societies, but beyond that they help break the silence around taboo subjects like FGM.

“I was for excision, personally, like many people, but the public discussions have helped me to change my position, to accept that in our culture, there are some values to preserve and others to abandon,” Abdoulaye Baldé, the imam of a mosque in Vélingara, told IPS.

Today, thanks to Baldé’s participation in the meetings, people around Vélingara know that FGM is not a religious obligation for Muslims. The involvement of opinion leaders has had a huge impact on changing the outlook on excision among grandmothers.

Fatoumata Baldé, a nurse-midwife in Kandia, a village near Vélingara, told IPS that she couldn’t remember coming across a case of excision in the area since 2010.

“Previously, we were used to handling lots of cases of cutting gone bad at the clinic, because it’s done without medical assistance,” explained the nurse, also a regular participant in the debates.

Boubacar Bocoum, a Malian consultant who has studied FGM in several countries, sees in the Vélingara experience grounds for hope that the practice could be definitively abandoned across West Africa.

“The projects fighting against this practice generally target excisors, while it’s really a community problem,” he said. “If only one part of the community abandons it, the practice persists because the rest of the people are not engaged.”

According to a study published by the NGO Plan International in 2006, FGM is practiced throughout the West Africa region.

“In Guinea, in Sierra Leone and in Mali, practically all women are excised,” said the report. “In Niger and Ghana, the practice is limited to particular geographic areas and the national prevalence is less than 10 percent.”

Nearly 270,000 refugees have had to flee their homes since January, when conflict erupted in northern Mali. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO, Nov 13 2012 (IPS)

West African heads of state have restated their determination that no member of Mali’s transitional government will be allowed to stand in the country’s next presidential election. Their statement has fed a growing debate over who should be allowed to run.

Mali is expected to hold presidential elections in 2013, following the recapturing of the north of the country, which is currently occupied by armed Islamist groups. To regain control of the north, the Economic Community of West African States, whose leaders met most recently on Nov. 11 in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, have made an initial commitment to deploy a 3,000-strong military force to Mali for a year.

The decision to make members of the interim government of Mali ineligible to contest next year’s election was reached during a meeting of the ECOWAS contact group on Mali, held on Jul. 7 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and forwarded to a process of national consultations in Mali for confirmation.  Earlier discussions by Malian political forces had already arrived at the same decision in April.

But during a cabinet meeting on Oct. 31, Mali’s interim prime minister, Cheick Modibo Diarra, announced his intention to run for president, and blocked the release of a communique forbidding members of the transitional administration from presenting themselves as candidates. Questioned about this on national television on Nov. 10, he did not deny his intention to contest the election, saying only that it was too early to talk about it.

Malians are divided on whether the prime minister, the interim president, and other members of the transitional administration should be eligible. News of Diarra’s intention to run for president is a hot topic in the streets of Bamako, with a debate raging in the local press over whether he would need to resign his current post if he wants to stand.

“The prime minister is a citizen like all the others, so he has the right to present himself in the next elections,” Cheick Koné, an English teacher in a Bamako school, told IPS.

Many ordinary Malians feel those who don’t want the prime minister to stand are being unfair. “It’s not normal, because the prime minister is fighting hard against corruption,” Koné added. “And that’s why he must run for president.”

Oumou Berthé, a member of the National Civil Society Forum, believes that ECOWAS’s statement will help to clarify matters. “The fact that the heads of state of ECOWAS are repeating that members of the transitional government should not contest the next elections has relaunched the debate at the international level. And I think that the prime minister will have to take into account the concerns of the international community,” she told IPS.

The Malian prime minister is in charge of organising national consultations among the country’s political actors to resolve this question. But he is suspected by some political figures of manoeuvring with an eye to authorising his candidacy at the end of these meetings.

“The prime minister has realised that he loves power,” said Boubacar Diarra, an activist with the United Front to Safeguard Democracy and the Republic. “He wants to run for president, while those who supported him – like the members of the former junta – are not supportive of his candidacy.”

The United Front is a political coalition that opposed the Mar. 22 coup d’état which toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré, and which has declined to participate in the consultations organised by the interim prime minister.

Dissatisfaction – both within the army and in the wider population – with the Touré government’s response to a January uprising in the north of the country was a key factor leading up to the coup, but an expanding cast of factions then took advantage of the instability and seized the northern part of the country.

