mustang19 posted:why are his daughters blacker than him?
they aren't his biological kids because, well,
all this marxism bullshit in the irrelevant in the real world; socialism is dead
and all i got was 2 downvotes
let me check though maybe there's a crusader hiding in my tomato
france seems to be having slight difficulty in gao
they weren't supposed to be pausing so soon. the real insurgency hasn't even started.
mustang19 posted:i'm no malian but here are some interesting articles.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mali/9828681/Mali-dispatch-Why-join-the-Islamists-Because-they-pay-more.html
"The older brother asked him: 'Why did you join the militant people?'" recalled Corp Toure. "He replied: 'Because they pay well.' He said he was earning two million CFA (£2,600) a year, plus 500,000 CFA (£750) for every day spent fighting."
That might not sound much by Western standards, but Corp Toure said that even the basic pay level was double his own army income.
Especially after the inevitable "deductions" from his superiors, who routinely cream a bit off from the lower ranks' earnings each month to line their own pockets. And when it came to earning the "fighting" bonus, it was probably safer to be the side of the well-armed, well-organised militants than the chronically under-equipped Malian army, who lost so many battles to them last year that it sparked the military coup in March and, ultimately, this month's French intervention.
"I did wonder about joining them, but then I had second thoughts and decided to protect the people instead," added Corp Toure, as he watched children playing around the wreckage of three burnt-out gun trucks. "But if you look up in Timbuktu and Kidal (militant-held towns in the north) I can tell you plenty of soldiers who have switched sides there."
...
One Malian aid worker, who returned to the country in 2003 after nearly two decades abroad, said: "When I came I was shocked by the changes I saw in the extent of radical Islam here. There are lot more radical Muslims and radical Islamic organisations that didn't exist before."
In some parts of the country, the lawlessness that goes hand in hand with a weak, corrupt, coup-ridden government has also created strong support for harsh punishments, if not necessarily the religious dogma that goes with it. Abdurraham Ballo, 64, the imam of the Mosque of the New Bus Station in Segou, said the only thing that was wrong with the amputations carried out in the Islamist-held towns further north was that they cut off feet as well as hands.
"That practice is not allowed in Islam, it should only be the hands," he said. "But the purpose of amputation is to prevent as well as punish, and if it can stop people stealing and robbing, then why not? Nowadays there all kinds of people stealing, and carrying out robberies with violence."
Mr Ballo added that he laid part of the blame on Mali "importing Western laws", which stopped people beating thieves and emphasised criminals' "human rights".
"All laws in Africa are imported from Europe these days, and they all talk of 'human rights'," he said. "Who is human? Only Europeans?"
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/another-kind-of-islamism-gains-ground-in-southern-mali/
BAMAKO, Mali — Last spring radical Islamism took over the north of Mali. Three fundamentalist militias with links to Al Qaeda hijacked a Tuareg uprising and after seizing two-thirds of the country, enforced Shariah at gunpoint and smashed religious monuments, eliciting comparisons to the Taliban.
Now, a republican form of Islamism is peacefully conquering the south of Mali. The High Council of Islam, an Islamist civil society organization, has gradually emerged as the country’s strongest political force.
...
Yet if southern Mali is heading toward Islamism, it is an Islamism based on persuasion, not violence and repression, as in the north. Also this week Dicko extended “warm thanks” to “His Excellence” François Hollande for the recent French intervention, while slamming “certain Gulf and other Muslim countries” — meaning Tunisia, Qatar, Egypt and members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — which called the French campaign an attack against Islam.
One Malian recently tweeted in support of Dicko: “These Arab Islamists are racists for they only conceive of Islam as being by Arabs, blacks are just second class.” He, like most black southern Malians, who overwhelmingly support the intervention, do not grant Arab countries a monopoly on the interpretation of Islam. They favor their own version, leavened by pluralism and compromise-seeking.
http://www.stripes.com/news/africa/mali-expert-says-tuareg-people-key-to-beating-insurgents-7.176948
this ones good so ill just paste the whole thing
STUTTGART, Germany — During the early days of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa, Rudolph Atallah made frequent trips to northern Mali, where he roved across the rugged Sahara with the locals known as the Tuareg.
Nearly 10 years before the territory fell into the hands of Islamic militants, Atallah, who was then serving as Africa counterterrorism director for the Defense Intelligence Agency, marveled at the Tuaregs’ ability to navigate the terrain. There were no roads, no sign posts or obvious ways to get a sense of direction. And after four hours of bouncy twists and turns during a desert trip in 2004, Atallah wanted to know how the driver did it.
“I’m sitting in the front seat, it’s hot, we’re eating dust, and I ask him how he doesn’t get lost,” said Atallah, who retired from the Air Force in 2009 and now runs a security consultant firm. “The driver smiles and says, ‘You know GPS? I am TPS. Tuareg Positioning System.’ ”
To the government in Mali and its army, which the U.S. has spent millions of dollars over the years trying to turn into a capable fighting force, the Tuaregs have long been regarded as the enemy. To policymakers in the West, the Tuaregs are an ethnic group with legitimate political grievances, but who are nonetheless kept at arm’s length because of their separatist rebellion in Mali’s north.
