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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) That Desert is Our Country: Tuareg Rebellions and Competing Nationalisms in Comtemporary Mali (1946-1996) Lecocq, J.S. Publication date 2002 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Lecocq, J. S. (2002). That Desert is Our Country: Tuareg Rebellions and Competing Nationalisms in Comtemporary Mali (1946-1996). General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:26 Sep 2021 VIII I Masterss of the land State,, rebels and civil society (1994-1996) ) Introduction n Thiss last chapter will deal with the last two phases of the rebellion from Mayy 1994 to March 1996. Thee first part of this chapter will deal with the third phase of rebellion fromm May to November 1994. This phase has been characterised by Georg Klutee as 'unlimited warfare'.494 First of all, the already divided movements underwentt a process of further factionalism and engaged in open violence againstt each other. The obstruction of the National Pact, and the absence off the state in Northern Mali combined with continued army retaliation, led thee movements to reorganise themselves along tewsit lines, which then engagedd in hostilities over the structure of the Tamasheq political landscapee - the position of tribal leaders and the hierarchical position of thee clans represented in their respective movements. Thee second part of this chapter will deal with a new player in the conflict.. The Mouvement Patriotique Ganda Koy - MPGK, created in April 1994,, was a vigilante brigade created in Gao by deserting army officers in reactionn to repeated attacks by rebel forces on the villages in the Niger Bendd and even on Gao itself. Observers of the conflict between the Ganda KoyKoy and the rebel movements, inside and outside Mali, have argued that it wass an 'ethnic conflict'. I argue that Ganda Koy discourses on the rebellion, Maliann and Tamasheq society and the Ganda Koy itself, are best explained byy looking at the discourse and images used internally, which were based onn concepts of Yace' and on fierce 'nationalism'. Mostt Ganda /toy attacks and pogroms were directed at those who were visiblyy Kel Tamasheq or Moor, that is: 'white'. The latter statement explicitlyy implies that to most Malians, in fact to most people, the Kel Tamasheqq are 'white' by definition. Next to racial and stereotypical images, thee Ganda Koy used rhetoric on the Malian nation both to justify its actions andd to depict the Kel Tamasheq as 'foreign elements'. But contrary to the 1950ss and 1960s, the Kel Tamasheq community now had the means to defendd itself against these stereotypes: Kel Tamasheq intellectuals counteredd the Ganda Ko/s polemical language. Thee third part of this chapter deals with the last phase of the rebellion betweenn October 1994 and March 1996, trading a gradual return to peace, whichh was finally concluded on 26 March 1996 with the ceremonial burning off three thousand weapons in the marketplace of Timbuktu. Thee 'Flame of Peace' was organised by the Malian Government in collaborationn with the United Nations. However, both the conception and Klutee (2001), op. cit., 394. 263 3 implementationn of this peace initiative were the result of local initiatives whichh emanated from civilian leaders - the tribal chiefs and village heads. I willl not linger too long on this last phase of the conflict. Others, particularly withinn the world of international organisations and NGO's, have written sufficientlyy on the subject. I will simply narrate how and under what conditions,, generally speaking, peace was brought about. Movementss and tewsiten Inn Algeria and Libya, the exiled Kel Tamasheq in the tanekra discovered aa relative freedom in the reshaping of tewsit hierarchy. The competition overr leadership within the tanekra in the 1980s had led to the Tamanrassett war of 1985 described in chapter VI. The possibility of re- establishingg hierarchy was furthered by changes in the political and militaryy organisation of society during the 1980s and 1990s which reshapedd the idea of the Tamasheq warrior. In previous times, the warrior statuss of an individual had been linked to his tewsit affiliation. Now, warrior statuss was determined by participation in the movement during the 1980s, thee participation in the Libyan campaigns in Lebanon and Chad and participationn in the rebellion itself. Contrary to the civilian population, and despitee the retaliation on civilians by the army, these new warriors discoveredd it could use violence as a means to establish