Four Reasons Why Mali in 2020 Is Not Burkina Faso in 2014

There was a lively commentary posted yesterday (August 4) at the Malian news aggregator site Maliweb, by Diagne Fodé Roland. I’ll translate the title as “Mali in 2020 Is on the Path of Burkina in 2014.” The twin reference is to the anti-incumbent protests that have been unfolding in Mali since June of this year, and to the 2014 popular uprising (and military coup) that overthrew Burkina Faso’s longtime ruler Blaise Compaoré in 2014.

The Malian protests are led by a coalition of groups known as the June 5 Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces (French acronym M5-RFP). Their main demand (now perhaps not shared by all parts of the movement) has been the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK).

I was not previously familiar with the writing of Diagne (I believe this to be his surname), but given how widely he has been published in the Senegalese press, he may be Senegalese rather than Malian. He quotes heavily from another thinker, Issa N’Diaye, whose work is also new to me – Diagne quotes from N’Diaye’s provocatively titled book Silence, on démocratise !: démocratie et fractures sociales au Mali (Silence, We’re Democratizing! Democracy and Social Fractures in Mali). The argument Diagne picks up on from Ndiaye is that after the popular uprising (and military coup) that overthrew Mali’s longtime military dictator Moussa Traoré in 1991, the new system of multiparty democracy was in reality a neocolonial “festival of bandits” where members of the old ruling party (UDPM) took over the new ruling party (ADEMA) and marginalized the original movers in the revolution. In this view, part of the Malian left was disempowered and the remainder was incorporated into a “neocolonial bourgeoisie in vassalage to the liberal plans of structural adjustment dictated by the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO.” In Diagne’s view, that history of what he sees as kleptocracy for elites and immiseration for ordinary Malians sets the stage for the current crisis.

Diagne’s points here are worth taking seriously, and his analysis is shared by not a few Malians. At the very least, the phrase “political class” has recurred throughout the crisis, and there is a palpable sense of fatigue and disgust with that class. The next part of Diagne’s historical narrative pertains to the northern rebellion of 2012 and the French intervention, which Diagne sees as a neo-imperialist maneuver. Diagne describes the insecurity in the country in highly conspiratorial terms, an analysis I do not share but which many Malians do seem to share. But to pursue that discussion would take us off track – I want to get back to the headline of Diagne’s piece.

Diagne does not develop, at all, the comparison between Mali and Burkina Faso – in fact, I wonder whether an editor slapped that headline on the piece. But the comparison is worth exploring, for at least two reasons:

1. Burkina Faso’s transition is the most recent instance of a popular revolution in the Sahel, and
2. The involvement of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in attempting to mediate Mali’s crisis invites a regional reading of the Malian situation. I have even seen the argument (I wish I had saved the link/post) that the real audience for ECOWAS’ missions to Mali is the domestic constituencies of those same ECOWAS heads of state, and that ECOWAS leaders are above all concerned that anti-incumbent protests not spread to their own countries. That’s a discussion worth pursuing in another post, I think.

I also won’t discuss the revolution in Burkina Faso exhaustively here – for that, I recommend Ernest Harsch’s Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution. Instead, I want to highlight four reasons why I think Mali 2020 and Burkina Faso 2014 are quite different from one another.

1. IBK is not Compaoré

Simply by virtue of math, I think one has to say that IBK in 2020 and Compaoré in 2014 belong to different categories. IBK is an embattled leader, a career member of the Malian “political class,” and now the symbol of that class, especially in the eyes of his opponents – yet he is also a term-limited incumbent in his second term, who came to power by the ballot box, and who has been in power for well under a decade (he took office in 2013). The elections IBK won in 2013 and 2018 were flawed (low turnout, and almost certainly some rigging), but they were not, in my view, the stage-managed elections of a “competitive authoritarian” dictatorship. All of this is a far cry from the career of Compaoré, who came to power in a bloody 1987 coup, was elected and re-elected president in grossly undemocratic elections in 1991 and 1998, skirted term limits on a technicality in 2005, and was preparing to flout term limits again in the lead-up to the 2015 election. IBK has not been president long enough to instill the kind of resentment that developed under Compaoré – no one protesting in the streets now in Bamako was born while IBK was president (I assume/hope), but plenty of protesters in Burkina Faso in 2014 had lived all their lives under Compaoré’s rule.