Modibo Diarra, a 60-year-old astrophysicist who planned to run in presidential elections originally scheduled for April 2012, was appointed interim prime minister on Apr. 6 in a deal brokered between the coup plotters and ECOWAS.

The prime minister’s desire to stand for election appears to have created a crisis at the heart of the interim government. At the start of November, the minister for territorial administration, Moussa Sinko Coulibaly, who is in charge of organising the elections and is reputedly close to the former junta, told representatives of political parties he opposed Diarra’s candidacy.

“One can’t be part of this transitional government and have political ambitions. That won’t work, because in accepting that members of the transitional government can be in the race, we run the risk of distorting the game,” he said.

Responding to questions about the legitimacy of ruling that members of the transitional administration are ineligible, Mahamadou Sangaré, a political scientist at the University of Bamako, recalled the situation in 1992.

“There is a legal precedent from the transition organised by Amadou Toumani Touré in 1992, after the fall of the government of General Moussa Traoré. The president of that transition and his prime minister, Soumana Sacko, were not candidates in any election at the time,” he said.

“At the end of the day,” Sangaré continued, “the prime minister is in a difficult position, because he has convinced the United Front to participate in consultations on the one hand, while on the other, he has to achieve cohesion in the heart of the government on the question of ineligibility of members of the transition.”

A group of smallholder farmers in Mali have turned to the courts to try to recover land they say they have lost to big private investors. The legal action comes as foreign investors are losing interest in Mali due to political instability and an armed rebellion in the north.
“We have laid a complaint against the agricultural land grabs that have hit so many smallholders,” said Lamine Coulibaly, a member of the National Coordination of Peasant Organisations, which is resisting the large-scale acquisition of agricultural land by foreign investors.

The farmers next day in court will be on Sep. 27, in the central Mali town of Markala. They hope to put the brakes on the requisitioning of land they have been cultivating for generations.

“There have already been several sittings without actual deliberation, but we have confidence in the justice system. We are convinced that we are in the right and we can win this case,” said Coulibaly.

The respondent in this case is Office of the Niger, a government department which oversees the the development of a million square hectares of farmland in this central region. A dam constructed by the French colonial authorities in 1932 could be the basis for enormous agricultural potential in the region, but barely 100,000 hectares had been developed before the arrival of foreign investors in 2008.

The zone was opened up to private capital, to the dismay of local farmer organisations, who say many smallholders lost their land.

“These expropriations took place to make way for agribusiness projects. The government signed agreements allocating land to investors for massive projects such as Libyan-owned Malibya, which covers 100,000 hectares,” Coulibaly told IPS.

Farmers assert that a total of 800,000 hectares have been affected by expropriation. The lawsuit that will resume at the end of the month targets a different project, the Markala Sugar Company (SOSUMAR) which was allocated 25,000 hectares to establish a sugar cane plantation.

“Thirty-three villages in Sana (in the central Ségou region of the country) have fallen victim to SOSUMAR,” said Massa Koné, one of the parties to the suit.

According to CNOP, of the vast area allocated to SOSUMAR, just two sugar cane nurseries have been set up, each covering 140 hectares. Smallholder farmers have welcomed the departure of Illovo Sugar, previously the major shareholder in the project. According to CNOP’s website, the South African company pulled out of the project due to the sociopolitical crisis gripping the country.

“Yet the smallholders can’t farm,” Koné told IPS. “The private investors have fenced off their fields and are still maintaining the nurseries.”

The court case further complicates an already challenging climate for investment in the region. The Malibya project has been stalled since the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, despite the completion of roadworks and a 40-kilometre canal.

The farmers are worried about food security and the future of family farming throughout the country. But Boubacar Sow, assistant director of the Office of the Niger, said their fears are groundless.

He told IPS that with help from private investors, government is actually developing land to be allocated to family farmers.

“The 100,000 hectares developed by the government was put at the disposal of family operators who produced 564,000 tonnes of rice in 2011,” he said.

Sow said that smallholders’ opposition to private investors is only hindering the government’s efforts to extend the developed area. He also said that the areas allocated to foreign investors were initially unoccupied.

“People were attracted to come and set themselves up in the area because of the improvements made by the Office of the Niger,” he said.

At the same time as they pursue their case in the courts, farmers have continued a dialogue with some big investors through the Office. In some villages, farmers were able to negotiate the right to plant in fields they lost three years ago.