But to Atallah, who was in Stuttgart this week to consult with Special Operations Command Africa about the unfolding crisis in Mali, the Tuaregs are an untapped resource. They are the missing piece in a U.S. strategy that so far has done little to curb the growing threat of al-Qaida-aligned militants who have taken root in the region, according to Atallah.
“In order to be a force multiplier against the Islamists, you need to integrate the secular Tuareg, the secular movement, in this intervention force in the north,” said Atallah during an interview in Stuttgart. “Get them to push out the core Islamists and get them to become the force up north that can raise the alarm anytime these guys try to turn up. The Tuareg never wanted them there in the first place.”
So far, few policymakers in the West appear to be listening as France continues to lead an intervention in Mali aimed at pushing back Islamists who have asserted control over a large portion of the country. However, within Africa Command’s secretive special operations community, Atallah says his ideas are resonating.
“SOCAF understands the problem sets very well,” said Atallah, a fluent Arabic and French speaker who has made more than 40 trips to northern Mali. “They really get it.”
In the two weeks of France’s surprise intervention, gains have been made on the battlefield. With the help of French airstrikes and fire power on the ground, Malian forces have been retaking cities. Small numbers of troops from Western African nations are on the way to help. Analysts, however, say there are many unanswered questions about the intervention and the long-term strategy for containing the terror threat.
For its part, the U.S. has provided logistical support to the French, mainly in the form of transporting troops into the country while asserting there would be no U.S. combat troops on the ground. Meanwhile, the broader U.S. policy, which has focused on intelligence-gathering operations and training militaries in the region to lead the fight against militants, remains the centerpiece of the American plan.
However, as the West wrestles with what to do next in Mali, a potential militant base for launching terror strikes across the region and possibly beyond, some experts say the U.S. needs to change course by putting less emphasis on a strategy that relies on the Malian army to do the heavy lifting. Instead, more should be done to bolster the standing of secular Tuaregs in the north, the key stakeholder in a region now dominated by Islamic militants such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
The Malian army, which sees the Tuaregs as its primary enemy, should be kept out of the north entirely, argues Atallah, who says the army’s history of heavy-handedness in dealing with ethnic groups in the north could drive potential allies into enemy hands.
“Everyone wants to see terrorists eliminated. Secular Tuaregs want the same thing. But they don’t want to be mistreated by Malian soldiers,” he said. “What you have now is a situation where Tuareg youth are so angry that, if left unchecked, you are forcing their hand to eventually join the wrong side, which will exacerbate the problem.”
In 2011, frustrated with their relations with the government in Bamako, secular Tuaregs founded a movement known as MNLA and rebelled against the Malian government in January 2012. By April, they had seized most of the north. They were soon pushed aside by Ansar al-Dine, an Islamist Tuareg front that aligned with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
While secular Tuaregs say they want a part in the fight to liberate the north, they have “essentially been told to shut up and have been pushed to the side,” Atallah said.
Atallah isn’t the only one advocating a new approach in Mali.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent who has investigated numerous terrorism cases and was the agency’s point man for interrogating captured al-Qaida members, also says the international community needs to consider coordinating with the secular Tuaregs.
“You have to focus your efforts on targeting your enemy,” said Soufan during a phone interview from New York, where he now runs his consultancy firm The Soufan Group. “In this case, if you isolate the Tuareg, you’re going to make them more oriented towards these (extremist) groups.”
Eventually, the French intervention will likely be handed over to regional African forces. And when that happens, the international community’s focus on supporting that regional force will serve as a distraction and prevent collaboration with the readiest fighting force, the local Tuaregs, according to Soufan.
“While the NATO allies are engaged in capacity-building, Islamic radicals will consolidate their hold on the north, and will likely launch opportunistic attacks on Western targets in the region,” according to a Soufan Group analysis on the crisis. “This will cause the terror threat from Mali to escalate, not diminish.”
For Soufan, a pragmatic strategy of “sanctuary management,” which would involve offensive strikes when needed while resisting costly attempts at nation-building, is what’s required.
“We have to be very realistic. Sanctuaries are all over the place,” Soufan said. “Are we trying to make these people democratic and instill the ideals of Jefferson and Washington? It is not going to work. First we have to eliminate threats.”
Meanwhile, Atallah says the next move by Islamic militants will be to blend into the population and launch a bloody insurgency.
“It’s going to be very painful for everybody,” he said. “For six months, Islamists have been making tunnels and preparing for the inevitable intervention. Moving into these towns to occupy them is going to be a piece of cake (for the French-led force). Then an insurgency starts and these towns become kill boxes.”
For the international community, the immediate strategy should focus on pressuring the junta government in Mali to step down while bringing the secular Tuareg into the fold in the north, according Atallah said.
“And you have to stop Malian troops from going north. Use anybody but Malian forces,” he said. “They couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. Despite all the training we’ve given them, this rebel force of Tuaregs last year overthrew them in two and a half months.”
While the West supports a plan to send more than 3,000 troops from Economic Organization of West African States to Mali, some experts say the roughly $500 million price tag to support the mission for a year would be better spent empowering the Tuareg.
