Fighters of the MNLA in Mali. Photo via Maghrebia on Flickr.

The latest installment of my regular Africa conflict roundup for warisboring.com

Congo

A large-scale mutiny-come-rebellion rocks the eastern part of the Democratic Replublic of Congo since Easter. Never the most peaceful of places, the situation in the Kivu provinces bordering Rwanda escalated, when army general Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda decided to defect from his position.

Ntaganda is searched for by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. (The ICC recently sentenced Ntaganda’s former superior Thomas Lubanga in a related case.) A military commander of a powerful rebel group, the CNDP, Ntaganda protected himself from prosecution by leading an internal coup against CNDP leader Laurent Nkunda and bringing the CNDP into the fold of the government. This deal — in which Rwanda played an important part — gave Ntaganda the highest army command in the Kivus and didn’t touch the CNDP structures, which persisted in parrallel to the normal chain of command. […]

Read more on the current situation in the DR Congo, Mali, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau here.

At the beginning of April, after a loose coalition of Tuareg rebel groups forced the Malian army to abandon Timbuktu, one of the armed factions involved in the fighting didn’t lose much time in announcing its ultimate objective: “We, the people of Azawad declare irrevocably the independence of the state of Azawad,”read the communiqué issued by the National Liberation Movement of Azawad — known by its French acronym, MNLA — five days after the ancient city fell.

The bold declaration is of course mostly wishful thinking. No state or international organization has recognized the independence of Azawad, as the Tuareg refer to the border-spanning region they inhabit, and it is unlikely that this will change in the near future. The situation in northern Mali remains chaotic, with various armed groups, criminal networks and terrorist organizations competing for influence, while the Malian government and army still reel from the effects of a coup d’état that shook the capital of Bamako in March.

But the Tuareg bid for independence does not come from out of thin air, nor does it come at a normal time for the countries of the Sahel region and North Africa. Tuareg minorities in Mali and Niger have fought for self-determination for more than 100 years. And following the fall of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya last year, regional political dynamics are evolving rapidly, which may yet prove to be either a boon or bane for those Tuareg rebels interested in independence.

Tuareg nationalism as a political ideology is rooted in the effects of colonization. It was sharpened by decades of marginalization and oppression, and has since become a useful tool in the hands of regional powerbrokers. Yet today, even as the MNLA makes the boldest bid yet for Tuareg self-determination, many Tuareg have actually come to accept the countries they live in as legitimate, making the future of Tuareg nationalism as well as its implications increasingly difficult to discern. […]

World Politics Review is a subscription journal. It’s well worth your money, but you can read the rest of this article for free, if you follow this link.

Mali is a landlocked country in West Africa, about two times the size of France. It is dominated by vast expanses of sparsely inhabited desert and the fertile surroundings of the Niger river. In historical times, the area was home to powerful empires and the ancient city of Timbuktu, with its architectural wonders, still tells of this era.

Mali is again in the news these days, but not favourably. There are no stories about enthusiastic tourists or cultural richness. Instead, Mali currently lives through a triple crisis: After a devastating drought,potentially millions of people face a hunger crisis. At the same time, a rebellion led by Tuareg fighters has engulfed the North of the country. And if this wouldn’t be enough, a coup d’état has brought a military junta into power in the capital and resulted in harsh sanctions by neighboring states. […]

Read the rest on ThinkBrigade!

The show was great and very interesting. There were some excellent participants, among them Andy Morgan, so if you didn’t see it yet be sure to watch it!

Tuareg rebels fighting for an independent Azawad. Photo CC-BY from Flickr user Magharebia.

Since my last post on Mali, a lot of things happened. The coup has officially ended (though it may not be over yet) and the situation in the North has … evolved, to put it mildly.

I will concentrate on developments in the North in this post. As Baz Lecocq has pointed out, we actually know little about what is happening in that region. News are sparse and to my knowledge only one journalist, Salima Tlemçani of the Algerian El Watan, is actually on the ground there. All other journalists and press agencies (me included) get their news from members of the various conflict parties, civilian eye witnesses and of course each other (head to my Twitter stream to get the latest).

In the beginning of the Tuareg rebellion, there were reasons for hoping that this would go over relatively peaceful. The Malian government under Touré was either unwilling or unable to resist the rebels, so not much blood was spilled in the first two months of the conflict. This ironically contributed to the coup against Touré, but the junta that took over from him was even less competent in the military quarter and the remaining army strongholds in the North collapsed virtually without a fight. The Tuareg rebels – by then it was clear that at least two groups of them existed which cooperated – quickly pushed the army out of all the “Azawad”.