Several of the children in Abala camp are visibly malnourished, and NGO workers are concerned about potential epidemics. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO, Jul 23 2012 (IPS)

Millet has become the basic ingredient for an enriched flour at the heart of an effort to establish a local, sustainable response to malnutrition in Mali.

In the city of Kati, some 15 kilometres from the capital, Bamako, a dozen women are busy processing locally-grown grain into “Misola”.

The Misola initiative, created by a French association of the same name, is a public health project which aims to reduce infant malnutrition.

“We buy millet, the basic ingredient for the enriched flour we produce, from grain merchants here in the city,” said Ramata Traoré, who manages the Kati production facility.

The flour is made up of 60 percent millet, 20 percent soya, and 10 percent groundnuts. Vitamins and mineral salts are added to this to produce a balanced food which responds to known nutritional deficiencies.

Demand for the flour is growing in Mali, following a poor harvest from the last growing season. Malnutrition is a serious problem in this semi-arid West African country, where food security has been badly affected by drought in recent years – a situation that has only been aggravated by a rebellion in the north.

In December, the Ministry of Agriculture said the country harvested just over five million tonnes of grain, against forecasts of eight million.

“The ongoing food crisis increases the risk of malnutrition in several regions of Mali, including in Kayes (southwest), Koulikoro and Ségou (south),” said Aminata Sissoko, a nutrition specialist with the Malian Red Cross.

She added that the seizure of the three northern regions of Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao by Islamist groups and rebels from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) has only aggravated the situation.

“At this point, we have not been able to go into the areas controlled by the armed groups to evaluate needs. But we are assisting people displaced by the war with Misola flour,” Sissoko told IPS.

One in five Malian children suffers from malnutrition, according to Abdoulaye Sangho, coordinator of the Mali chapter of Misola.

“We are an NGO which supports women producers of Misola flour,” Sangho told IPS. “Our objective is to improve the nutrition levels of the whole population, with a particular focus on children between the ages of six and 60 months, and pregnant and breastfeeding women.”

Mali’s first Misola production site was set up in 1993 at Diafarabé, in the central region of the country. The initiative expanded quickly, and today there are 19 small factories spread through all regions of the country except for Kidal, in the north.

The project extends far beyond the country’s borders. Production of the enriched flour actually began in Burkina Faso in 1982, and the nutrition supplement is now also made in Senegal, Niger and Benin.

A common charter links all the groups producing Misola. “The women working in each of the projects also promote best nutrition practices in their neighbourhoods. They organise demonstration sessions in health centres or in other public places,” said Sangho.

“When he was seven months old, my child was very sick, very thin. But I didn’t know the problem was malnutrition. It was only during a demonstration session for Misola at the market that I realised that,” said Assetou Traoré, a spice vendor.

By training women to make this flour – which is eaten as a porridge – as well as to promote its use in their communities, the Misola association is building both broader awareness of sound nutrition and the know-how needed to achieve this, based in the production facilities.

In the courtyard in Kati, Traoré and her colleagues have spread millet that they’ve carefully washed several times out to dry on a tarpaulin in the sun. “Since what we produce is meant for children’s food, we pay careful attention to hygiene,” said Traoré, explaining why no one is allowed to enter the grain store with their shoes on.

Chata Mariko, a nurse at a Bamako health centre told IPS that the recommended remedies for malnutrition are easily available. “A sachet of some of these foods costs no more than 500 CFA francs (around a dollar). But unfortunately, there are parents who don’t bring their children to health centres in time,” she said.

Malian rebels do not have the support of most ethnic groups in the north of the country. / William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Soumaila T. Diarra
BAMAKO, Jun 12 2012 (IPS)

Tuareg and Islamist rebel groups which seized control of northern Mali in March are trying to find common ground for the joint administration of the territory. Residents of the region fear that individual and collective freedoms will not be respected if such an alliance sets up an Islamic state.

Ansar Dine, which is linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) captured the northern part of this West African country in the power vacuum following a March coup.

Abdoul Maïga, director of the Ahmed Baba Centre for Islamic Studies in Timbuktu, one of the main cities under rebel control, says the two groups have widely differing outlooks.

“The MNLA wants to be closer to Europe where it has contacts. In contrast, Ansar Dine is oriented towards the Arab world where it has found support. I don’t know if this support comes from governments or from specific groups, but it’s certain that Ansar Dine’s funding comes from the Middle East, particularly Qatar,” Maïga told IPS over the phone.

