Malian soldiers walk in a rally in the capital. Reuters
The
violence began in the West African country of Mali when junior officers
overthrew Amadou Toumani Toure, the elected president. The coup
leaders, once in power, said that Toure had to go because he had failed
to effectively respond to the rebellion of the Tuareg peoples, who
dominate the country's vast but sparsely populated northern region. In
response, Tuareg fighters, some of whom had served as part of Qaddafi's
private army in his waning months as Libya's dictator, seized provincial
towns in the north, including Timbuktu, the center of Mali's legendary
ancient civilization. On Friday, the Tuaregs declared an independent
state, which they call Azawad.
The world is struggling to find
the right response. France, the former colonial master, insisted it
would not take unilateral military action to prevent the partition
between Mali's north and south, Meanwhile, the coup leaders forced
President Toure to "officially" resign, claiming that they would
transition the country back to electoral democracy under the leadership
of the parliamentary speaker (who had fled to neighboring Burkina Faso).
Mali
is mainly desert. In the long period of French rule, stretching from
before World War I into the 1960s, Mali was an integral part of a West
African zone that included both the ports of Dakar and Abijan. In
addition to supplying food and resources to the Francophone cities on
the western coast, Mali also supplied labor. Even today, many Malians
seek work not only in Dakar and Abijan but in France. Remittances have
long kept Malian living standards, if not buoyant, than basic.
As
an independent nation, Mali has endured structural disadvantages, not
the least of which has been lack of direct access to large cities and
ocean transport. The interior Saharan region -- with its now rising
security risks and its sheer vastness -- must be supported by a nation
with a rather small population (about 14 million people) and a miniscule
national budget. In colonial times, French West Africa could
essentially subsidize the costs of maintaining Niger, northern Burkina,
and the far north of Mali. No longer.
Self-reliance for Mali has
largely been a fool's game as a result. With one of lowest percentages
of arable land of any country in the world, Mali has long been among the
poorest places on the planet . But that's changing, and Mali is
becoming more important in the world.
Mali is a second-tier
producer of gold and one of a group of West African countries who
together export significant amount of cotton. Both gold and cotton are
trading at historic highs. In February, two exploration companies, one
Canadian and the other Algerian, signed an agreement to begin
prospecting for oil in northern Mali.
It's also a geographic bridge
between Muslim North Africa and the more Christian sub-Saharan, In
recent years, Mali has quietly been enlisted
in U.S. efforts to undermine Islamic fundamentalists who seem, rather
unexpectedly, to have formed an alliance with the Tuareg.
In the
vast deserts of the Sahara, the Tuareg long have resisted rule from
Bamako, where the ruling political elite maintain deeper and more
durable ties with Paris, the old master, than they do with the Tuareg.
In the 1990s, a series of settlements appeared to resolve the
long-running, low-level violence between the Tuareg and the Malian army.
The war officially ended in 1996, but the underlying conflict
apparently did not. Perhaps because of the blowback from the overthrow
of Qaddafi, the terms of Tuareg political aspirations have altered.
France, which gave up its official colonial status but kept much of the
influence, could help end the conflict. If it were willing to commit
troops, it could semi-permanently partitioning the country in the same
manner of Ivory Coast, where the intervention of French troops froze a
political stalemate between Muslim north and Christian south. In Mali,
virtually everyone is Muslim, so the cleavages divide along ethnic and
geographic lines. Southern Mali, running along the Savannah rim of the
West African interior, is vastly different from the empty arid
northeastern part of the country, which mostly borders the North African
countries of Algeria and Mauritania.
This wide swathe of the
Sahara, it just so happens, plays a growing role in the Pentagon's
African military strategy, which is increasingly preoccupied with the
al-Qaeda shoot-off that operates there under the name al-Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Pentagon's "trans-Sahara" exercises aim to
constrain, if not eradicate, the violent fundamentalist groupings there.
It was as part of a Pentagon trans-Saharan initiative that Mali's coup
leader, Amadou Sanogo, a captain in the army, previously participated in
several U.S.-funded training exercises, according to the Pentagon's
Africa Command.
Perhaps because of the complexities of the
Malian predicament -- and the growing reach of the Pentagon into Saharan
affairs -- the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, last week
carefully explained that while the French might help with logistics or
training, "there is no question of putting French soldiers on Malian
soil." Juppé suggested that, with six French hostages currently held by
the Tuareg- AQIM, "we are clearly a target."
Juppe added, "It
appears that this extreme Islamist-Jihadist faction is taking the upper
hand among the different Tuareg factions."
With the French
bowing out and the U.S. taking a bigger lead in West African security
issues, is this America's fight? Not directly, of course, but that's not
how the U.S. does it anymore. In combating al Shabab in Somalia, the
Obama administration crafted what at first seemed like a fanciful
alliance out of Kenyan, Ugandan, Ethiopian, and African Union forces.
Might the same strategy work in Mali?
For President Obama, the
Mali crisis comes after a long string of complex emergencies in Africa,
from the legal separation of north and south Sudan, to U.S.
participation in the overthrow of Libya's government, to the effort to
pacify Somalia, to the effort to capture or kill Joseph Kony. An
independent northeastern Mali, landlocked between Algiera and Mauritania
to the North and Niger and Burkina to the South, could create a
relatively safe haven for violent extremists. That's no small risk for
Obama's African security strategy, which already has enough challenges
and struggling states to worry about without adding this new one.
Obama could use a boost to his Africa efforts, the legacy of which has
been more military than humanitarian, more about security than
development. Predecessor George W. Bush orchestrated a global response
to HIV/AIDs and vastly expanded the availability of anti-retroviral
drugs. Obama, by contrast, has emphasized African self-reliance,
inviting entrepreneurs and technocrats to the White House, celebrating
African talent, calling for mutual benefit -- as opposed to charity --
as the basis for U.S.-sub Saharan relations. . Obama has resisted using
force in previous African crises, namely Ivory Coast and Sudan,
patiently working towards political settlements that have (so far)
broken his way.
Mali could well break Obama's carefully
cultivated mold on African affairs. If the U.S. did decide to get
involved in stemming the conflict, it would likely have to rely on
African Union soldiers, who often fight effectively but tend to get off
to slow starts. The Sahara represents an enormously difficult logistical
and tactical challenge for the African Union, even if the AU did accept
the rationale of intervening directly in Mali.
Obama, in the
end, may find a proxy war in Mali impossible to stage. The terrain of
northeast Mail bears eerie similarities to that of Iraq and Yemen. U.S.
drones, supported by conventional forces, could gradually reduce the
Tuareg fighters' hold on the region, as well as that of Al-Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb. For a President bent on forging new methods of
war-fighting -- more high-tech solutions and fewer (or even zero) boots
on the ground -- the heart of the Sahara desert could provide a test-bed
for the latest in high-tech war.
Mali's partition, and the question of who will lead its breakaway
northern state, matters a great deal on its own. But, with France
stepping back in the region and the U.S. stepping up, it could also be a
turning point in the relationship between sub-Saharan Africa and the
rest of the world.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/malis-crisis-obamas-opportunity/255699/
