There are conflicts old and new crying for solution and reconciliation, not violence, with reasonable, realistic ways out.

Take the South Sudan conflict between the Nuer and the Dinka. We know the story of the borders drawn by the colonial powers, confirmed in Berlin in 1884. Change a border by splitting a country – referendum or not – and what do you expect opening Pandora’s box? More Pandora.

There is a solution: not drawing borders, making them irrelevant. The former Sudan could have become a federation with much autonomy, keeping some apart and others together in confederations-communities, also across borders. Much to learn from Switzerland, EU and ASEAN.

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

Take the Maghreb-Mali+ complex: a road to peace runs through Tuareg high autonomy and confederations of the autonomies, in addition to the state system. Proceeds from natural resources – oil, uranium, gold, metals – should benefit the owners, not former colonisers. The United Nations’ task is to make the West comply with socioeconomic human rights.

Take what is called the last colony (well, Ulster? Palestine?): Sahrawi, Spain’s shame for not having decolonised; the United Nations Charter Article 73 formula is not perfect but differential treatment is unacceptable.

Take Ceuta and Melilla, “Spanish” enclaves in Morocco, and Gibraltar, an “English” enclave in Spain: use the Hong Kong formula with sovereignty for the owners, flag and garrison, and leave the system as it is.

Geography and history matter; sovereignty for one, system for the other. Not a bad formula for the Falkland/Malvinas islands or Northern Ireland, with a reborn Republic of Ireland in a Confederation of British Isles.

Back to Berlin 1884, institutionalising the outrageous sociocide, with genocide and ecocide, perpetrated on Africans on top of centuries of Arab-West slavery. But do not forget the Congress of Berlin six years earlier, in 1878, doing the same to the Balkans, with the infamous Article 25 giving the Dual Monarchy, Austria-Hungary, the right to occupy and administer Bosnia-Herzegovina temporarily.

On Oct. 6, 1908 they did exactly that, Turkey and Russia both being weak. What do you expect when annexing someone’s land? A resistance movement of course, and ultimately, on Jun. 28, 1914, the sacred date to the Serbs, having been defeated by the Turks 525 years earlier: Two shots rang out in Sarajevo.

One century later “historians” (who pay their salaries, states?) see the shots as the cause of World War I, not what caused the shots; like seeing the terrorists, not what causes terrorism.

Then as now the same two stories, nations made prisoners of states, and states-peoples made prisoners of empires. Sarajevo used against terrorism.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson used self-determination to dismantle the beaten Prussian, Habsburg and Ottoman empires; but not the victors’ empires as a young Vietnamese in Paris experiences, chased away from the U.S. Embassy: Ho Chi Minh, claiming the same for his people.

And the U.S. Versailles delegation rejected that claim by Sudeten Germans against Czechoslovakia; accepted by England, not to “appease” Adolf Hitler, but to rectify a wrong.

What a fantastic chance for German-Austrian foreign policy!

Start this 2014 centenary year preparing 150 anniversary conferences, in 2028 and 2034, apologising for 1914, undoing some harm, letting Africans be Africans and Balkans be Balkans of various kinds, stop blaming their victims for being unruly, restless, terrorist and so on. The peaceful century 1815-1914: some peace! Don’t miss the chance.

But they were not alone. In 1905 the U.S.-Japan, Taft-Katsura (later president and prime minister, respectively) agreed to U.S. rule in the Philippines and Japanese rule in Korea, in the interest of “peace in East Asia” – their peace, meaning rule. A good century later the Obama-Abe (president and prime minister, respectively) uneasy agreement on Japan’s aggressive policy.

The solution to the Korean Peninsula conflict is a peace treaty and normalisation with North Korea, a Korean nuclear free zone and work on the open border-confederation-federation-unitary state continuum.

If the U.S. fails to go along, why not go ahead, also multilaterally and via United Nations.