An accord between the Islamists and the MNLA was announced on May 26, in which they agreed to merge their armed forces and create an Islamic state in the regions of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. But five days later, the Tuareg rebels backed out of the agreement, stating their preference for an independent, secular state.

“The failure of the merger announced by Ansar Dine and the MNLA did not surprise me at all,” said Maïga. “The people in the northern regions of Mali – given the choice – will never agree to live in an Islamic state.”

An estimated 90 percent of Malians are Muslim, according to the country’s High Islamic Council. The northern regions, and Timbuktu in particular, have played a historically important role in the spread of Islam throughout West Africa.

“But people don’t understand what is going on now. Here, Islam has never expanded by means of jihad or any other form of violence,” said Maïga.

Negotiations between the rebel factions over the application of shari’a, Islamic law, have continued into June.

Some northern residents see the failure of the merger as proof that shari’a can’t be applied in this region, particularly in cities like Timbuktu, which must preserve their reputation of openness to continue to attract tourists.

“The northerner is by nature a free thinker. Liberty is very important to him, and that’s why 90 percent of the population doesn’t want these people in charge,” Sado Diallo, mayor of Gao, told IPS.

Ansar Dine has begun applying Islamic law in the city, including cutting off thieves’ hands and flogging smokers, according to the mayor – who at the same time lamented the increase of auto theft and other banditry. “Every day I receive SMS messages from people who complain about acts committed by militias,” Diallo said.

Far to the south, in the Malian capital, Bamako, the transitional government says that whether or not the rebels merge is immaterial. Government spokesperson Hamadoun Touré told state radio that the priority for the authorities is to relieve the suffering of residents of the north.

Outside Mali, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union are both worried by the possibility of a well-armed Islamic state being established in the north. During a recent visit to France, the Beninois head of state, Boni Yayi, who is also currently president of the AU, raised the possibility of an intervention by an African military force in Mali, under the aegis of the United Nations.

Mali’s three northern neighbours, Algeria, Niger and Mauritania, are also concerned. Following the unilateral declaration of independence of Azawad on Apr. 6, these countries, who in 2010 set up a joint committee to fight against terrorism and drugs smuggling in the region, met in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, to support ECOWAS initiatives in Mali.

But while waiting for outside help, people in northern Mali have begun to lose patience.

Seydou Cissé, a member of the Peul militia “Ganda Iso”, in the Gao region, told IPS that the population intends to fight.

“All we want from the international community is support for the national army in the form of air strikes against Islamists who seized sophisticated weapons from Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi,” he said.

“We will do the rest to liberate our land,” he said.

(END)

Cheick Modibo Diarra has been named interim prime minister of Mali as a transitional administration takes shape, to guide the country back to full constitutional government. But despite agreeing to hand power back to civilians, the military junta intends to retain an oversight role in the transition.

Timbuktu is one of the northern Malian cities seized by Tuareg and Islamist rebels. Credit: Emilio Labrador/CC BY 2.0

Diarra is a 60-year-old astrophysicist with dual U.S. and Malian nationality, who has previously worked for the U.S. space agency NASA and as the president of Microsoft Africa. He entered politics last year, establishing the Rassemblement pour le développement du Mali (RPDM) party, with the intent of contesting presidential elections originally planned for April 2012.

Those elections were abandoned following an uprising by Islamist and Tuareg rebels in the north and the Mar. 22 coup d’état which toppled the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré.

The interim prime minister, appointed in line with a framework accord for restoring civilian rule agreed on Apr. 6 between the coup plotters and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), must now address a complex crisis in the north of the country.

Dissatisfaction – both within the army and in the wider population – with the government’s response to the January uprising launched by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rebels was a key factor leading up to the coup. But a growing cast of factions then took advantage of the instability following the coup to expand and consolidate their rebellion.

The north, including the three major cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, is entirely in the hands of the MNLA, the main Tuareg rebel group seeking independence for the region, and Islamist forces who want to impose Islamic law across a unified Mali.

Uncertain transition

Even as Diarra was being congratulated on his appointment as prime minister, the military junta continued to arrest leading political and military figures from the previous government, holding them at the Kati military base 15 kilometres outside the capital, Bamako.