“The Islamists would be gone in a heartbeat,” he said. “Instead we’re going to dump it on this (ECOWAS) force that is ill-prepared, all based on a half-baked plan. There’s no sense of realism.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mali-rebels-town-20130127,0,5775328.story
DIABALY, Mali — The militants came with gifts of dates, milk, peanuts, cookies and plastic prayer beads, extolling Islam and promising townspeople they wouldn't hurt them. They took over houses, unloaded truckloads of ammunition, food and water and ordered families not to run away.
They took down the national flag from the school and replaced it with a black Islamic flag. They blasted the concrete cross off a church.
They wore turbans covering their faces like masks, but spoke gently, promising to pay for any damage they caused.
When not shooting, they slept, ate and prayed.
The Al Qaeda-linked Islamic fighters seized Diabaly in a dawn assault on Jan. 14, three days after France launched attacks on militants elsewhere in Mali to destroy what it called the threat of a new terrorist state in West Africa, one capable of exporting terrorism to Europe and beyond.
The militants' assault on this central Malian town laid bare the country's weak, shambolic army, which was in danger of ceding the entire country to the extremists. The Islamists had already seized the north, where they imposed a harsh form of sharia, or Islamic law, that included the hacking off of people's hands for relatively minor offenses.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/130122/malians-mali-french-intervention-islamists
“We were scared when the army left,” Hamet said. “Then the Islamists told us not to run away, that they had come for the army and the local administration, not us. They said they had come for jihad and to introduce Shariah law.
“Then I was scared again because we have heard that they cut off hands and feet,” he said, referring to reported atrocities carried out in Timbuktu and Gao, northern cities held by Islamists.
Diabaly’s mayor, Oumar Diakite, was lucky: he was out of town when the Islamists arrived, so instead they trashed his office. “The destroyed everything,” he said, surveying the broken tables and overturned chairs. Had he been there he is sure they would have killed him.
The Islamists also went on a petulant rampage through the town’s small Catholic church, smashing the large wooden crucifix, beheading a stone statue of the Virgin Mary and leaving a decapitated plastic baby Jesus on the altar.
But their reign was short. The night they arrived the French air strikes began, and by Friday the last Islamist fighters left on motorbikes after burying the bodies of their dead comrades who had to be transported to the cemetery in three pick-up trucks.
...
But pushing them into the desert is not the same as winning the war, that will take longer and require more than air raids.
“If the French are here we’re not scared, but we don’t trust the Mali army,” said Hamet who, like others, feared an Islamist resurgence. “This is not the end we need the French forces to stay here.”
all this marxism bullshit in the irrelevant in the real world; socialism is dead (outside glorious DPRK). what really matters to the developing world, at least in the middle east and north africa, is corrupt liberalism versus relatively uncorrupt islamism. the "oppose both sides and support communism" thing is just a last ditch for first worlders to make it seem like they're not defending western liberalism.
the western backed states are failing even as their people nominally support them because they're just too corrupt and useless to sustain themselves. france and its shell oil-controlled ECOWAS allies are the only thing keeping failed secular governments alive in west africa. even then islamism is slowly taking over mali anyway.
so either support france or support islam. none of this neutrality crap please, cry me a river.
that's imho at least, glad nobody from mali posts here to wave the bloody severed hand at me.
for a reason
Dar es Salam, northern Mali - We make a flashing signal with our headlights to let them know our car is in trouble.
They drive a wide berth around us at high speed. Unsure who we are, they fear an ambush on their caravan. It is late at night and there are many forces in this Sahara.
After some hesitation, a group of men get out and in a staggered V-shape military formation, guns at the ready, start walking toward us in the dark.
"Al Sallam alaykum." "Wa alaykum sallam."
"Are you from Ansar Dine?" we ask referring to the local Malian Islamist armed group.
They do not say yes.
"We are mujahideen in the cause of Allah."
Exclusive: Al Qaeda urges Mali to reject foreign intervention.
The hair on our necks stands on end.
The fighters look like desert military preachers - members of some stoical sect that took a vow of poverty and jihad. They wear double bandolier ammo belts over austere beige cotton smocks and matching high cropped pants - like inhabitants of Tatooine, the desert planet in Star Wars. These are not outfits one buys at the market, or inherits from a brother or friend. They are uniforms tailor-made to send a message of simplicity.
The men, mostly Mauritanians, are escorting a caravan of trucks loaded with food and medical aid for the people of Timbuktu - a gift from the Higher Islamic Council of Mali.
One picks up a walkie talkie and relays: "They're just civilians. Their car is stuck in the sand." A voice in Arabic comes over the line: "My brother, why didn't you tell us this before?"
The mujahideen set about helping us extricate our car - its wheels churning deeper and more hopelessly into the sand. One enters the driver's seat to manoeuvre while the others help us push from behind. The effort drags on for an hour.
They banter easily with our team in Tamasheq, the Tuareg language - evidence that they have spent years living in northern Mali where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had a mountain base and a tacit agreement with the Malian state.