2. There are no Malian equivalents to the symbolism/martyrdom of Thomas Sankara or Norbert Zongo (yet)

The Burkinabè revolution was multi-causal and complex, but it’s worth mentioning two key figures who became symbols for the protesters there, and whom the protesters (and much of the wider society, it seems to me) consider martyrs of the Compaoré regime. The first is Compaoré’s immediate predecessor, the revolutionary dictator Thomas Sankara (in power 1983-1987), who is widely admired not just in Burkina Faso but across Africa and around the world (including by me, for what it’s worth) for his efforts to transform Burkina Faso’s society and economy and to make the country egalitarian and truly independent. Sankara’s murder during Compaoré’s 1987 coup is, for many Burkinabè citizens, a wound that refuses to heal, and during and after the protests there has been a powerful call for the country to reckon with that tragic history. The second figure is Norbert Zongo, a journalist murdered in 1998, likely at the hands of Compaoré’s regime and in connection with his investigation into the murder of a driver employed by Compaoré’s brother François, a story with wider implications for understanding corruption and impunity within the regime. These figures are not the only victims of the Compaoré regime, but their memories loomed large in the 2014 uprising.

I do not see any Malian equivalents to those figures, not at the same level of symbolism and resonance. This is not to say that there are not Malians dying in tragic and preventable ways; the insecurity in the center and the north of the country claims victims on a daily basis. There have even been deaths associated with the Malian security forces’ response to the M5-RFP’s protests. But I do not see a parallel to Sankara and Zongo in Mali in the sense of prominent, widely respected and even beloved figures whose deaths can be laid directly at the incumbent’s doorstep in some deeply personal way. Deep as the anger toward IBK may be among the M5-RFP’s supporters, I am not sure it matches the depth of the Burkinabè protesters’ anger and disgust toward Compaoré in 2014.

The most dangerous moment so far in the Malian government’s response to the M5-RFP, I would say, came over the weekend of July 10-12 when the security forces were detaining M5-RFP leaders and cracking down on protesters with excessive force. If the security forces inadvertently produce martyrs amid this crisis, the dynamic could shift substantially.

Another, related point is that there were dress rehearsals, of sorts, for the Burkinabè uprising of 2014 – notably, there were waves of protests in 2008 and 2011. One could argue that various episodes in Mali’s history (the 1991 revolution, or perhaps the 2009 protests against a controversial Family Code, or perhaps something else) were precedents for the current moment, but 1991 was a long time ago and previous mobilizations by clerics were issue-specific, or focused on figures below the level of the president. Mali in 2020 does not appear to be at the peak of a long-building wave.

3. The M5-RFP has little visible support outside Bamako

Another crucial difference between Burkina Faso in 2014 and Mali in 2020 is that the Burkinabè revolution had a broader geographical ambit. Certainly the M5-RFP is not completely lacking in support outside the capital, and certainly Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou was the heart of the 2014 revolution there – but numerous commentators have pointed out that the M5-RFP has not mobilized substantial protests in cities other than Bamako. Meanwhile, in Burkina Faso in 2014 (and in the earlier protest waves in 2008 and 2011), there was substantial mobilization in the economic hub Bobo-Dioulasso and elsewhere. If IBK outlasts the M5-RFP, as he is still fairly likely to do, a significant reason will be that the protests are not truly national in scope.