Those arrested at the beginning of the week, Apr. 16 and 17, include Modibo Sidibé, prime minister under President Amani Toumani Touré at the time of the coup, and Babaly Ba, the director general of the Malian Solidarity Bank.

Several high-ranking military personnel have also been detained: General Sadio Gassama, the former minister of defence, General Hamidou Sissoko, army chief of staff under Touré, and General Mahamadou Diagouraga, the national police commissioner.

Wednesday Apr. 18 saw the arrest of Kassoum Tapo and Tiéman Coulibaly, two leaders of the civil society coalition against the coup.

“While we welcome a return to normal, constitutional order, several people are in custody,” lawyer Hamidou Diabaté told IPS. “We don’t understand these detentions. If people must be arrested, then this should be left to the judicial system.”

Diabaté is a member of a political group opposed to the coup, the United Front to Safeguard Democracy and the Republic.

Under the Apr. 6 accord, the junta led by Captain Amadou Sanogo agreed to hand power over to civilians. The former president of the National Assembly, Dioncounda Traoré, was duly made interim president on Apr. 12, but the arrests taking place while the transitional government is set up have raised fears among politicians.

“It’s only now that we’ll see Captain Sanogo’s true face,” Ousmane Maïga, a member of the youth wing of the Union for the Republic and Democracy party (whose leader, Soumaïla Cissé, is also among those in detention), told IPS.

“His only ambition is to remain in power.”

Junta retains support

But the junta’s actions have the support of some civil society leaders. Responding to questions from IPS, Hamadoun Amion Guindo, president of Mali’s Trade Union Confederation of Workers (CSTM), said the soldiers must finish what they started.

Many trade unionists, associations and other political actors under the umbrella of the Coordination of Patriotic Organisations of Mali believe the framework accord gives the interim president the power to rule the country for only 40 days.

“ECOWAS and the military must find a consensus candidate to replace Dioncounda Traoré (after this period),” says Guindo.

The junta enjoys strong support in Bamako, particularly among the city’s poor. Wearing a badge bearing a picture of Sanogo, Fanta Sissoko, a resident of the Medina Coura neighbourhood, told IPS: “If the soldiers step down completely, the politicians will just continue with their corruption. We need new political leaders for the country to move forward.”

This backdrop only makes the task facing the prime minister in resolving the crisis in the north more difficult. Since Traoré was sworn in as president, initial contacts have been made with several of the insurgent factions. Around 200 soldiers who had been captured by Ansar Dine, the leading Islamist group in the north, have been freed and welcomed back to Bamako by the authorities.

As armed groups have captured Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu, the three largest cities in northern Mali, the differences within the alliance have begun to emerge. There are reports of rape and looting in Gao, while in Timbuktu an Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, has announced the imposition of sharia law.

Tuareg rebels have seized Timbuktu and other northern cities in Mali. Credit: Emilio Labrador/CC BY 2.0

As the leaders of a Mar. 22 coup in the capital, Bamako, considered their response to an ultimatum from the regional bloc ECOWAS to step down, events in the north accelerated with the three largest cities passing into the hands of armed groups.

“On the radio, the rebels said they would not harm the civilian population, but they asked women to veil themselves when they go out,” Timbuktu resident Badji Maïga told IPS. “They also asked people to welcome them and arrested those they caught looting.” The Bamako-based weekly La Nouvelle République reported that Ansar Dine founder Iyad Ag Ghali took to the airwaves of Timbuktu’s Radio Boctou to explain the group’s intentions. “Misfortune is due to people’s lack of faith in God, and because they have abandoned the practice of sharia, because we have changed our way of life under the influence of Whites,” he said.

“It is for this reason that there is misery, licentiousness and other ills in our society.”

Ag Ghali also played a leading role in an earlier rebellion in the 1990s, and his group has rapidly gained prominence in the current uprising in northern Mali.

“People spotted many foreigners amongst the Islamists, including Nigerians, Mauritanians and Algerians,” Cissé told IPS.

While the MNLA has said it is fighting for the independence of the northern region, Ansar Dine wants to preserve the country’s present borders, but turn Mali into an Islamic republic under sharia law.

In its Tuesday Apr. 3 edition, Bamako-based daily La Républicain announced that Ag Ghali, in a hearts-and-minds operation, had visited a city hospital to greet the sick and donate medicine. “Shortly after this visit, he sent his troops throughout the city to ask women to wear the veil,” the article said.