But they were not alone: in 1917 Balfour Jewish homeland followed the Sykes-Picot treason with four disastrous colonies. With a major difference, however: the Jews had been there before; some title to some land, but not to an ever-expanding Jewish state (just one word away from “only Jewish”).

The road to peace must pass through a pre-1967 Israel with Jewish characteristics, Palestine recognised, a Middle East Community of Israel with border countries, an Organisation for Cooperation and Security in West Asia, with Syria (an upper chamber for the many nations with cultural autonomy – Ottoman millet), Iraq (maybe confederation, with no U.S. bases), the Kurds (autonomy in the four countries for some land, a confederation of autonomies), Iran (an end to Benjamin Netanyahu extremism), a moderate Israel, and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection.

Afghanistan? Full U.S.-NATO withdrawal, an end to foreign bases, coalition government, Swiss-style constitution with much autonomy for villages and nations, and gender parity. But let Afghans be Afghans.

China’s claims on sea and air space? Too much, but the Chinese had been there before, 500-1500; some title to some sea, some air.

And U.S.-China: direct cooperation for mutual benefit, make it more equal; the U.S. is cheating itself, building warehouses, not factories.

U.S. spying on the world: the point is not clemency for Edward Snowden but to drop the NSA and punish those, also allies, who violated human rights.

The West tries to claim the moral high ground by changing discourse to something they think they have and others do not: democracy. Running a huge colonial-imperial system against the will of others? Some democracy.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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.

Tebu security staff at Saharan oil fields in southern Libya. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS

By Rebecca Murray
SOUTHERN LIBYA, May 17 2013 (IPS)

Kaltoum Saleh, 18, is elated to graduate from her overcrowded high school in the remote Saharan town of Ubari, near the Algerian border.

Saleh, a member of Ubari’s indigenous Tebu tribe, says that for decades under former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan Tebu suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination, which stemmed in part from the failure of the semi-nomadic tribe to register under Libya’s 1954 citizenship law.

Gaddafi’s subsequent “Arabisation” campaign, intended to erase indigenous language and culture, also contributed to discrimination against the Tebu, many of whom were deprived of citizenship papers. As a result, they were barred from decent health care, education and skilled jobs. They often worked for low pay or as subsistence cross-border smugglers.

The tribe was swift to join the revolution against the regime in 2011, and with Gaddafi’s overthrow, the Tebu hoped to attain what they had long been struggling for: their full rights as citizens.

More than two years after the revolution, Saleh proudly says that her father, once a security guard, is now a hospital manager. She herself has considerable ambitions and is striving to become a human rights lawyer and fight for Tebu rights.

“The revolution was good for our self worth,” she says optimistically. “Now I feel like a Libyan citizen.”

But the revolution has not produced all the gains the Libyan Tebu have sought.

They lack sufficient representation in the Tripoli-based government, are in conflict with neighbouring Arab tribes, partly over resources in the current power vacuum, and are still branded by some Libyans as ‘foreigners’.

Guarding southern borders

In their quest for equal rights, Libya’s Tebu are now positioning themselves as valuable and natural guardians of the country’s vast southern borders.

Stretched across Libya’s south, the Tebu live in Ubari, Sebha and Murzuq in the west, and across the Sahara nearly 1,000 kilometres to the Kufra oasis in the east.

The desert terrain, with no roads across its width, is rich in underground water – which is diverted to ninety percent of Libya’s population along the coast – as well as oil and precious minerals.

It is also a haven for illegal cross-border trade, with weapons, government-subsidised gasoline and food smuggled out, and migrants and drugs transported in.

At the beginning of the revolt in 2011, Gaddafi promised both the indigenous Libyan Tebu and Tuareg citizenship papers and rights in exchange for their support.

While the Tuareg threw their lot in with his regime, only to find themselves on the losing side, the Tebu say they instead took Gaddafi’s weapons, and turned them and their desert expertise against him.