4. The Burkinabè revolution was relatively leaderless, whereas the M5-RFP is elite-led and therefore vulnerable

The whole idea of “leaderless movements” is partly a myth, of course, and there were organized groups that played substantial roles in the 2014 revolution in Burkina Faso – the most famous of them being Balai Citoyen (Citizen’s Broom), founded by musicians in 2013. And the ground for the uprising was partly prepared through intra-elite splits, including the departure of several major figures from Compaoré’s camp in 2012 (among them current President Roch Kaboré). Yet amid the 2014 revolution in Burkina Faso, it was not so easy as it is in Mali in 2020 to pick out the handful of people who appear to be in charge. The M5-RFP is a formal coalition of three groups, which gives you a relatively small group of key leaders, such as Imam Mahmoud Dicko, his close associate Issa Kaou Djim, and the former ministers Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Mountaga Tall, and Choguel Maïga. It is not that these leaders merely snap their fingers and tens of thousands of people come out – obviously there must be a give-and-take between leaders and protesters as the leaders attempt to read the mood of their supporters. Yet the relatively small, elite character of the leadership leaves them vulnerable to divide-and-rule tactics by IBK’s team, and to infighting and strategic disagreements. With the M5-RFP’s most prominent leader, Dicko, now suggesting that IBK does not need to resign, after all, it appears more likely that the M5-RFP will split than that the M5-RFP will succeed in forcing IBK out of power. In Burkina Faso, in contrast, events moved so quickly in October 2014, and the protesters proved so difficult to placate or divide, that Compaoré was being forced out before he could devise a serious counter-strategy. The increasingly protracted negotiations in Mali have, in a way, favored the M5-RFP so long as they don’t budge; but it has also given IBK time to experiment, lean on his peers and supporters outside Mali, and wait for the M5-RFP to crack.

Mali’s Temporary Skeleton Cabinet

Yesterday, Monday, July 27, the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) held an extraordinary summit by videoconference. The summit addressed the political contestation in Mali between President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK) and a protest collective called the June 5 Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP). In the conflict between IBK and M5-RFP, ECOWAS has been the formal external mediator, with the support of France and other foreign powers. ECOWAS sent two mediation missions to Mali’s capital Bamako in June and July, and most recently sent five West African heads of state to Bamako on July 23.

ECOWAS’ recommendations have become stipulations, and the July 27 summit reiterated a deadline of July 31 for implementing the following measures: the formation of a national unity government, the recomposition of the Constitutional Court, the removal of 31 parliamentary deputies whose elections were contested.

Here I just want to focus on the national unity government – a formation that the M5-RFP has not (yet) agreed to join. Yet the Malian presidency, which has also been promising to form some kind of unity government since June, is moving ahead. Also yesterday, the presidency announced a kind of interim, skeleton government with just six essential ministers under Prime Minister Boubou Cissé; this is in keeping with ECOWAS’ framework, which authorized the appointment of core ministers before the full slate was determined.

Here are the appointees:

1. Defense and Veterans: General Ibrahima Dahirou Dembelé
2. Territorial Administration and Decentralization: Boubacar Alpha Bah
3. Security and Civil Protection: General M’Bemba Moussa Keïta
4. Justice and Human Rights: Kassoum Tapo
5. Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation: Tiébilé Dramé
6. Economy and Finance: Abdoulaye Daffé

A few relatively banal observations:

1. There is a lot of continuity here. I’ve lost track of all the different cabinet reshuffles in Mali (more on that below), but if we look at the government formed in May 2019, after Cissé became Prime Minister we see Dembelé, Bah, and Dramé in their current posts.
2. Both the newcomers and those continuing on are familiar faces. Tapo, for example, is an ex-minister who was close to former President Amadou Toumani Touré.
3. The one real political newcomer might be Daffé – from my brief searches, it does not appear that he has held a ministerial post or a parliamentary seat before. But he comes out of a top job in the banking sector; he was the longtime Director of the National Development Bank of Mali. His name was even recently floated as a replacement for Cissé as prime minister. He is reportedly close to the Chérif of Nioro du Sahel, a major Muslim cleric who is somewhat aligned with the M5-RFP but who is also a key interlocutor for the presidency and for Cissé. So he should not be pegged as an apolitical technocrat.
4. The cabinet reshuffles and games of musical chairs are exactly what the M5-RFP, or at least part of it, is trying to short-circuit. From the perspective of IBK’s opponents, the president has used repeated cabinet reshuffles to shield himself from political consequences. It also seems that most of the M5-RFP’s supporters are tired of politics as usual, and seeing the same faces cycle in and out of government and/or other top jobs is a complaint of the protesters rather than a solution to their complaints. It could reinforce protesters’ cynicism and anger to see previously fired officials (such as General Keïta, who was fired as Chief of Army Staff after the March 2019 massacre at Ogassagou in central Mali) return to powerful positions . Dembelé’s initial nomination in May 2019 was controversial too, given his active role in the 2012 military coup.