But now things seem to start escalating. The MNLA and Ansar Dine – the two main Tuareg rebel factions in the North – are in an uneasy relationship. The MNLA is mostly described as secular and nationalistic, with an independent Azawad as its main goal. Ansar Dine in turn is a Salafist movement, which wants to introduce Sharia law to the whole of Mali, but is opposed to an independent Azawad.

Ansar Dine also seems to have taken AQIM into the boat, especially in the area around Timbuktu. Leaders of AQIM were seen in the city attending a meeting with the leadership of Ansar Dine. Meanwhile a splinter group of AQIM has appeared in Gao, where it has abducted eight Algerian diplomats from the local consulate.

On monday then reports began surfacing of a new militia, the FLNA. This seems to be a group mainly made up of ethnic Arabs from the Timbuktu area, who may want to use it as a vehicle to secure their economic interests (read: smuggling routes) against possible encroachment from the Tuareg rebels or the foreigners of AQIM.

Into this mix of current interests and agendas of course feeds as well a long history of grievances and unsettled scores, often stemming from the last Taureg insurrections. Apart from political and/or religious motivation, kinship ties and historical relations between ethnic/social groups play an important role.

In this complex situation, large scale violence between the various armed groups can easily erupt and will be hard to contain once it takes place. Some of the deadliest phases of the Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s did take place only after the conflict with the Malian state was over and the various rebel factions began fighting each other.

Even worse, the political elite in the South seems to be quite willing to attempt a military solution from their side as well. The AFP quoted Malian government and military officials saying that the Nigerian terror group Boko Haram had hundreds of fighters in Gao. This is of course very likely bullshit of the highest order and the AFP should be fined for repeating such abstruse claims without giving the necessary context.

But it shows that the institutions of Mali still bank on painting all Tuareg rebels as fanatic Islamists, thereby trying to delegitimize their demands and grievances and possibly hoping for military hope from Western countries terrified of a “Saharan Afghanistan”.

A military involvement of the Malian army (or any other army for that matter) would of course drastically increase the chances for large scale violence in the North, without giving much hope for a quick resolution. And in the face of the upcoming hunger crisis, it is probably time that matters most.

What do you think, how could a degeneration into large-scale violence in the North be avoided?

Around 30 families live in that location and search for gold. The work is fully manual and unbelievably hard. Temperatures here reach 40°C in the shade easily and there is not much shade to begin with.

If the miners (both men an women ply this trade) are very lucky, they find enough gold to sell for around 2,000 Franc CFA every few days. That equals about three Euros.

Recipients of an Oxfam Cash-for-Work program in North Burkina Faso wait for their payment. Peter Dörrie photo.

This is part of a series of posts, looking at the state of the Sahel food crisis. You can also find a regional overview and a report on the situation in Chad on this blog so far.

On Tuesday, I was invited by Oxfam to look at one of their projects addressing the current food crisis in the wider region. A car took us from Ouagadougou, the capital, north to Kaya and from there to several surrounding villages.

The dry season has the country in its hot and dusty grip now. Temperatures are above 40°C every day and it hasn’t rained for weeks. The ground is barren and doesn’t look like it could feed anybody, not to speak of the thousands of people who live here dispersed over several villages and small towns.

And indeed, the last agricultural season brought serious shortfalls: officially, the national harvest has been 5% below consumption, but nobody knows if this figure is correct and shortfalls here in the North were greater anyway. One of the beneficiaries of the Oxfam project tells me later, that she only harvested three sacks of millet instead of the normal eight to nine, which she needs to feed her household of nine persons. One sack comes at five kg.

Oxfam reacted early and with money from ECHO started a Cash-for-Work program in the region: The villagers were shown how to enhance their fields with a simple trick; Many small holes dug into the earth would catch and hold more water once the rain comes, increasing the next harvest. Everybody applied the technique on his own field and was now paid for this work.

This creates a theoretical win-win situation. The villagers will have some money to buy food on the market until the next harvest arrives, which will be larger due to the increased productivity of the fields.