“Our forefathers came here hundreds of years ago,” explained Ibrahim Abu Baker, a Tebu archeologist from Ubari. “When we hold the sand, even in the night when the moon is shining, we know where we are.”

Although the Tebu were heralded for their revolutionary role guarding Libya’s southern borders and oil wells, with just two Tebu representatives out of 200 in the current General National Congress (GNC), their fight for equal rights is just gearing up."The Tebu want to close the chapter so they can get their citizenship, healthcare and education."
-- Mohammed Sidi

“During the revolution, people were perfect, excellent,” said Ali Ramadan, a Tebu military commander. “But when we returned to normal life, we found all the same people in their old positions, doing the same thing.”

In 2012, brutal clashes erupted between Tebu and Arab tribes in the desert towns of Sebha and Kufra. Mostly over power and resources, including smuggling routes, the fighting left hundreds dead and wounded, destroyed infrastructure and deepened animosity between neighbours.

Now an enormous wall and wide ditch encircles Kufra, built and controlled by the Arab Zwai tribe, who share the town with the minority Tebu. A tense ceasefire – not peace – is in place.

There is more optimism in Sebha. Last month, community elders successfully hammered out a reconciliation agreement between the western town’s Tebu and Arab Awlad Suleiman tribes.

“The Tebu want to close the chapter so they can get their citizenship, healthcare and education,” said Mohammed Sidi, one of the chief negotiators.

But Sidi still had reservations. “The wise people are together,” he said. “But the young people are separated now. The bad people – like those working in smuggling – are still together. They can’t negotiate because their experience is low. How do we bring those people together?”

Ubari, over 100 kilometres west of Sebha, is the last in a chain of fertile desert oases surrounded by sand dunes before the Algerian border. Dominated by the semi-nomadic Libyan Tuareg, who are also indigenous and have strong cross-border ties, this desolate corner thrived as a tourist destination until the 2011 revolution.

Now Ubari is known as a stop on the rumoured smuggling routes south to Mali and for its lucrative oil fields. It is also where Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a son of Muammar Gaddafi, was apprehended while trying to flee Libya after the fall of Tripoli.

The Tebu, along with Tuareg and Arab militias, maintain an uneasy presence here, legitimised and paid for as part of the Ministry of Defence’s auxiliary Shield of Libya brigades and by private oil field security companies.

For now, they are the border guard presence. While the Tebu loosely patrol the southern border from Niger to Egypt, the Tuareg control Libya’s far southwest corner and the Algerian frontier running north to Ghadames.

Keeping an uneasy peace

The war in Mali, the terrorist attack against the nearby Amenas oil field in Algeria, the French Embassy bombing in Tripoli and rumours of Islamists trafficking weapons and fighters south have heightened community tensions.

“Libyans were very worried when the French intervention started in Mali,” a western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Their main concern is that Islamists being flushed out by French jets could seek refuge in the kind of ungoverned space in southern Libya. They are worried about extremist groups moving through the region.”

Concerned about Libya’s porous frontier, the European Union and countries including the United States and United Kingdom are providing “advisory” roles in building up the government’s border guard.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has established a military base for drones on the south side of the Libyan border, in Niger.

“Broadly speaking, there are localised rivalries, ethnic rivalries and tribal rivalries in the south,” said the western diplomat. “A long-term solution for border security would most probably include both Tebu and Tuareg because they know the region and they live on the borders.”

Chaotic downtown Ubari is filled with migrants, most from Mali and Niger, who congregate on damaged sidewalks hoping for work, while Tuareg and Tebu tribesmen, wrapped in elaborate scarves to shield themselves from the dust, drive by in honking Toyota pickups.

Chieftains work hard to maintain the peace in mixed Libyan Tebu and Tuareg communities, like Ubari. They understand their shared battle is to overcome discrimination from Libya’s Arab population and to secure their rights.