At the same time, there are questions about how long the M5-RFP can hold together, particularly when it comes to their core demand for IBK to resign. I’ve said before that I think repeatedly reiterating that demand has given the M5-RFP a lot of bargaining power, but Malian experts such as Bréma Ely Dicko are now predicting that the influential imam Mahmoud Dicko, the foremost leader of the protesters, will break with the others and drop the demand for IBK’s resignation. We will see.

I leave the French-speakers with this thread, which goes through the new cabinet picks in some detail:

Gal M’Bemba Moussa Keïta à la sécurité intérieure. Ancien chef d'état-major général des armées. Il avait été démis de ses fonctions après le massacre d’#Ogossagou I où au moins 157 civils ont péri dans le centre du #Mali

— Bubu Ardo (@Ardo_Galo) July 27, 2020

Mali: Recent Developments Connected with the June 5 Movement

In Mali, and particularly in the capital Bamako, the 5 June Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP) is driving a flurry of political negotiations, proposals, and counter-proposals. I’ve gone into the composition of the movement and covered its first two mass demonstrations here and here, and I wrote an overview for the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) – so I won’t rehash the context here, but will simply round up some of the latest developments.

1. On 30 June or 1 July (reports vary), the M5-RFP released a memorandum that appears to modify its core demand – namely that Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK) resign. The memorandum makes a number of sweeping demands, including the dissolution of the National Assembly and its replacement by “a transitional legislative mechanism”; and the formation of a transitional government under a prime minister selected by the M5-RFP, with the president’s powers effectively reduced to nothing. Yet Cheick Oumar Sissoko, leader of one of the three main blocs of the M5-RFP (a civil society coalition called Espoir Mali Koura or “Hope for a New Mali”), has said the memorandum does not reflect his own point of view – he still wants IBK to go. Meanwhile I have been thinking about a post from Tchoussal N’Gourgou saying that “the truth is that Mahmoud Dicko [the leading M5-RFP organizer] is condemned to follow the framework dictated by [the Economic Community of West Africa States].” In other words, with the international community weighing in to subtly suggest that it does not want IBK’s resignation and that it does want a negotiated outcome, the M5-RFP and Dicko are forced to accept some outcome less than what they originally demanded.
2. Some of IBK’s supporters have, unsurprisingly, denounced the memorandum, calling it antidemocratic and unconstitutional. They may have a point. Ironically, the Malian Constitution of 1992 appears to me (not a constitutional constitutional scholar!) to implicitly allow for a president to resign, but only envisions temporary handoffs of power from the president to the prime minister (see Article 36) or the delegation of “certain powers” from the president to the prime minister (Article 51). Any permanent incapacity on the president’s part triggers a new election and I don’t think the constitution envisions a scenario where the president hands off all of his/her powers permanently. Meanwhile, the president can dissolve the National Assembly (Article 42), but that triggers new legislative elections and I am not sure how the demand to create a “transitional legislative mechanism” can be squared with Article 42. But obviously that’s all for Malian lawyers and politicians to work out, should it come to that. And in fairness, IBK slid into an extra-constitutional zone vis-a-vis the National Assembly by allowing deputies to remain in office longer than five years (Article 61). So the Constitution is not the ultimate guide to what will/can happen in Malian politics (or elsewhere!).
3. On 2 July, the captivity of opposition leader Soumaïla Cissé (kidnapped, presumably by jihadists, in the Timbuktu Region on 25 March) passed the 100 day mark. There is a rhetorical competition underway between the president’s allies and the M5-RFP to take ownership of the issue – the M5-RFP cites Cissé’s kidnapping as one of many tragedies amid the crisis they are responding to, while the president’s allies accuse the M5-RFP of taking advantage of the tragedy for political gain.
4. On 4 July, IBK held three meetings in an effort to tamp down tensions: one with Imam Mahmoud Dicko, the foremost leader of the M5-RFP; one with the parties of the presidential majority in the National Assembly; and one with the “founding families” of Bamako. According to Dicko, the president offered him some kind of ministerial role or “privileges” in the yet-to-be-formed “government of change” that IBK announced in a 14 June address; Dicko refused. IBK reportedly wants a “government of national unity.”
5. On 5 July, IBK met with M5-RFP representatives (see the presidency’s readout here). The meeting did not achieve a breakthrough, and in fact led the M5-RFP to decry what it sees as IBK’s obstinacy and to renew its call for him to resign (see the M5-RFP communiqué here).
6. Direct communication between IBK and the M5-RFP leaders is not the only channel of negotiation. Jeune Afrique published an article on 23 June about the “emissaries” of IBK during the crisis, citing names such as ex-Foreign Affairs Minister Tiebilé Dramé, former President Moussa Traoré, and current President of the High Islamic Council Ousmane Madani Haïdara.
7. The role of religious leaders in the M5-RFP – not just Dicko, but also the Chérif of Nioro du Sahel – continues to generate commentary and controversy. At The Conversation, Boubacar Haidara and Lamine Savane analyze Dicko’s role in the protests; at Journal du Mali (h/t Adam Sandor), there is an analysis of the Chérif’s role. Meanwhile, one cleric belonging to the High Islamic Council, Mohamed Moufa Haïdara, has formed what appears to be a pro-IBK platform explicitly opposed to “mixing politics with religion.”

