Whither after the Mali Coup? Exclusive to Al Jazeera 31 March 2012

Whether or not it was a mutiny that went too far, or a coup d’état organized by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, he appears to be in charge but Mali is now under mob rule. Meanwhile the Tuareg rebellion in the North appears to be gaining ground after the capture of the regional capital of Kidal March 30th and rumors of attacks on the river city of Gao March 31st. The people who benefit from the coup d’état are the Northern rebels, where the complexity becomes greater by the day. The heavily armed Southern Brigade of the former Libyan army, composed mainly of Tuaregs recruited by ATT for Khadafy, is sitting in the important northern city of Kidal. If I were their commander, I would now march on Gao while the national army and the State are leaderless and in chaos. But maybe they are too late: rumors are flying that a new group from Mauritania called Mujao attacked Gao on March 31st. The Tuareg MNLA wants independence or at least some autonomy, and Iyad ag Ghali, the former Libyan soldier who led the June 1990 armed revolt, now has a heavy beard, leads a group called Ansar Dine, and wants to create an Independent Salafist Republic of the Azawad under sharia law. Who benefits from the coup? Only the armed political movements can gain, while the populations of all colors and all nationalities will become corpses or refugees. Maybe the biggest winner will be Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) which wants freedom to kidnap tourists and transport cocaine to Europe. The cocaine route opened one decade ago, and Colombians have too much money ad firepower for the Malian army to control alone. European leaders have allowed the trade in cocaine to corrupt not only their cities, but also the Malian state which is crumbling under the strain. What would the Independent Republic of Azawad look like, if it came about? It would be a lawless narco-state in the middle of he Sahara desert, sitting on top of a lot of oil. So the question lurking behind the action is this: Who is pulling the strings? Regional war threatens, and we must wonder whether it is being encouraged by Sunni Islamic extremists, by European arms salesmen, by Columbian and Lebanese cocaine smugglers linked to Hezbollah, or by American oil companies keen to destabilize the frontiers left by the French Empire and to redraw the map of Africa? How can Mali extricate itself (and Captain Sanogo, and the rest of West and North Africa) from this colossal mess, which threatens the stability of all Mali’s neighboring countries? On March 31, Sanogo is rumored to be in Ouagadougou, visiting the official ECOWAS Mediator, President Blaise Campaoré of Burkina Faso. Blaise has been in the thick of West African intrigue for decades, ever since he was trained in Gadafy’s Libya: now that his own country is threatened by the possible destruction of Mali next door, President Blaise seems like the only person who might pull the pieces together and stop the impending massacres. The National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State (CNRDR) in Mali, led by Captain Sanogo, appears to be a group corporals and sergeants, with a Lieutenant as their television spokesman who has a tenuous command of French, the official language of Mali. Undisciplined soldiers have been looting government offices and racketeering in the streets, while unemployed youths are paid $1 per day to riot in support of the junta throwing stones at the democratic opposition and imposing a reign of terror. Opportunists have quickly filled the political void : notably a former student leader Dr Oumar Mariko has moved center-stage, and there are suggestions that he may have encouraged the coup d’état. There are certainly indications that Mariko was funding youth movements calling for the early departure of President Amadou Toumani Touré (known as ATT), even if they never openly called for military intervention. But if Mariko is the rent-a-mob’s puppet paymaster, who is pulling the strings that make Mariko function? Who is paying Oumar Mariko? Under Mariko’s influence, the CNRDR has suspended the 1992 Constitution and all state institutions (soldiers actually chased elected representatives out of the national Assembly building to stop them deliberating), and presented a its own Constitution. A complete change of military leadership has been announced, with new colonels in every position. While no senior officer had made a statement of support for the CNRDR, there appears to be de facto acceptance of its authority. So Captain Sanogo is in charge – yet he seems to recognize that he is out of his depth, that his position is untenable. After this week’s ECOWAS meeting in Abidjan, rent-a-mob occupied the airport runways and blocked the visit of a delegation of six West African Heads of State. Their airplane was unable to land. The ECOWAS strategy has been anything but subtle, but these presidents will not forgive their humiliation. ECOWAS issued an ultimatum: economic sanctions will be imposed in 72 hours, unless a return to democracy is arranged. Mali is a land-locked country: even basic necessities like salt and sugar come in by train from Senegal or by road from Ivory Coast, Togo or Guinea. Gasoline is already in short supply; if rice and millet and wheat flour cannot be trucked into the capital city of Bamako, there will be food riots. And where is Captain Sanogo going to find the wages for his soldiers, teachers and civil servants, if the banks are shut? Adding sanctions to its present state of confusion and lawlessness, I doubt whether Mali could hold out for more than one month. There is no doubt that ousted President ATT bears responsibility for the fiasco. A former general, his instincts have always been military rather than political. His one-man rule has undermined the institutions of state and concentrated power in the hands of a coterie of favorites, most of whom were weak… while some have been fingered publicly as corrupt and getting rich from theft or from the Colombian cocaine flowing through northern Mali to Europe. ATT appointed dozens of generals – his friends and supporters – all of whom are superfluous for an army of 7000 men. Maybe Mali needs six generals, even ten, but ATT has promoted flagrant cronyism. The "Malibya regime" is the term critics use to describe the Mali president’s cronyism with the late Muammar Khadafy, and that relationship has come unstuck. The final straw for the underpaid and abused Malian soldiers, came with the massacre of Aguel Hoc, a garrison in the desert near the frontier with Niger. When they ran out of ammunition, the Malian garrison was overrun by the MNLA. Algerian Arab fanatics from AQIM then arrived, tied up the defenseless soldiers, and executed them in cold blood. Pictures of the massacre caused the wives and daughters and mothers in the Kati barracks to riot on February 2nd and they marched on the palace in anger and distress. When the Ministry of Defense told soldiers in the Kati barracks on March 21st that they would be going north to fight the MNLA, he was greeted by angry cries of ‘we need weapons and ammunition’ and a hail of stones…. Mutiny had begun, and the coup followed.

Meanwhile West African Civil Society is organizing in favor of peace. How many battalions do they have? None. But civil society leaders are non-politicians with good ideas, high motivations, and a petition called the Initiative for Peace in the Sahel! Malian society is built on principles of djataguiya = hospitality and sununkuya = neighborly interdependence, fundamental cultural beliefs that have created strong social capital throughout the region. In the 1990s, when Mali came close to civil war, the Peace of Timbuktu was negotiated by civil society leaders (wise women and men, without any soldiers or politicians) seeking ways to cooperate the get the economy moving again for the benefit of everybody. The same can happen again, even though today’s situation is complicated by cocaine money and AQIM, by large quantities of Libyan weapons, and by numerous armed splinter groups like Ansar Dine and Mujao. A civil society conference to seek peace and to transform the conflicts will be held April 5-6 in Ouagadougou, and we must pray that this will set in motion a stream of actions that promote peace and conflict transformation. The alternative is a new Congo in the Sahara, which God forbid! Robin Edward Poulton is Affiliate Professor of World Studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University USA) and a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. is a human-environment and development geographer. He first worked in Northern Mali rebuilding socio-economic activities following the extreme droughts of the 1970s, and spent a month in Mali in February 2012 as part of a United Nations exploratory peace delegation. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.