Shamsideen Khoury, an 18-year-old Tebu student in Ubari, fought in the revolution and has faith in the future. He seeks a different path from his deceased father, who was a low level security guard. “I want to be an architect,” he says quietly. “I want to build a new Libya.”

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 Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

With France withdrawing troops after chasing Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) from towns in northern Mali, the central government in Bamako should urgently launch a serious process of national reconciliation, particularly with the Tuareg and Arab minorities, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) released Thursday.

Among other steps, the authorities should prevent the persecution by the security forces of the civilian population, especially in communities allegedly associated with rebel or armed Islamist groups that controlled the north for the 10 months preceding the French intervention in January.

Bamako’s leaders also should not impose pre-conditions, such as immediate disarmament, that make dialogue with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), the Tuareg independence group, more difficult, according to the ICG.

They should also ensure that the country’s radio and television stations do not incite or aggravate existing ethnic divisions in the country, especially in the run-up to national elections that are supposed to take place in July, according to the 47-page report.

“Elections must be held soon but not at any cost,” according to Gilles Yabi, ICG’s West Africa Project director.

“The radicalisation of public opinion is a major risk, and Mali’s leaders and institutions must take firm action to prevent people, especially those in the south, (from) lumping together rebels, terrorists and drug traffickers with all Tuaregs and Arabs,” he said.

As if to underline the urgency of the challenge, the ICG report, ‘Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform’, was released just as Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced that two Tuareg men who had been detained by Malian soldiers in a small town near Timbuktu had died while in detention at Bamako’s Central Prison.

The two were part of a group of seven men, aged between 21 and 66, who were arrested in mid-February on suspicion of supporting Islamist groups, including AQIM. The men were subsequently transported to the Bamako prison, according to HRW which interviewed the men there Mar. 20.

HRW said the two men probably died of excessive heat, given the lack of ventilation in the room in which they were held, possibly combined with the injuries they received from the earlier abuse, which included repeated beatings and burning. The surviving five were reportedly moved to a different room after the two deaths, HRW reported.

The deaths came amidst continuing reports of abuses against Tuaregs, Arabs, and Fulanis by Malian soldiers who returned to the north alongside French forces in their drive to oust AQIM and its allies. Since then, HRW’s Sahel expert Corinne Dufka told IPS, at least 13 members of the three minority communities have been summarily executed by Malian security forces and at least another 15 have “disappeared”.

“These abuses by the army in reconquering the north are exacerbating already existing ethnic tensions,” she said.

The chaos into which Mali descended began at the beginning of 2012 when MNLA, whose forces were fortified by returning and well-armed veterans of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s security forces, chased the Malian army out of the north, precipitating a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government in Bamako.

AQIM, initially a mainly Algerian movement that had dug deep roots into northern Mali after its defeat in Algeria’s civil war, was able to wrest control of most of the region from the MNLA by last June.

As its control spread over the succeeding months, Mali’s neighbours and Western countries, including the U.S., which had provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and training to Mali’s military as part of its Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership Initiative during the previous decade, became increasingly alarmed.

By December, the U.N. Security Council approved a plan for the eventual deployment of a West African force to take back the region. In January, however, one of AQIM’s affiliates launched an offensive southwards, triggering the France’s intervention.

French troops quickly took the region’s three most important towns – Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal – paving the way for both the return of the Chadian army and contingents of the West African peacekeeping force (AFISMA).

French and Chadian forces, backed by U.S. intelligence assets, notably reconnaissance drones newly based in neighbouring Niger, then entered the northern-most part of Mali to pursue AQIM militants into their sanctuaries as part of the ongoing “war against terrorism”.

Militants have since staged a number of suicide attacks against
targets in the cities. According to the ICG report, the ability of AFISMA, which is likely to absorb the remaining French troops as part of a rehatted U.N. stabilisation mission, to maintain security for the civilian population is “unclear”, while a senior Pentagon officials testified here earlier this week that it was a “completely incapable force”.