To maximise the effect, Oxfam wants the villagers to buy subsidized millet, which the government currently sells as part of its food crisis emergency program. This program has received lots of acclaim by the UN and other donors. Subsidized millet costs 11,000 Franc CFA (ca. 16.5 €)per sack, which is less than half the usual 25,000 FCFA price tag.

Anticipating this price, Oxfam paid the villagers 25,000 FCFA each, enough for two sacks of subsidized millet and some necessary condiments like cooking oil and sugar. Therefore, the consternation was great when the villagers told us that they wouldn’t buy subsidized millet and instead buy the normal stuff at the considerable higher price.

Recipients leave their fingerprints as proof that they received the money. Peter Dörrie photo.

The reason for this is of course not that the Burkinabè hate a bargain or are not aware that one sack of millet won’t bring them over the lean period. But during the last delivery, the government provided only seven sacks of subsidized millet for the village in question, which has over 4,000 inhabitants. Nobody knows when the next delivery will happen, but it is already clear that there won’t be nearly enough for everybody. And the people need the additional food now, so they have little choice.

Once the food runs out again, they will take out a loan to buy more. This way, between NGO relief programs, the government emergency aid and going into dept, there will probably be enough food for everybody to survive the hunger crisis in Burkina this year. But that doesn’t mean that it won’t have very negative effects on many people.

The debt will have to be paid back after the next harvest. If this again fails or only stays average, many people won’t be able to fully pay off their loans and keep enough food to not hunger again next year. To safe money, kids will be taken out of school to work on the gold fields of the region instead. And not dying of hunger of course doesn’t mean that one can’t get ill or malnourished, which has a range of disastrous consequences of its own.

In conclusion, Burkina will be one of the least impacted countries of this year’s hunger crisis. This is due to its geographical advantages, but also the early and relatively comprehensive reaction by the government and NGOs. Still, many people will be off worse after the crisis than they were before. Lets hope that they won’t be forgotten as soon as the crisis is declared over.

Soldiers from Senegal and Mali train with US instructors. US army photo.

When news of the coup in Mali hit the airwaves last week, much was made of the fact that the apparent coup leader, Capt. Sanogo, received US army training. The captain, who used to be an English teacher before assuming leadership of Africa’s latest junta, proudly sports a US Marines pin on his fatigues and generally likes to brag about his several trips to the US for various trainings.

Commentators who noticed this generally questioned the US military aid in the sense of if it is good that the troops which were trained then proceed to topple democratically elected governments. This is an interesting question, of course, but it is also a bit beside the point.

While I’m critical of US policy, I don’t assume that they teach partnering militaries to stage coups. And it is highly unrealistic and patronizing to assume, that you need US military training to successfully chase your president out of his palace. So far, the amateurishness of the coup in Mali should probably make US military trainers more concerned, if their students didn’t take a nap during some lessons.

But we should take the opportunity to review some other aspects of US (and increasingly EU) counter terrorism foreign policy. Namely: does it succeed in solving the problem?

I would argue that instead of solving the problem (of terroristic/criminal behavior in the Sahel region), counter terrorism foreign policy has helped create and sustain it.

Take the example of Mali: despite Millions of Dollars that the US poured into training of the Malian army, AQIM activity in the remote desert north has only risen. No tourist ventures out into Timbuktu nowadays for fear of being abducted. Smuggling of weapons and drugs is common and the criminal groups running these schemes have a strong overlap with AQIM.

But what is most worrying is that the government of Mali, which counter terrorism foreign policy is supposed to support, seems to be deeply implicated in these criminal activities. Army commanders and politicians all take their share, happily cooperating with extremists they are paid and trained by western militaries to fight.

In one infamous episode a Boeing 727 (!) full of cocaine landed close to a remote desert town (happened to be governed by a close associate of the president), where the load was distributed upon trucks and send on its way towards Europe.

Meanwhile, the political establishment of Mali has been happy to put the blame for these kind of incidents squarely on the Tuareg, which of course comes in handy if one is fighting (and loosing) against a rebel group of this ethnicity.

Financial and military counter terrorism aid seems to result in the perverse incentive for the ruling class to get involved and profit from exactly these criminal  activities. This makes sense of course: by cooperating with AQIM and smuggling networks, politicians and army generals not only profit from kickbacks and corruption, but also ensure that the problem stays around and more aid flows into the country (and their pockets).

Western powers should wake up to the fact that transparent and legitimized governments are the best antidote against extremism and criminal groups, not military professionalism.