tewsit hierarchy underr circumstances that had been missing for more than a century - state absence. Afterr the first six months of rebellion, the state was absent in Northern Mali.. Administrators had been killed or had abandoned their posts, except inn the major cities such as Kidal, Menaka and Gao. After the Tamanrasset agreementt in 1991, the army withdrew to a small number of posts, also largelyy situated in the main cities and villages. The number of posts would onlyy decrease after the signing of the National Pact in 1992. Indeed, the armyy occasionally left its barracks to fight rebel units and more often to terrorisee and kill the nomadic population. But crudely put, that was 'all' it did.. With this last remark I do not intend to trivialise their actions. It is to sayy that, on one hand, the army largely influenced peoples' behaviour throughh the exercise of violence but, on the other hand, it had no means to directlyy control or influence developments within Tamasheq society, as it hadd in previous decades. Thiss situation of 'independence' or the absence of the state, combined withh heavy military repression despite this absence, had a large influence onn the reorganisation of the rebel movement along tewsit lines. The atrocitiess the army committed against the civil population forced the populationn and the rebels to organise their defence. The concepts of Hlelan -- the strong members of society - and tifaqiwin - the weak members of societyy needing protection - needed to be reformulated to deal with the developmentss Tamasheq society underwent. In previous periods, notably inn pre-coloinial times, strong tewsiten had protected weak tewsiten. In practice,, the iileian or noble clans had monopolised violence to the detrimentt of imghad and other tiiagiwin. During the colonial period, but 264 4 particularlyy during the Keita regime and the years of exile, the imghadhad becomee aware of the possibility of a political existence independent from thee noble clans. As a large number of rebel fighters were of imghad origins,, they felt they did not need fighters of eltelu origins to protect them andd their tewsit from the army. However, this reformulation of strong and weakk in society on the basis of personal combat skill instead of tewsit affiliationn meant a fragmentation of protection. Wheree one tewsit had formerly protected others, this shifted to some extentt to groups of individuals protecting others within the same tewsit. Onee of the consequences was the creation of militias based on the structuree of a rebel movement and often supporting a name analogous to a rebell movement, but without its political aims. Their existence was legitimisedd by the need for protection. Such groups were the Base AutonomeAutonome du Timetrine - an Idnan militia, the nameless Daoussahak militia,, and the Ifoghas militia created by amenoka/IntaWa ag Attaher. By accident,, the latter had managed to procure a number of weapons from thee Malian army, destined to defend himself and his entourage against attackss by the rebels.495 In 1994, his militia, in alliance with the Ifoghas movementt MPA would start a campaign to reestablish Ifoghas and chief dominancyy within the Tamasheq political landscape of movements, civilians andd tribal leaders. Thee fratricidal war, ARLA and MPA Thee division between modernists and traditionalists among the ishumar playedd its part in the development of these new ideas on protection and clann hierarchy as well. Part of the ishumar community had been in favour off a revolution internal to Tamasheq society that would lead to the equality off all members of society. The concept of timgheda - 'imghadness' - came too full development during this third phase of the rebellion. Under the influencee of the Ifoghas tribal chiefs, the concept of tefoghessa - or 'ifoghasness'' - also developed in the period at hand, and precisely in reactionn to timgheda. These conflicts between former iiieian and tilaqiwin, betweenn formerly dominated and former dominators, came especially to thee fore in what became known as the 'fratricidal war' between the modernistt ARLA and the traditionalist MPA in 1994. But it was also present inn the conflicts between the MPA and other movements that same year. Inn February 1994, members of the ARLA ambushed and killed MPA's secondd man Bilal Saloum. Bilal was a Kel Adagh of beffah origins and a closee friend to Iyad ag Ghali with whom he had fought in Lebanon. Bilal hadd been a Colonel in the Libyan army, a rank he kept in the MPA.

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