Paris announced this week that about 100 of its 4,000-troop intervention force have pulled out – the start of a phased withdrawal that will leave about 1,000 French soldiers as part of the proposed stabilisation mission by the end of the year.

At the same time, a 550-man European Union (EU) mission began training Malian soldiers last week in hopes that they will eventually play a major role in defending the country against the AQIM threat. The mission is also aimed at reforming the military institution, including fighting endemic corruption and subordinating itself to civilian control.

Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers here, notably Sen. John McCain, who just returned from a trip to Mali, are pressing the administration of President Barack Obama to restore and expand military aid to the Malian army. Direct U.S. military assistance to the army was cut off after the coup, and the administration appears more inclined to defer to the EU at this point.

The ICG report stressed that political initiatives are at least as important as military measures.

“Focusing on terrorism alone risks distracting from the main problems,” according to Comfort Ero, ICG’s Africa director. “Corruption and poor governance are more important causes of the crisis than the terrorist threat, the Tuareg issue, or even the north-south divide.”

“The challenges for the region and the U.N. are to align their positions on the political process and to insist that Malians, especially their elites assume responsibility for reversing bad governance and preventing another crisis,” she said.

HRW’s Dufka agreed, noting that Mali’s collapse last year showed that “its so-called democracy was built on very, very weak foundations …but should also illuminate the challenges it faces – addressing endemic corruption, strengthening rule-of-law institutions, and ending chronic human-rights abuse.

“Addressing the Tuareg problem is key to the future of stability in Mali,” she noted, adding that top priority should be given to returning the tens of thousands of Malians now living in refugee camps to their homes.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Ramatou Wallet Madouya (r) and her sister Fatma (l) in Goudebo camp, Burkina Faso. They are many of the Malians who fled the fighting in their country. Credit: Marc-André Boisvert/IPS

By Marc-Andre Boisvert
GOUDEBO, Burkina Faso, Feb 22 2013 (IPS)

Fatimata Wallet Haibala sits among a group of women and teenage girls under a tent, her handicapped boy on her lap. The scene could be a rural picture of a Tuareg gathering in the desert. But the mother mother of five resides in a refugee camp in Goudebo, Burkina Faso, almost 100 kilometres from their home in Mali.

“Life is harsher for women in the camp,” she tells IPS. “We have to take care of the family — men can walk around freely.” The widow makes money by re-selling to her fellow refugees the boxed milk and sugar that she buys from outside the camp. She has been here for more than a year now, escaping Mali before the crisis first hit in 2012.

In early 2012, a rebellion saw the Tuareg – a traditionally nomadic community living across parts of Mali, Niger and Algeria– take over the north and nearly two-thirds of the country. But they did not hold the terrority for long.

In April 2012, a coalition of armed Islamist groups allied with Al-Qaeda chased out the secular Tuareg-led National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad.

The coalition – composed of Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), and Ansar Dine – was able to hold on the territory until a French intervention allowed the Malian army to reclaim the north last month.

The crisis, so far, has created over 150,000 refugees in neighbouring countries – 40,000 in Burkina Faso alone – and 230,000 internally displaced persons within Mali.

Every day, new refugees arrive at the camps. Most are “fair skinned” – Malian Arabs and Tuaregs.

Fear of the retaliation at home

The late father of Haibala’s children, a Tuareg, was a soldier loyal to the Malian army who died fighting a rebellion in Agelhok in eastern Mali, last February.

As soon as the rebellion came closer to her home, Haibala chose to leave. She arrived in the camp in February 2012, long before Islamists imposed Sharia law in the north.

“In Gao, all “fair skin” left. Now, we hear that they hunt us – I don’t see the day yet when we will go back,” the 49-year-old woman says.

Fresh attacks shook the town as recenlty as Thursday, Feb. 21., when the Malian army battled Islamists.

The fear of retaliation from their communities back home is the main reason why they do not want return to Mali.