This Islamist push worries Malian women who are used to dressing as they please.

“I don’t want to live in a country where which clothes and which hairstyles one wears are controlled,” Kadiatou Samaké, who manages a hair salon in Bamako, told IPS. “That’s why I’m afraid that the Islamists will extend their influence in Mali. Women will suffer if this happens.”

But for the moment, the Islamists have not yet used force to apply their edicts in the north, according to sources in Timbuktu.

The Islamist groups said in Timbuktu that they had come to spread the word of God and not to attack people or their property. But according to Cissé, they have publicly punished four youth caught sabotaging equipment belonging to the national electricity company.

In the other cities under rebel control, women have been targets of a different kind.

“Women are being raped. In Gao, women have been raped in public,” said Al Mahdi Cissé, a member of a collective of people of northern origin, during a march organised in Bamako on Tuesday in support of residents of the north.

Responding to questions from IPS, Kadiatou Sangaré, the president of the National Commission on Human Rights in Mali, condemned human rights violations in the north. “Several women were raped in Gao, while others were taken away.”

Gao’s residents are also facing a food crisis, according to Alassane Touré, a resident who IPS reached by phone on Thursday Apr. 5. “You can no longer buy food here. The rebels have smashed up the shops and the warehouses; they have looted the petrol stations,” he said.

West African heads of state meeting in Côte d’Ivoire have given Mali’s military junta three days to restore constitutional order and step down – or face a range of diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Captain Amadou Sanogo, leader of the Mar. 22 coup which sent President Amadou Toumani Touré into hiding, responded by saying that he remains open to dialogue while appealing for assistance in dealing with the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country.

An extraordinary meeting of the Economic Community of West African States earlier in the week had decided to send a high-level delegation to the Malian capital on Thursday, but the mission was abandoned at the last moment, when several dozen supporters of Sanogo’s fledgling administration occupied the tarmac at the Bamako airport.

Tensions were running high in Bamako, on a day where groups of young activists for and against the coup clashed at the Labour Exchange in the capital.

Supporters of the junta stormed the airport on Thursday morning to protest against the ECOWAS delegation. Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara’s plane, which had already entered Malian airspace, returned to the Ivorian capital, Abidjan.

The regional leaders proceeded to meet in Côte d’Ivoire. Daniel Kablan Duncan, the Ivorian foreign minister, told Radio France International that ECOWAS had told the coup-plotters that if they did not return power to the elected government they had deposed by Monday, they would face sanctions.

The threatened sanctions include the freezing of Mali’s account at BCEAO, (the Central Bank of West African States – a regional bank serving the francophone countries that share a single currency, the CFA franc), the suspension of access by private Malian banks to BCEAO, the recall of ECOWAS member states’ ambassadors from Bamako, and the closure of borders with neighbouring countries.

According to a source close to the military, the junta would have met with ECOWAS representatives already on the ground in Bamako, such as the Burkinabè foreign affairs minister, Djibril Bassolé. According to analysts, this is a means for Captain Sanogo to show that he has not broken off all dialogue, as he is well aware of the looming threat of sanctions.

The aborted visit by ECOWAS leaders was preceded by the arrival in Bamako on Wednesday of a delegation of army chiefs from the region. The head of this mission, General Soumaïla Bakayoko, appeared on Malian television to say that they had come to ask the junta to step aside.

The coup-plotters told the army chiefs that they were prepared to do whatever was necessary for the good of the country.

Prior to the army chiefs’ arrival in Bamako, several thousand sympathisers marched in the streets of the capital to demonstrate their support for the coup, shouting slogans including, “Down with ECOWAS! Down with France! Viva the army!”

Among the organisers of this march was the African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence party (SADI), the only political party represented in parliament that has expressed support for the coup. Addressing an excited crowd, Dr Oumar Mariko, the secretary general of SADI, said the international community had not helped Mali when the country needed support to fight against Tuareg rebels.

Against this, a coalition of 36 political parties and civil society organisations has come out strongly in support of mediation by ECOWAS. Members of the coalition meeting at the Labour Exchange on Thursday morning were attacked by young supporters of the new regime. “We went to the Labour Exchange for a sit-in, but the youth attacked us with stones,” Sega Diabaté, an opponent of the coup, told IPS.

