The New Pan-Africanism by Michael Amoah;

Author:Michael Amoah;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: African History, Political Science and Theory, Development Studies, Nationalism, International Relations, 20TH century history, Geopolitics
ISBN: 9781838600488
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

CHAPTER 7

MALI

The chief peculiarity about the Malian case is not so much that the country is landlocked, or that pre-independence political arrangements plus the one-party state of the first president Modibo Keita sowed and watered the seeds of discord by concentrating development in southern Mali and alienating the northern Tuaregs, who then took advantage of subsequent political sentiments and led a series of insurgencies from January 2012 against the military and the government; Tuareg and allied insurgency is nothing new in Mali. Rather, it is that Mali has been awash with arms, resulting from the proliferation and transfer into Mali of sophisticated and heavy weaponry from the 2011 Libyan uprising, along with forces and affiliates of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) who began to populate the unmonitored and sparsely populated northern Mali. The Libyan uprising was itself a key consequence of the Arab Spring that began on 17 December 2010 in Tunisia and rippled to Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Mauritania.

The arms proliferation as well as the battle-tested experience of the Arab Spring contributed to the formation of the secularist Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) which wanted a northern Mali secession or autonomy for Azawad, and further boosted the capabilities of Islamist and other rebel groups in northern Mali including Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA/MUJAO), which was a splinter group from AQIM, and of course AQIM. All the Islamist or jihadist insurgent groups principally wanted the imposition of sharia law, first in Azawad, and then for the whole of Mali.

Mali is a landlocked country in the middle of the Sahara Desert, with some eight political divisions or regions, and most heavily populated in its southern parts which are less arid, and where the Niger and Senegal rivers contribute to environmental appeasement. Unfortunately, the southern political base of central government has not made the necessary appeasement towards northern Mali which has been consistently close to the zero end of the little development the broader country could show. It is generally not easy for Mali to thrive, even by diversifying an economy that has few natural resources, although it is the third-largest gold producer on the African continent, and has been producing historically over many centuries. Mali is the site for the Old Ghana Empire that was famous for being bountiful with gold. In 2011 when the conflict was imminent, Mali's gold revenues had surged by more than 20 per cent to 240 billion CFA francs ($475 million), principally because of the rise in gold prices and other economic prospects, for which reason more mines were opening in the country.1

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