They do not have to spend all night stuck in the sand with us. Their generosity is impressive, their faces luminous, their voices soft, their manners exquisite. And they have given us the satisfying feeling that we are more important to them than time, or anything else.
Omar, a local Arab travelling with us in his old pick-up truck, is impressed.
"Look my brother," the mujahideen tell him, "your car is very old, it can't work. You need to buy a new car." It is an ingeniously subtle flag - and it elicits the intended response. "I wish you would buy me a new car because I have no money," Omar says.
The fighters barely need to signal what everyone in this impoverished Sahara long ago came to know: al-Qaeda has money and they can help you with it.
"We can bring you to a path that is even better than money," they tell Omar, "the path to paradise."
"I love the idea of jihad," says Omar, "but I have children and elderly people relying on me. I have to support them and I can't leave them behind."
At this moment two of the fighters say almost simultaneously: "If you tasted jihad you would leave all of this and come with us."
Omar decides to stay the night with the mujahideen who are bedding down in the sand. It will not be possible to reach Timbuktu tonight.
The suffering of Timbuktu
The barge crosses slowly, silently - making its way over the river to Timbuktu. On board: a fleet of shiny new 4x4 Land Cruiser trucks, bristling with communications gear, black jihad flags flying.
The ship driver chews his siwak and concentrates on the bigger picture: the water and sandy yellow shore he will get to. All kinds of people cross here. In the absence of a state, the default position is to mind one's own business.
Timbuktu is the gateway to the Sahara desert. North of here are vast seas of sand believed to be filled with oil and gas. Algeria, France and Qatar are exploring the Mauritanian side of the massive Taoudeni Basin, while Algeria holds exploration concessions on northern Mali's side. The region's indigenous Tuaregs believe this land also contains a mother lode of uranium, gold and more.
But northern Mali is only rich in theory - it is one of the poorest regions on Earth, which the government of Mali has done little to develop.
That is one of the reasons why the secular Tuareg rebel movement - the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) - rose up in January 2012 and swept the northern two-thirds of Mali, declaring an independent state called Azawad.
But the MNLA rebels were soon sidelined by al-Qaeda and its local offshoots, which pushed them from the cities and took over the region, imposing Sharia. The MNLA declined to fight al-Qaeda and beat a tactical retreat. They say their primary enemy is Mali, and until the world recognises them, they cannot lose blood and treasure opening a second front.
"We should fight al-Qaeda in exchange for what?" asks Bilal Ag Cherif, the head of the MNLA and president-in-waiting of the Tuaregs' hoped-for Azawad state.
"Will they recognise Azawad?" asks Bilal. "Provide clear political, economic, security and military assistance to the Azawadis? Those are the requirements of war. So give us those things, recognise us as a state, and then we can talk about fighting terrorism."
In the meantime, Timbuktu is being run by AQIM in partnership with local Islamist armed group Ansar Dine - an organisation of mostly Malian Tuaregs and Arabs which serves as an umbrella and host for the foreign fighters of al-Qaeda, much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. The two groups work hand-in-glove managing the Islamic police and distributing charity.
Many here are afraid of the mujahideen and say so quietly - they feel sad and confused by the imposition of unfamiliar interpretations of Islam and the destruction of their heritage.
"Aren't we Muslims?" asked one old man in the street. "By God this is the land of Islam. We have many good Islamic scholars here. We don't understand their ways. We feel like we're in prison."
Exclusive: Humanitarian Crisis in Timbuktu
Timbuktu is now a city of the hungry, where food staples like millet have tripled in price and no one has money to buy them anyway.
In the slums where Tuareg families who have lost their animals scratch a living from garbage heaps, the mujahideen are playing the role of humanitarians.
"When the Salafis came with millet and rice, we got some of it," says Fatimatou, who is now dependent on the groups to survive.
"I can't lie before God. They came to us and paid their respects. At the time these little girls were not wearing hijab. They put hijabs on them and gave us a dress code."
At Timbuktu hospital where starving babies are beginning to appear, Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Ould Boumana stalks the halls worrying about the hungry children.
"Any humanitarian aid to assist people here, regardless of who it comes from or under what name, we have no problem with it," says Sanda, adding that the only aid they would reject is evangelical aid.
Sanda's mobile erupts with the sound of a laughing baby - the preferred ringtone of the mujahideen because it is family-friendly and is not music.
"We call upon the world," he resumes, "we ask them to please give aid to this poor and suffering people."
Sanda, who did hard jail time in Mauritania for being an alleged member of al-Qaeda, does not understand why almost no one is giving.
Amidst the whimpers of children too hot or sick to cry, the beleaguered director of this hospital, Saidou Bah Salloum, looks like he is going to explode from suppressed grief or anger, or both.
"I am a committed Muslim," he says choosing his words carefully to protect the hospital, which receives aid from the armed groups. But his eyes contradict the calm tone, telegraphing a message of desperation.
"For all the people of Timbuktu, as a native of Timbuktu, I hope that God will accord us a better tomorrow and that he will really help us. We are Muslims. And the only reason we are still alive is because of our faith."
How did al-Qaeda get here?