The coalition does not intend to give the junta a moment’s rest. It has put forward a plan for a campaign to “defeat the coup, restore constitutional order and return soldiers to their barracks”. But the coalition is conscious of the challenges facing the Malian army, and has sought to reassure rank and file troops.

“We will listen carefully to the demands of the army and the security forces with regards to the improvement of their living and working conditions, particularly as relates to the situation for the families of soldiers killed on the frontline (in the north),” said Tiébilé Dramé, a former minister for foreign affairs and member of the coalition against the coup.

Deposed President Amadou Toumani Touré broke his silence on Wednesday Mar. 28, granting an interview to Radio France International that was broadcast across Africa. He said that he and his family remain in Mali, and are not being detained by the new regime. Elected in 2007 for a second five-year term as president, Toumani Touré was expected to leave power in June, following presidential elections that had been scheduled for Apr. 29.

But the outbreak of rebellion in northern Mali in mid-January and deepening social malaise have profoundly tarnished his image in the country since the start of the year.

Paradoxically, many people who oppose the coup as a matter of principle support Toumani Touré’s overthrow.

“We, who retired voluntarily, we are encouraged by this coup d’état. It is only now that there will be a true democracy where equality in the eyes of law can become a reality for all,” Abdoul Sidibé, a former policeman, told IPS. “For more than 20 years, there has been an international perception that Mali was a democratic country, while corruption and impunity reigned.”

Life is slowly returning to normal in the Malian capital after widespread looting last week. Several prominent figures associated with the former regime had been arrested, but they were released on Tuesday Mar. 27.

Meanwhile on the northern battlefront, the Tuareg website Ternoust (www.ternoust.org) said that the outskirts of the northern city of Kidal had been under rebel attack since Thursday morning, but there has been no confirmation of this from other local sources.

Mali’s political parties have jointly called on the government to hold a forum for peace and reconciliation as a way to end a Tuareg rebellion launched several weeks ago. The uprising has forced around 55,000 people out of their homes, the majority fleeing the fighting in the north of the country, but others are seeking shelter from ethnic tension and violent demonstrations in cities in the south.

Across the country, MNLA rebels have circulated images like these via cellphone. Credit: MNLA

The uprising by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) has claimed dozens of casualties since mid-January, including members of the army and the rebels, though precise numbers have not been established by independent sources.

In a Feb. 7 statement, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said it has sent emergency teams to countries bordering Mali to help meet the needs of around 20,000 refugees in neighbouring countries.

“In the past three weeks, at least 10,000 people are reported to have crossed to Niger, 9,000 have found refuge in Mauritania and 3,000 in Burkina Faso,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva on Tuesday.

“Many of the new arrivals are sleeping in the open and have little access to shelter, clean water, health services and food,” Edwards said.

The Red Cross estimates that 30,000 others have been displaced within Mali since the first MNLA attack, against the town of Menaka, took place on Jan. 17, against the town of Menaka. The rebels have gone on to attack several other army garrisons in the north of the country.

Since then, popular anger over the attacks has grown in the south. Violent demonstrations took place in several southern cities including Kayes, Ségou, and the capital, Bamako, between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2. The marches were organised in reaction to what protesters view as a “timid” reaction by the authorities against the rebellion, but in many cases degenerated into rioting.

Modibo Diaby, a resident of the southern town of Kati, told IPS that he saw numerous businesses belong to Tuaregs – or people believed to be Tuareg – were looted; similar scenes occurred elsewhere in the south.

The Malian president, Amadou Toumani Touré, has called on Malians not to confuse the insurgents with Tuareg civilians more generally. “Those who attacked military barracks and other locations in the north must not be conflated with our other compatriots – Tuareg, Arab, Songhai, Peul – who live with us,” said Touré in a televised address on Feb. 1.

He highlighted military operations against the rebels. “The army has all that it needs to secure the safety of all our people. We will continue to send weapons and ammunition.”

Also seeking to ease ethnic tension, Mali’s Minister for Infrastructure and Transportation, Ahmed Diane Semega, the following day stressed that not all Tuareg are part of the rebellion. “Of the nearly 3,600 Tuareg in the national army, fewer than one hundred have deserted,” he said.

According to a military source, 300 Tuareg fighters – the largest contingent of Malian Tuareg soldiers who returned from Libya after the fall of Moammar Gaddhafi – have been deployed with the Malian army in the areas of Kidal, Tessalit and Gao, all in the north.