The next mass rally is scheduled for 10 July, this Friday.

Mali: On Moussa Timbiné, the New President of the National Assembly, and a Bit of Context

On May 11, following legislative elections held in two rounds on March 29 and April 19, Mali’s 6th National Assembly selected Moussa Timbiné the body’s new president. Timbiné replaces Issaka Sidibé, who served in the position from 2014-2020.

Timbiné, 47, belongs to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta’s Rassemblement pour le Mali (Rally for Mali, RPM). He was a founding member of the party in 2001, coming from a background in student union activism and then working his way up the ranks of the party as a youth leader and then an elected official, rising to become second Vice President of the Assembly in its last iteration. He is ethnically Dogon and Songhaï, hailing from the Bandiagara administrative district of the Mopti Region, central Mali. In parliament, however, he represents the capital Bamako’s Commune V. A longer biography of Timbiné can be found here (French).

Timbiné is seen as a close ally not just of Keïta the father but also the president’s influential son Karim. (Notably, outgoing National Assembly President Sidibé is Karim Keïta’s father-in-law.) Observers see the Keïta family’s strong hand in putting forth Timbiné, whose candidacy as speaker was a bit of a surprise; until a day before the vote, the RPM’s designee had been another deputy, Mamadou Diarrassouba, who represents Dioïla in the southern Koulikoro Region.

Ironically, moreover, Timbiné had recently nearly lost his own seat. After the second round of voting, provisional results gave the barest of victories, 50.4% to 49.6%, to an opposition  candidate, Boubou Diallo. Diallo belongs to the Union pour la République et la Démocratie (Union for the Republic and Democracy, URD), the country’s foremost opposition party, whose leader Soumaïla Cissé was kidnapped on March 25 and is still in captivity. Indeed, the overall results from Bamako at first appeared to be a bloodbath for Keïta’s RPM there, with the party losing all but one seat (Karim Keïta’s) of the nine it held going into the elections. On April 30, however, Mali’s Constitutional Court reversed the results from various constituencies; by the revised figures, RPM gained ten seats, including four in Bamako, of which one was Commune V. RPM came out with 51 seats total, giving it the largest bloc in the National Assembly but falling well short of a majority. In any case, for those who regard the election results as compromised, Timbiné’s installation as president of the assembly is symbolic and symptomatic.

The scope of Timbiné’s victory within the assembly also raises questions about how much of an opposition there really is in Mali. Timbiné received 134 votes out of the body’s 147 members, against 8 votes for former Prime Minister Moussa Mara. Reportedly, some or even all of the URD members even voted to support him (or were given instructions to cast blank ballots, depending on which account you read). The URD deputies’ behavior angered many of the party’s supporters, prompting party leadership to issue what reads like an apology. In any event, the RPM’s losses in the election and its minority share within the new assembly do not necessarily mean that President Keïta and his allies have lost their grip on the chamber.

