Senegal and Mali 9
Senegal and Mali 9 MACARTAN HUMPHREYS and HABAYE AG MOHAMED n mid-December 1983, hundreds of demonstrators—armed with spears, machetes, and hunting rifles, covered in protective charms, and chanting Iincantations to render them invulnerable to bullets—invaded the streets of Ziguinchor to call for the independence of a region in the southwest corner of Senegal—the Casamance.1 The government responded with a heavy hand, leaving an official toll of 80 injured and 29 dead.2 A handful of those retreating, led by vet- erans from the Senegalese army, under the banner of the Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC), headed to the mangroves and dense forest of lower Casamance to set up rebel bases.They started military training and planning attacks on government positions.In doing so,they began a guerrilla war that has left thousands killed and the south of Senegal strewn with land mines.After 20 years of failed negotiations and aborted attempts at achieving military victory,no end to the war is in sight. The civil war in Mali started very differently.On the morning of June 28, 1990, a small group of Libyan-trained fighters belonging to the Mouvement Populaire de Libération de l’Azawad (MPLA), also hoping to gain independence for their region, Azawad, attacked a small government position in Tideremen in the far northeast of Mali.They killed four and gained control of a dozen automatic rifles.Moving south- west,the group attacked more government positions that same evening.In an attack at the town of Méneka, they seized 124 automatic rifles.These attacks were the beginning of a war that would engulf the region in intercommunal conflict, pitting northern “whites” against northern “blacks.”After extensive and broad-based nego- tiations, the war ended with a weapons-burning ceremony in 1996.
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