Al-Qaeda has based itself in northern Mali for 10 years, as part of an alleged secret agreement with Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), the president of Mali who was deposed in a military coup in March 2012 as northern cities were falling to Tuareg rebels.
During ATT's presidency, AQIM amassed an outrageous fortune in Mali – collecting up to $250m in hostage ransoms from Western governments for more than 50 European and Canadian hostages kidnapped over the past decade, usually from neighbouring Niger.
At this moment there are still European hostages being held by al-Qaeda in northern Mali pending delivery of a $132m ransom.
The ransom negotiations, which were carried out under the auspices of the presidency, were confirmed by the Wikileaks cables to be a goldmine for the Malian VIPs involved - with each receiving his cut of the jackpot including, according to a former Malian official with knowledge of the deals, the president himself.
Another powerful individual alleged to have enriched himself from hostage ransoms was ATT's close political and business associate Iyad Ag Ghali who has been involved in nearly every al-Qaeda hostage negotiation since the first one in 2003.
Iyad Ag Ghali is the head of al-Qaeda offshoot Ansar Dine, and the closest thing Mali has to a Mullah Omar.
Now Mali's closest neighbour seems to be confirming the deal.
Niger's foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum recently told the French National Assembly: "ATT was very proud to appear on the steps of his palace trying to return former hostages to their country. But there was a deal with AQIM, which kidnapped the hostages in Niger and Mauritania before taking them into Malian territory. The hostages were then released through the mediation of the Malian president. And his emissary was often Iyad Ag Ghali."
For years Malian Tuaregs have been complaining that their government was in bed with al-Qaeda, but their cries fell on deaf ears.
"Mali opened the field to Al Qaeda- to roam among the camps and villages, to build relationships with the people… Mali facilitated Al Qaeda."
-Colonel Al Salat Ag Habi,Commander MNLA
According to numerous northern residents, AQIM fighters have been circulating openly in Tuareg towns, not for the past year, but for the past 10 years; shopping, attending weddings, and parading fully armed in the streets, in front of police stations and military barracks.
Colonel Habi ag Al Salat, a Malian army commander who defected in 2011 to join the MNLA, was one of the first to notice the Algerian fighters from the Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) entering Tuareg towns of the far north such as Aguelhoc, which was under his command.
But when Habi warned his army superiors they told him to stand down and leave the men alone because they were "not enemies" of Mali. When the GSPC changed its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, following a pact announced by Ayman Al Zawahiri, that policy did not change.
"Mali opened the field to al-Qaeda - to roam among the camps and villages, to build relationships with the people," says Habi.
"Local people benefitted up to a point from the trickle down of money flowing to al-Qaeda by way of Mali. And this ensnared many of our youths who are unemployed. Mali facilitated al-Qaeda, providing them complete freedom of movement among our families because they believed the presence of this group would impact the Tuareg struggle against the governing regime which has been going on for 50 years."
Yet for all the huge sums of money, most Tuaregs in northern Mali dislike Salafism and remain un-seduced by al-Qaeda. Most still cling to dreams of independence and find old-school national liberation groups like the MNLA attractive, in spite of the fact that it cannot even afford to feed its troops.
"We are Muslims but we can't stand the Salafi way," says Bukhadu, a 22-year-old Tuareg herder who likes the MNLA. "We want our sisters to feel the wind in their hair."
Were it not for legendary Tuareg warrior-turned-Salafi Iyad Ag Ghali, who led Mali's Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s and who has used all his political and tribal capital to press his followers into the cause of jihad, al-Qaeda would have little support in northern Mali, and the Tuareg push for independence would have been hard to stop.
Now, thanks to his alliance with al-Qaeda, Iyad Ag Ghali has muscled Ansar Dine to a place at the negotiating table with a prize bargaining chip in hand - much to the relief of regional negotiators who prefer dealing with Ansar Dine, which unlike the MNLA, does not want an independent state.
The forbidden state
Can the welcome mat Mali extended to AQIM be understood only as a case of greed?
This region has been dealing with Tuareg rebellions and Tuareg separatism for 50 years. Not a single country in the Sahel or Sahara supports the notion of a new state, especially not one that might fuel Berber aspirations in Algeria, or more seriously, spark Tuareg irredentism on the part of oil-rich southern Algeria's Tuareg populace, or oil-rich southwest Libya's Tuaregs, or uranium-rich northern Niger's Tuaregs.
The major existential threat to states like Mali, Niger and Algeria is Tuareg/Berber rebellion and separatism.
The fact that Tuaregs are one of the world's poorest and most isolated people living atop some of the world's richest resources only fuels the fear, and the desire.
Of the millions of dollars in US and EU support allocated to help the Malian army fight al-Qaeda, much of it was diverted to fight the Tuareg insurgency.
Ighlas Ag Offin, a national security official in the Office of the President witnessed ATT ordering 55 military vehicles and a massive weapons cache to equip an Arab militia during the 2008 rebellion.
"Those weapons had come to Mali as foreign aid to fight terrorism. All of it went north to fight the Tuaregs," says Offin, "and to this day they are still in the hands of that militia."
Profits and kickbacks from drug smuggling were also allegedly thrown into the fight.
