by JESSICA HORN
PHOTO/Flickr
In conversation with Jessica Horn, a leading Malian women’s rights activist (name supplied but withheld on request) identifies the roots of the crisis in Mali, and the opportunistic use of the crisis by Malian and international Islamic fundamentalists to gain a popular foothold in the north of the country.
JESSICA HORN: Were there any early warnings that this crisis would emerge?
INTERVIEWEE: This is one of the deepest crisis [10] that this country has faced since colonial times. We have been through the 1968 military coup against President Modibo Keïta, we went through the popular revolutions in the early 1990s, but it has never gotten to this level of instability. The military group that led the coup is from Kati, a military garrison town outside of the capital Bamako which had been used historically as a base for troops from all over West Africa.
At the end of January 2012, a group of women who were wives of soldiers from Kati had held a march and threatened to go to the Palais de Koulouba (presidential palace) in Bamako. These women felt that they needed more information about the government’s response to what had happened to their husbands who had been sent by the government to fight the Tuareg rebellion in the north of Mali. There had been a lot of rumour that the Malian military did not have enough arms to fight the Tuareg rebels. The women had also heard that there were many cases of torture and ill treatment of Malian soldiers by the Tuareg rebels, and had also heard rumours that the Malian government was engaged in heavy negotiation with the rebels and not, for example, ordering troops to shoot at the rebels. They felt that their husbands had been sent to the north of Mali to die.
We have to remember that the Tuareg rebels had been supported by Gaddafi in Libya, who had both integrated some of these rebels in his army and was also known to have been assisting with the rebellion in the north of Mali. After the fall of Gaddafi, these rebels returned to Mali heavily armed, and in fact some say better armed than the Malian army itself.
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