These fighters, drawn from the Imghad Tuareg community, have been placed under the command of Colonel Elhadj Gamou, a Tuareg who joined the Malian army in line with the terms of a 1992 peace pact that ended a previous uprising in the same region.

On Dec. 3, 2011, well before the latest uprising, two representatives of this Tuareg community – Colonel Waqqi Ag Ossad and Comander Inackly Ag Back – met with President Traoré and told him their group was ready to give up their weapons and serve the state.

According to Bamako-based journalist Cheikna Hamalla Sylla, the presence of the Imghad soldiers is the reason that an attack on the rebels’ main objective, the city of Kidal, has been delayed so far.

Notwithstanding continued military operations against the rebels, Touré has stated that the government still plans to hold presidential elections scheduled for Apr. 29.

According to Dioncounda Traoré, the president of the National Assembly and himself a candidate in the April elections, “(The president has committed) to putting everything in place to retire on Jun. 8, 2012 in line with the constitution, after organising credible and transparent elections.”

Leaders of Mali’s political parties want a forum on peace and reconciliation to be held from Feb. 17 to 19, and they have called on the Malian authorities to contact the governments of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger for assistance in opening a dialogue with the rebel groups.

They also want the government to speak to leading Tuareg and Arab figures who have left Mali for neighbouring countries; and to the ambassadors of France, the United States and the European Union for assistance in creating the forum for peace and reconciliation.

A new family law has raised tension in Mali. This controversial law, intended to give greater freedoms and rights to women, has been sent back to the National Assembly for a second reading after protests from Muslim radicals.

At least one conservative women's organisation argues that the progressive changes to family law are not welcomed by ordinary Malian women. Credit: Ferdinand Reus/Wikicommons

These Muslim are threatening to make the country ungovernable if the law is enacted in its original form as voted by Parliament in August 2009.

“Those who oppose the new family law have started threatening legislators, railing against them in sermons and organising protest meetings. They’re also using newspapers and radio since they learned that the law is on the agenda of the current parliamentary session,” Salimata Kouyaté told IPS. Kouyaté is an activist with the Malian Network of NGOs and Women’s Associations.

The next full session of parliament is scheduled to begin on May 20, but for now there is no confirmation when the legislation will be reviewed and put to a vote.

Gender relations at stake

Emblematic of the struggle is the legal definition of the relationship between a married couple. Historian Bintou Sanankoua told IPS that “Article 32 of the old law on marriage and guardianship stated that the husband was responsible to protect his wife, and the wife had to obey her husband.

“This article makes the woman a lifelong minor whose every act is subject to her husband’s approval who may, as we’ve seen in daily practice, abuse this power.”

The new law says that, “Spouses owe each other fidelity, protection, relief and assistance. They commit themselves to the community of life on the basis of affection and respect.”

Pressure to reverse changes

For Malian public figures, merely expressing support for the law is enough to attract trouble.

“The High Islamic Council, on behalf of all Muslims, challenged twenty provisions in the draft family law that clash with our religious and societal values,” the council’s president, Mahmoud Dicko, told reporters.

“The president promised to take our claims into consideration during the rereading period, but HCI was never contacted,” he added.

While the debate on the new law has taken an alarming turn, human rights advocates are trying to warn the authorities in Mali to stand firm.

“Among the key violations of human rights in Mali in 2009, you can list women’s status,” Bréhima Koné told IPS. Koné is a lawyer and president of the Malian Human Rights Association (known by its French acronym, AMDH) based in the capital Bamako.

“The new family law is good legislation that certain people, that I don’t want to name here, are challenging. There is very little public information about its contents, and if authorities aren’t careful, Mali risks backsliding on women’s rights.”

All eyes are on the National Assembly. The tension is such that even advocates for the law are silent, fearing reprisals by radical Muslims.

“This new law is actually the old 1962 law, but updated to reflect present-day reality,” wrote a moderate Muslim cleric, El Hadj Sekou Amadou Diallo, in a letter in defence of the new law.

Diallo, after receiving death threats by telephone, was deposed by a group of imams from his position in the town of Kati, 15 kilometers from the capital.

“This standoff between supporters and detractors of the new code has lasted since last August, and it may spark a religious conflict that the country does not need,” Idrissa Maiga, a Bamako-based journalist told IPS.