"The president was surrounded by drug smugglers," says Offin, "every single day drug smugglers were coming and going from the presidency."
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), northern Mali is a major drug trafficking corridor for the $1.8bn to $2bn worth of cocaine that is moved from West Africa to European and Middle Eastern markets every year.
Ibrahim Ag Al Saleh, a former MP from Bourem, which is the epicentre of northern Mali's cocaine traffic, says ATT and his wife were deeply involved in the business.
"The president used the profits from drug smuggling and al-Qaeda hostage ransoms to help fund northern militias to protect the drug traffic and fight the Tuareg rebellion," says Ibrahim, whose home area is now under the control of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), another al-Qaeda offshoot.
"Today it is those very same drug smuggling protection militias who are raising the black flag with the words upon it ‘No God but Allah' in Gao and in Bourem. They no longer have ATT to protect them. Now they are hiding behind the Salafists."
While ATT relied increasingly on ethnic militias and special units to crush Tuareg insurgency, the Malian army was starved and demoralised, its hungry soldiers forced to sell their weapons to eat, to watch AQIM parade before their barracks, and planes filled with cocaine landing near their bases. The system was rotten. Could they be blamed for overthrowing it?
The most interesting testimony on the relationship between AQIM and Mali comes from the organisation itself.
The emir of AQIM, the Algerian Abdelmalek Droukdel a.k.a. Abu Musab Abdel Wadoud, seen earlier this year by Al Jazeera touring Timbuktu's main souq, recently addressed the people of Mali.
Reading from a teleprompter in a television studio, Droukdel begged Malians to reject the MNLA and to preserve the territorial integrity of Mali.
"France lies to you," he implored, "when they pretend that they want to protect the unity of Mali while all the evidence proves their intentions are otherwise and confirm they want to divide the country. Are they not the ones who supported MNLA in order to put them in charge of northern Mali and make an independent state there? But thanks to Allah, your brothers, the mujahideen, your brothers in the north, the Islamists, they are the ones who stopped this satanic plan and corrupted their steps …. I invite the Muslim people of Mali of all its tribes to put their hands with the hands of their brothers Ansar Dine and to come to a mutual understanding with them that they become one hand and one cohesive group and save the country from break up."
It is an unusual plea from a group professing only to defend Islam, and to have no interest in the preservation of secular states and their borders. It sounds almost nationalistic.
"We know the intelligence agencies of a number of countries have been working with the leadership of these groups," says MNLA chief Bilal Ag Cherif.
"Where are the resources and capabilities these groups enjoy coming from? Why are the leaders of these groups able to enter the capital cities of neighbouring countries and then return here, while they have been declared 'terrorist' organisations? Why do they not arrest them in those capitals, whereas the minute they return to Azawad they say: ‘Fight them'?"
Bilal stares amazed. "This game of chess should not be played."
The one armed force that has both the numbers and local knowledge to credibly expel al-Qaeda from a wide swath of the Sahara and keep them out over the long term would be the region's indigenous Tuareg fighters.
But giving them a mandate to do that would mean recognising and empowering them as a force with legitimate demands, which neither Mali, nor any neighbouring country wants to do.
Meanwhile the Tuaregs have a sinking feeling: The fear that they are the ones who will be killed in any coming war, in the name of fighting al-Qaeda.
Edited by mustang19 ()
Vancouver, B.C., December 4th, 2012 - Rockgate Capital Corp. (TSX:RGT) (the “Company” or “Rockgate”) is pleased to announce updated mineral resource estimates (“MRE”) for the Falea Uranium-Silver-Copper Project located in Mali, West Africa. The new MRE reflects the addition of 396 drill holes completed in late 2011 and the first half of 2012 to the January 2012 MRE. Falea is an advanced exploration project comprising three permits totalling 267 square kilometres located in western Mali, West Africa. The Falea Project is 100%-owned by Rockgate.
Islamist insurgents retreating from the ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu have set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 13th century, in what the town's mayor described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage.
The manuscripts survived for centuries in Timbuktu on the edge of the Sahara hidden in wooden trunks, boxes beneath the sand and caves. The majority are written in Arabic, with some in African languages, and one in Hebrew, and cover a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.
Seydo Traoré, a researcher at the Ahmed Baba Institute, who fled Timbuktu last year shortly before the rebels arrived, said only a fraction of the manuscripts had been digitised.
"They cover geography, history and religion. We had one in Turkish. We don't know what it said."
Traoré told the Guardian that some rebels had been sleeping in the new institute where some of the manuscripts were kept. He said that they had also destroyed the shrines of more than 300 Sufi saints dotted around the city. "They were the masters of the place," he said.
wah wah my global proto-liberal heritage, some bits of paper are more important than lives, how DARE shelter is prioritized for human beings over what is basically the 800 year old equivalent of a mustang19 post.
"devastating blow" to world heritage
yeah, truly devastating, how are we gonna survive
Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Squalid posted:Ironicwarcriminal posted:
Sorry I just get incredibly annoyed by this fetishizing of education that literally leads to people getting upset that humans are being provided shelter because it displaces some old junk.