Stories of attacks against light-skinned folks, true or false, are intertwined with the harsh memories of the Tuareg rebellions of the 1990s, during which the Malian army and paramilitary groups executed several Tuareg and Arab civilians.

Recent statements from Human Rights Watch confirm that executions have been carried out by the country’s army on suspected Islamist rebels and supporters, but President Dioncounda Traoré denied the allegations on Feb.20.

Safe – for now

Meanwhile, the refugee women gathered under a tent in the camp to discuss rumours of rapes and killings.

Though none of the women here have been witness to the atrocities, they have heard stories. “We know that some traders have been killed by the army at Gao’s market,” comments Fatma Targui.

Further away, in another tent, Abou Haoula and some friends drink tea. Tradition prevails in Goudebo and men and women do not mix much here.

The men arrived here in January from Gao. Some came by cars, some rode on the back of donkeys or camels. When they reached their country’s boarder with Burkina Faso, they were taken in by the United Nations Refugee Agency.

“We fled because of the bombings and fighting – that was just too much. A lost bullet could have hit us … We had to leave,” explains Haoula, who is in his fifties.

He says that, from the time of the Islamist invasion untill the bombings, they had been able to receive a steady delivery of food from Algeria and from Bamako. After the French launched the first bombings in January, all life and the deliveries of needed supplies stopped. It is only then that Hauola and other refugees left.

“The MUJWA was harsh, but they left us alone if we complied by the rules,” Amidy Ag Habo, tells IPS. Back home, he was the deputy mayor of N’takala, a small town 60 kilometres outside of Gao.

“We did not know the Islamists. They were foreigners,” he adds, but still, the “fair skinned” are perceived as allies to the MUJWA in Gao.

The Goudebo refugee camp lies in an arid region. Here, NGOs had to dig water holes and build basic infrastructure to meet the needs of some 7,444 refugees who had to be relocated here in January.

Fears that fighting from Mali would spill across the border and kidnapping threats were some of the reasons why authorities relocated the camp.

Inspite of the harsh conditions, Haoula is relieved to be here. “Now, we are able to sleep tight. I was not able to close an eye in Mali,” he says.

The men, still dressed in their Tuareg headscarves, share the feeling that it is most likely payback time in Gao.

“There is no government in northern Mali now. All decisions are taken by the military. They are the police, the judges, and the government. The French do not kill. They simply disregard what the Malian army is doing,” says Habo.

For Fatou Wallet Mahadi, the Islamists were a lesser evil compared to the Malian army.

“There is no Mali without Azawad. We, Tuaregs of the Azawad, now belong to Mali. We trust that one day we will be able to go back. But right now it is impossible. There are too many tensions. We are tired of violence erupting every 10 years. When we go back, we need to work on a real solution to live together,” she says.

The United States has poured money into training the Malian military in the last several years. Above, U.S. Special Forces inspect weapons in Mali in 2007. Credit: The U.S. Army/ CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jan 14 2013 (IPS)

U.S. Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta has applauded France’s surprise airstrikes on Islamist rebels in northern Mali that began late last week and continued over the weekend.

Panetta added that the U.S. government is readying plans for assistance in the ongoing operations, which scholars and human rights workers worry could continue for an extended period.

“I commend France for taking the steps that it has, and we have promised…to provide whatever assistance we can to try to help them in that effort,” Panetta told reporters on Monday.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that Al Qaeda does not establish a base for operations in North Africa and Mali,” he continued. “The effort is to try to do what is necessary to halt [rebel] advances and to try to secure some of the key cities in Mali.”

On Friday, the French government authorised airstrikes and ordered 550 French troops into Mali, where for 10 months the massive northern section of the country has been under the control of a combination of Islamists, ethnic Tuareg nationalists and criminal gangs. In March, the weak government in Bamako fell to a military coup, creating a power vacuum in the north.