 

The Death of a Northern Malian Shaykh, and a Few of My Analytical Blindspots

On April 2, northern Malian sources reported the passing of Shaykh Hamdi Ould Muhammad al-Amin (Romanized spellings vary), the chief judge (qadi al-quda) of Kidal.

رحمك الله يا الشيخ #خمدى ولد #محمد #الأمين أحد علماء منطقة أضاغ في اماسين. اللهم اغفر له وارحمه وعافه واعف عنه ووسع مدخله واكرم نزله.
Décès du Cheikh Hamdi Ould Mohamed-Lamine le grand juge Islamique de l'Adagh. Une grande personnalité pacifique. Paix à son âme. pic.twitter.com/V0pm4c8Uit

— Inkinane (@Inkinane1) April 2, 2020

In a Facebook post (Arabic), one spokesman for the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (French acronym MNLA) traced the shaykh’s genealogy back to Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti (1729-1811), one of the most influential religious scholars (.pdf) in the Mauritania-Mali sub-region in the past several centuries.

The shaykh appears to have been more than just a learned man. He also seems to have had strong relationships with tribal and political leaders in northern Mali; for example, he was one prominent attendee at the installation (Arabic) of the Kunta confederation’s new ruler Muhammad al-Amin Ould Baba in 2015. The Nord Sud Journal, in its report (French) on the shaykh’s death, notes that his passing was announced by the prominent northern Malian politician and hereditary ruler Alghabass ag Intalla, sectary-general of the High Council for the Unity of Azawad (HCUA), over WhatsApp. The journal describes the shaykh as a “consensus” figure in northern Mali, writing that he “judged all the disputes between armed groups after the Anefis accords of 2015.” (See background on those accords here.)

The MNLA and HCUA eulogies for the shaykh are another reminder that neither of these movements should be understood as secular. In interviews, MNLA leaders have stated to me that they and the rebellion they launched in 2012 received support from prominent shaykhs and jurists in the region – including another prominent northern Malian shaykh who died in 2017, Al-‘Atiq bin Sa’d al-Din (Arabic).

Identifying the senior Muslim scholars of northern Mali has been a consistent blind spot for me, and with both Ould Muhammad al-Amin and Ibn Sa’d al-Din I became aware of them only upon their deaths. In part, this is simply a weakness of my own research, and a sign that I have not yet found the right sources and interviewees, or have not asked the right questions of the politicians I’ve interviewed. On another level, though, I think the task is objectively harder than, say, identifying prominent clerics in Bamako or Nouakchott. Perhaps this difficulty reflects a center-periphery split, with the ulama (religious scholars) of the capital much more visible than those in the north. Yet there is essentially no difficulty in identifying major political or military figures in northern Mali: such individuals are routinely profiled and interviewed by Jeune Afrique, for example, and they have proven relatively easy to meet in Bamako and even in Washington.

So there are a few questions that have occurred to me over the years:

1. Has there been a disruption in scholarly reproduction in northern Mali? In other words, do senior scholars have clear successors – from within their families or from among their senior students? From what I’ve read on Ould Muhammad al-Amin and Ibn Sa’d al-Din, scholarly authority appears strongly hereditary in the region – but that does not mean that it will be reproduced automatically, or that sons will have the same status as their fathers. The eulogies for Ould Muhammad al-Amin indicate that there are clear successors in his place, but I have wondered about the wider picture.
2. Are northern Malian ulama reticent to step into the media spotlight given the conflict in the region, or because of the local scholarly culture? In Bamako, even when I know the names of major scholars and seek out interviews with them, I have found it much harder to have productive interviews with shaykhs than with politicians, including politicians from the north. Is there even more reticence in the north about interacting with foreigners and/or journalists?
3. How much did the rise of Tabligh in the 1990s and 2000s, and the rise of Salafism and Salafi-jihadism in the region, affect the wider religious field? How were traditionalist – i.e., Maliki-Sufi-Ash’ari – scholars in the north affected? Is it even correct to assume that someone like Ould Muhammad al-Amin, from a family famously identified with the Qadiriyya Sufi order, still identified as Sufi? What is the position of someone like the jihadist(-leaning?) judge Houka Houka ag Alhousseini within the wider religious field – an outlier, a representative of a minority trend, a representative of a growing trend, etc.? Is someone like that only infamous because he is associated with jihadists, while the truly influential religious scholars in the region shun the spotlight?
4. When the 2015 Algiers Accord, meant to bring peace to northern Mali, refers to the role of cadis/qadis (Islamic judges) in local governance (.pdf, p. 13), do northern leaders have a list of specific people in mind to fulfill these functions – or who are already fulfilling these functions? Or is this more aspirational?