Like, I don’t understand why these things are supposedly so important, presumably they say nothing about astronomy or women’s rights that we don’t already have written down somewhere so why pretend they are this mystical, inviolate thing?
It’s just an angle to prop up support for imperialist action among liberals, like putting that girl with no nose all over bus shelters in Paris and berlin when the people there started getting uneasy about their presense in Afghanistan. At least that was about human empathy though, not some gay old manuscripts
“these savages should respect history!” lol wut?
If art is about challenging conventions and making people think then I can’t imagine many things more worthy or more deserving of our attention than this process of creation through destruction. It’s prompted an intense discussion about how we ascribe texts with meaning and what the true value of them is in society, and I thank the islamists of Mali for opening that conversation.
That article makes me so sad. Thanks for sharing though
Ironicwarcriminal posted:Lookit these guardian reading liberals downvoting my posts, spilling tea on their cardigans because the Eternal Integrity and Dignity of Books was toyed with.
now a single sentence-- THAT, i can READ!
Squalid posted:There is some really cool art about destruction. I like this piece
That article makes me so sad. Thanks for sharing though
Why?
I just guess I genuinely don’t understand why people get so upset about it. Did it have any useful information that wasn’t recorded ANYWHERE else or is it just nostalgia, like feeling wistful when mom throws out your baseball cards.
Sometimes as a people, and as a civilization, we must burn the corpses of our heroes.
PS: i just can't get excited with art ABOUT destruction, it's all a bit detached and noncomittal. Art that is destruction actually raises the stakes and has a lot more value
let's see, what should we prioritize?
-saving irreplaceable items of world cultural importance that stand as a testament the towering heights of human creativity and the intellect
or...
-making a couple people comfortable a bit sooner, people who will basically do nothing for the rest of their lives and will be forgotten by everyone
swirlsofhistory posted:the manuscripts really are more valuable than most people because most people's accomplishments and cherished memories are dumb things like having children, finding that great bargain shopping, and memories of discovering 'their' secluded spot on the mexican riviera that probably 1500 other people think is theirs too. it's hard to imagine how boring and unremarkable peoples lives in mali must be when the day's activities are probably collecting water for 3 hours and threshing millet for another 12. no package vacations either.
let's see, what should we prioritize?
-saving irreplaceable items of world cultural importance that stand as a testament the towering heights of human creativity and the intellect
or...
-making a couple people comfortable a bit sooner, people who will basically do nothing for the rest of their lives and will be forgotten by everyone
whatever, go back to stormfront dude
world cultural importance that stand as a testament the towering heights of human creativity and the intellect
This is just so fucking elitist that it’s actually angering me. Just because it was written down? By some privileged noble? Therefore it stands apart from what you claim to be an all-encompassing idiocy amongst normal people?
The average person considers and philosophises on women’s rights every time they see their wife or daughter, they are an astronomer every night that they look up the stars and absorb a feeling of wonder or infinity.
But blah blah library good African bad I’m a liberal
If we could discuss this together, we would agree that precisely in that phenomenon does our modern life, actually the whole of old Christian Europe and its state, but, above all, the "Romanic" civilization which is now everywhere predominant, show the enormous degree to which our world has been damaged, and that, with all our past behind us, we all bear the guilt that such a terror could come to light, so that we must make sure we do not ascribe to those unforunates alone the crime of a combat against culture. I know what that means: the combat against culture. When I heard of the fires in Paris, I felt for several days annihilated and was overwhelmed by fears and doubts; the entire scholarly, scientific, philosophical, and artistic existence seemed an absurdity, if a single day could wipe out the most glorious works of art, even whole periods of art; I clung with earnest conviction to the metaphysical value of art, which cannot exist for the sake of impoverished people, but which has higher missions to fulfill. But even when the pain was at its worst, I could not cast a stone against those blasphemers, who were only carriers of the general guilt, which gives much food for thought.
that's how you want your precious demolished space to be used, you ought to be locked up! for your own good!
Crow posted:i didn't really read what i was downvoting, i just knew you were up to no good. looking back over it, i see i was right! Shame on you! there has never been a case of western military intervention to 'preserve' a foreign nation's cultural legacy. when the americans were murdering iraqis, they used babylonian ruins as a military base, so then they could set the stage for the destruction of iraqi architecture and monuments to their brave leaders, and encourage looting, banditry, torture and terror.
that's how you want your precious demolished space to be used, you ought to be locked up! for your own good!
well i dunno about any precedents but all i know is that over in the guardian and new york times you can read for yourself that it is stories like this that can seriously effect the public appetite or belief in a mission.
same old baby incubator, people shredder, viagra-rape shit
Ironicwarcriminal posted:It seems ridiculous that leftists with revolutionary sympathies who idealize Mao and the ‘smashing of the olds’ would start qqing about this.