Since then the international community has debated how to proceed. While France, Mali’s former colonial power, has pushed a military option, others such as the United States and the United Nations have been more cautious.

Still, in December, Washington and Paris co-sponsored a U.N. resolution that allowed for a military operation carried out by the West African grouping ECOWAS, for which the United States has offered training. (Washington is barred by law from training the Malian army until democratic elections are held.)

The ECOWAS force is not expected to be ready to enter Mali until the fall at the earliest, however. Meanwhile, Islamists reportedly linked to Al Qaeda have continued advancing against the Malian military. The French actions over the weekend sought to halt rebel attempts to take the central city of Konna, a strategy with which Washington appears to agree.

“It was clear to France and to all of us that that could not be allowed to continue,” Panetta said Monday. “That’s the reason France has engaged, and it’s the reason that we’re providing cooperation to them in that effort.”

While Panetta refused to offer details of new U.S. assistance, he did state that there would be “some limited logistical support” and “intelligence support”, as well as “some areas of airlift”.

Both the United Kingdom and Canada have stated that they would send aircraft to assist in the Mali mission. The European Union on Monday said that it would not send any combat mission to North Africa, although it publicly supported the French decision.

Already a crisis

While France’s move appears to have taken observers by surprise, the strikes are reportedly received with cautious relief by many Malians.

Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, has been pleading for an intervention. And Oumou Sall Seck, the first woman mayor elected in northern Mali, warned in an opinion piece published in late December, “Immediately reclaiming northern Mali from violent extremists must become a priority. And it can’t be done without international help, especially from key powers like America and France.”

With international action now underway, however, the mission’s exact scope is unclear. “I’m very surprised that things moved so quickly, given that there had been no movement and just a lot of talk for some time,” Susanna Wing, a professor at Haverford College who has written widely on Mali, told IPS.

“The French are clearly operating in the hope of a rout, but that is not likely to happen quickly. I’m worried this could go on and on and result in a real civilian catastrophe. It’s important to remember that there’s already a humanitarian crisis in Mali, with some 400,000 refugees having fled.”

Humanitarian groups are sounding the alarm, with Medecins Sans Frontieres and Amnesty International on Monday calling on international forces to protect civilians and health infrastructure.

While rumours surfaced on Monday of greater U.S. involvement in the fast-evolving situation in Mali, Wing says such involvement seems unlikely.

“Intelligence support, troop training – that seems reasonable, but I would be very surprised if there were anything other than that,” she says. “Since Somalia, everyone knows the U.S. isn’t going to move to put troops on the ground anytime soon.”

A more recent memory guiding many international actors, including the United States, may be that of Libya. The 2011 intervention and the resulting outflow of both weapons and fighters are widely regarded as having led directly to the subsequent spike in violence in Mali.

Piecemeal intelligence

Washington has been building up a covert network of Special Forces bases and operations in Africa over the past decade, and the sudden and dramatic decline in stability in Mali in the past year has come as a stinging surprise to many U.S. policymakers, particularly in the military.

According to new analysis published on Monday in the New York Times, Washington under President Barack Obama has spent upwards of 600 million dollars in a “sweeping effort to combat militancy” in North Africa. The effort has included a significant focus on Mali, which was regarded as a bastion of stability and where the United States has poured money into training the military.

“Has this backfired?” Wing asked. “The Malian military training that was provided was useful, but what the U.S. government was not doing was putting all the pieces together.”

For instance, she said, the Pentagon should not have been surprised by discontent within the military that led to this spring’s coup. Furthermore, despite a key move during the 1990s to integrate ethnic Tuareg into the state military, Wing noted that little effort was put into actually resolving longstanding northern grievances of underdevelopment and decentralisation.

“The U.S. was always just looking at fragments of the picture and saying they would continue to support the situation through training operations,” Wing said. “It’s piecemeal intelligence – in Mali, somehow, the whole picture was never seen.”