Mali's Only Hope

When war comes to the place where you live, you run. You grab your family and you run. If you run across a border, you’re officially a refugee. But if you seek safety inside your own country, you’re officially titled an ‘Internally Displaced Person,’ or an IDP according to international refugee law. I always thought that this rather strange term could just as well refer to the internal states of many of the people I’ve met who’ve had to run for their lives from war. Running for your life tends to do leave one ‘internally displaced’ in more ways than one.


When I left Mali, West Africa, 16 years ago, I never thought I’d be coming back to a country at war, first at the mercy of a coup of rebelling officers, then under threat of being overrun by an alliance of ethnic separatists and Islamic fundamentalists. Back then Africa was the flagship of West African democracy, having seen an African Army Colonel who’d seized power by a coup step down voluntarily to make way for democratic elections. Yes, that’s plural; Mali held three democratic elections through the 90’s, until after two terms of the Konare presidency, that once-lauded Colonel – known as A.T.T. – returned to power by the ballot box, only to descend into the worst kind of corruption that spread like a disease across every level of the society.


But they say that this was not his fatal mistake. His fatal mistake was ignoring the needs of his own army, and ironically for a former general, this is what did him in. But according to a group of community leaders from the Northern cities of Gao, Tomboctou and Kidal whom I spoke with yesterday in Bamako, the seeds of rebellion up North had been sown long before ATT fled the country in disgrace.


‘The Jihadis have been travelling around the villages for a long time,’ says Agali Mohamed, ‘offering 30,000 FCFA to young men who are willing to join them and carry a Kalashnikov.’ This is about 75 dollars a month, a very decent salary for a young man with no education and very few options. Before the conflict, Ag has been leading a successful program in Tomoctou to gather small arms and light weapons and destroy them. For him there is no doubt that the conflict of his home town is not yet over, despite the French army’s recent military victories.


Starting in the 90’s Mali embarked on an ambitious program of political reform and devolution of power to regional and communal governments, intended to more fairly apportion resources and increase local autonomy and authority. ‘Decentralisation was actually a success,’ says Ag, ‘and despite the isolation of the North, the resources for schools and health care were slowly arriving in our communities.’ But perhaps it was too little, too slow. Ag also acknowledges a failed strategy to address the Tuareg ethnic group’s quest for a separate state in the North; ‘any time they needed to placate some rebellious tribal leaders,’ he says, ‘they would simply offer them nice positions in the army or in the army college, just buying them off. It got so bad that the young men from the South were jealous, and used to joke that perhaps they should start a rebellion to get equal treatment.’


But the situation truly began to deteriorate when ATT resumed power and begin his descent into corruption and neglect of the North. It couldn’t have come at a worse time, as militant fundamentalist Islam was also beginning an ambitious plan to spread across North Africa. I still remember seeing the first fully-burkha’d women in Northern Mali, South of Douentza in area of the Dogon ethnicity. Our guide at the time pointed them out, and remarked that the burkha was a new arrival to his village. When Qadaffi’s regime across Mali’s Northern border in Libya fell, a number of his weapons fell into the wrong hands, and what had been for years been a low-level Tuareg rebellion suddenly joined forces with the burgeoning Islamic fundamentalist movement and seized a moment of opportunity.
Ag tells me that the jihad isn’t really an ethnic issue, and most of the Tuareg who are now being harassed and chased from their own homes in the wake of the French-led reconquering of the North neither physically support nor even sympathize with the Jihadis. In this ethnically diverse country they are populated by Fula, Songhai and Tuareg men, as well as foreign Arabs.


For the moment, Ag considers it still unsafe to go home, so he is still internally displaced. ‘As a community leader I am targeted. I have received threats. I am calling friends and family who stayed behind every day,’ he says, ‘and I hope to return soon. When commercial transport to Tomboctou reopens, I will be among the first to get on the bus.’


But even if the French have retaken the city for now, the jihadis are far from giving up. Whilst Mr. Hollande has a 3 month plan, the Jihadis likely have a 10 year strategy. Their plans include linking what's happening in Mali with Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Egypt... It occurs to me and my colleagues as we sit and hold meetings in Bamako to plan our relief operation up North as soon as it becomes safe to return, our enthusiasm growing as we can see the various elements of funding, logistics, and local capacity taking shape in our plans for intervention, there is also probably another meeting taking place a few hundred miles to the north, where another group of men is likewise equally enthusiastic about their own plans, and equally confident of success, as they envision how the elements of funding, strategy, human resources, and logistical capacity will doubtless ensure their takeover of the North as soon as the French have left and the ineffectual Malian army is left to defend the cities.


'What is the answer?’ I ask Ag. ‘How can we return Mali to the peaceful country that I knew as a volunteer in the 90’s?’ He’s not sure, but a few things are certain for him. ‘One, it must be a longer term strategy. Not just 1 year, or two years, but a five year or ten year plan to bring the North back to the rest of the country. Two, we must offer economic opportunity and development, not just military solutions. Three, we must address the local conflicts, and support local communities and peace building initiatives. And all of this must be done at once, and in a large scale, and with serious commitment.’


All of this sounds logical, but given the current state of Mali’s political leadership, it also seems highly unlikely. And I can’t help but shake the vision of a poor, disaffected youth in a village from my mind. I believe that this boy is the key to changing Mali’s destiny. This entire generation of young men – from 15 to 25 – who have little or no education, haven’t yet married, and have few opportunities. What the jihadis offer them is not just 30,000 FCFA a month. They offer a vision for change, a chance to join a movement, and a meaningful role in shaping their community’s destiny, and perhaps even the destiny of the nation. The only problem is that this vision is jihad; a fundamentalist totalitarian state where extreme sharia law is applied, where women’s rights are non-existent, where music is a crime.


But if we are to see Mali return on the path to peace, and once again lead the way – despite being amongst the poorest countries in the world – for the rest of the continent in demonstrating what democracy looks like, we’ve got to figure out how to offer that young man a viable alternative to jihad, to offer him a chance for a future. This means the kind of large scale investment in demobilization, demilitarization, and reintegration that was accomplished after the Sierra Leonean and Liberian civil wars, offering tens of thousands of young men sustained training in viable technical trades, and access to markets. Until then, picking up a Kalashnikov for 30,000 FCFA a month is still going to be the best opportunity around.

Note: Agali Ag Mohamed’s name has been changed to protect his identity.