“these savages should respect history!” lol wut?
after the smashing of the olds the old is new again, that's different
Crow posted:you accidentally did two sentences again, no one can read that
i didn't know you supported imperialist aggression
Edited by Ironicwarcriminal ()
in greece, no one touches the parthenon or famous greek and roman statues even though in their prime they were majestically pained and had glass eyes. knosses (the ancient minoan ruins in crete) were restored as to prevent them from sinking into the ground and it's a major scandal 100 years later. all the plaques there talk about the controversy and what it looked like before the restoration.
many other cultures have a living idea of history. imperialism often presumed that using wood rather than marble or metal to make religious and cultural artifacts was a sign of primitivism, but now we know that this was simply untrue, and many ancient cultures (or modern ones) had a different conception of culture and being advanced.
obviously the chinese destruction of feudal culture is an interesting topic, as is the restoration of the pre-soviet culture in modern russia. culture, like everything else, is a product of class struggle and it seems to me that you are correct to point out that the specific idea of ancient unchangeable historical artifacts comes from a specific enlightenment bourgeois-imperialist worldview. but you lack nuance or anything of interest to say beyond that. yeah, imperialism justifies itself through preserving "culture", the british refuse to give back the elgin marbles even now. nobody's really arguing with you.
babyhueypnewton posted:in greece, no one touches the parthenon...
What come on there have been cranes surrounding the Parthenon moving shit around, they touch it all the time. Also it's Knossos you FUCK.
Edited by Lykourgos ()
The pyramids are impressive because of their size and materials, if someone built the same thing today it would be just as impressive…that hotel in Vegas comes pretty close.
Lykourgos posted:Okay I was in the car coming home from a hard day's work incarcerating people and I was listening to a story about Mali on NPR. At this point I know all about it so ask away
babyhueypnewton posted:in greece, no one touches the parthenon...
What come on there have been cranes surrounding the Parthenon moving shit around, they touch it all the time. Also it's Knossos you FUCK.
yeah sorry i was typing fast. you're right of course, it's constantly getting worked on. the caryatids at the acropolis are plaster after all, the real ones are in a museum. however they are meant to look like the modern vision of ancient greece rather than what it actually looked like. the parthenon had a tile roof (and later wood) but the repairs are purely to prevent it from falling apart. it remains roofless. it seems like a very strange contradiction to me, all the work we put into preservation and restoration to create the illusion of a static historical object.
only after going to another country where they restore ancient artifacts to their magestic original form did I realize how strange our culture is. the original acropolis was destroyed multiple times, and the romans, the byzantines, and the ottomans added to the acropolis all the time. ours is a unique culture which values ancient artifacts in their original forms over actual human life, and views history as static rather than continuing to the present day.
babyhueypnewton posted:only after going to another country where they restore ancient artifacts to their magestic original form did I realize how strange our culture is. the original acropolis was destroyed multiple times, and the romans, the byzantines, and the ottomans added to the acropolis all the time. ours is a unique culture which values ancient artifacts in their original forms over actual human life, and views history as static rather than continuing to the present day.
wouldn't it rather be that our culture views history as dynamic since we measure how we've changed by keeping ancient artifacts preserved in their original state and contrasting them with present day life?
swirlsofhistory posted:babyhueypnewton posted:only after going to another country where they restore ancient artifacts to their magestic original form did I realize how strange our culture is. the original acropolis was destroyed multiple times, and the romans, the byzantines, and the ottomans added to the acropolis all the time. ours is a unique culture which values ancient artifacts in their original forms over actual human life, and views history as static rather than continuing to the present day.
wouldn't it rather be that our culture views history as dynamic since we measure how we've changed by keeping ancient artifacts preserved in their original state and contrasting them with present day life?
but we dont consider ourselves part of history. perhaps history was dynamic, but only because we are the end of history. that culture should be "preserved" and put in a museum is a fairly recent idea, even by our own standards. as everyone knows, i live in dc and all the buildings in DC are designed after roman architecture because the american aristocracy considered itself the continuation of roman civilization. perhaps we could say fascism was the last resistance to the revolutionary destruction of culture that accompanies capitalism, both the NAZIs and the PNF saw themselves as part of a historical culture.
that's not to say islamic fundamentalists have any kind of coherent ideology or culture, or that destruction of artifacts isn't a tragedy. simply that "preservation" of the past rather than living it is strange. why do we consider the ottoman destruction of the pathenon a tragedy, but not the destruction by the persians which is simply considered part of history. this may seem obvious but it is not. to use korea again, Namdaemun, one of the big gates and national treasures in seoul, was built in 1398, rebuilt in 1447, damaged by the japanese in 1592, damaged by the japanese again in 1907, destroyed by the americans in the korean war, and recently burned down by a crazy person. in the mean time it was used by every occupier for propaganda including the park dictatorship.
in countries with such a recent history, culture has to be actively created and the idea of "preservation" of a historical past simply has no meaning in the face of repeated destruction and occupation. preservation is the hobby of the privileged. namdaemun isn't being rebuilt to preserve a historical culture of "korea" but to create one.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
-The Manifesto of Little Monsters, Lady Gaga
this is what I mean by a static history. of course history is in fact dynamic, as any marxist will tell you. but to the bourgeoisie history is static, every past way of life is alien and every present is eternal. what better place to put the victims of imperialism than a museum, where we can gawk at them. and though we've often supported these same victims clinging to their culture as a defense and creating their own history, perhaps destroying our history isn't so bad either.