Tag: #mali

Mali : the unexpected crisis, a year later…. (guest post by Marc-André Boisvert)

December 31, 2012 /

When I moved to Bamako a bit more than a year ago, the international community praised Mali for being a beacon of democracy and stability.

I did not see that. I am not pretending that I knew that almost two-third of the country would fall under the control of rebels link to Al-Qaeda, nor that the military will take over in one of the most useless coup in West Africa, ousting President Amadou Toumani Touré (locally known under the acronym ATT).

What I knew was Malians did not see their country as the model that the international community kept referring to. They talked about corruption, lack of real democracy and injustice.

Nevertheless, there was such a consensus of Mali being the good Western-friendly pupil that I started to believe in it myself. Then the double crisis hit.

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Military intervention brings no simple solution to conflict in Mali (guest post by Olli Teirilä)

December 18, 2012 /

The latest conflict in Mali’s troubled history is coming to a breakpoint, or at least some kind of a turning point. While in the north of the country the Tuareg rebels continue their recently accelerated fighting against the Islamists of MUJAO, AQMI and the new-found Malian Ansar al-Sharia, in New York the United Nations’ Security Council is still weighing the details and options of an ECOWAS led military intervention.

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Post-Kaddafi repercussions in the Sahel: the Mali emergency, questions of radicalization and emerging West African discourses of “clashing civilizations”

July 10, 2012 /

In western media there has over the last days been an uproar against Ansar Dine who are seen destroying world heritage sites in Timbuktu. Destroying buildings give more attention than killing people in Northern Mali and it is far from the first time that radical Muslims use this trick to speak to the world. Yet still it is an unfortunate outcome of an uneven world when buildings are worth much more than human beings. In late June about 20 scholars from West Africa, Europe and North America gathered at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra to discuss the increasing political unrest in the Sahel. The conference was a joint venture between The KAIPTC and the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI). Continue reading