Obviously I welcome any insights that readers may have. The answers to these questions potentially have major import for how one understands the situation in northern Mali. A situation where senior, traditionalist scholars are dying without being replaced could mean that the politicians are the ones dominating the scene and/or that jihadists face less resistance within the religious field. On the other hand, if the senior traditionalists are still present but reticent, that could mean that there are powerful religious influences on politicians and powerful counterweights to jihadists, in complex dynamics that lie outside of my view.

Protests in Bamako and Southern Mali

Protests yesterday in Mali’s capital Bamako showed that the ongoing Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali is seriously affecting politics and interethnic relations in the southern part of the country. Reuters describes the scene:

Hundreds of Malians set up barricades and burned tyres in the streets of Bamako on Thursday, shutting down the capital in the latest protests against a rebellion that has seized several northern towns, and the government’s handling of it.

[…]

A Reuters reporter in Bamako said shops were shuttered early in the afternoon and smoke hung over parts of the city after tyres had been set on fire.

The centre of town was largely deserted except for groups of youths wandering around, the reporter said.

Yesterday’s demonstrations made international news, but protests actually began several days earlier. Military families began protesting in Kati, a town near the capital Bamako, on January 30th. Le Pretoire (French, my translation), writes that on Tuesday the 31st, “The women of the military base in the town of Kati went out and marched in the direction of Koulouba [the presidential palace], burning tires on the Kati-Bamako highway.” On Wednesday, military families reportedly “attacked government buildings and targeted at least one business run by a Tuareg in…Kati.” Protesters have also, the BBC says, targeted Tuareg shops in Segou. Jeune Afrique has begun to speak of “anti-Tuareg pogroms.”

Protesters are angry in part over what they see as the military’s lack of proper equipment. The protesters may also feel scared about the difficulties (French) and setbacks the military has faced so far. There also seems to be a perception among some protesters that the Tuaregs in the south are sympathetic to, or to blame for, the actions of their fellow tribesmen in the north. As Reuters comments, “The demonstrations, sparked by local reports that the military ran out of ammunition and that dozens of soldiers may have been executed during rebel attacks, have raised the prospects of clashes between Malian communities.”

Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Toure, who has only a few months left in office, has attempted to reassure his nervous nation and to defuse ethnic tensions. For the first time since the Tuareg rebellion resumed, he addressed the nation on Wednesday, “pledg[ing] not to give in to separatist demands but, in a sign of concerns that the conflict could spread, call[ing] on Malians to refrain from attacks on any particular community.” (Read the full text of Toure’s speech here, in French).

The administration is doing a lot of talking behind closed doors as well. Government representatives are meeting Tuareg representatives in Algeria; all signs indicate that the government wants a diplomatic solution and believes one is still possible. Toure is also moving to assuage the protesters’ anger; yesterday morning he met with military wives.

So long as the situation remains bad in the north, though, the possibility of protests and pogroms will remain in the south. This is a bad moment for Mali, and indeed for the region. As Fatoumata Lejeune of the UNHCR wrote on Twitter yesterday, “Touareg uprising in Mali, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Wade reelection bid in Senegal. Too much trouble in West Africa these days!”

For updates on the situation in southern Mali, I recommend following Martin Vogl, a journalist based in Bamako who frequently writes for major news outfits.