Has the (southern) Malian government ever stated its case for why the Tuareg peoples of Northern Africa should NOT be permitted an autonomous nation? (Aside from the obvious inconvenience of partitioning northern Mali into a new state)
That’s pretty much it. In general post-colonial states have opposed secessionism on the grounds that once it starts it may not stop and will cripple the mother state, however artificial that state may be in origin. The Tuareg are like the Kurds - submerged behind the borders of several neighboring countries. Even worse, as they were largely nomadic and predisposed to ignore borders anyway.
There are never any good solutions, unfortunately.
No country wants to lose territory and any future strategic advantages or minerals that may come with it. Not to mention, losing territory to a rebel group is a tough thing for a government to remain in power through. It demoralizes the population, undermines trust in the efficacy of a state, and threatens to lead to further fragmentation and anarchy.
even sven and Tamerlane have it right. The Tuareg have long been ignored by the government in Bamako and rightly feel disenfranchised. That’s all coming home to roost, of course. There was even a misguided attempt to turn Tuaregs into truck drivers because they are, you know, nomads at heart. :rolleyes: The Malian government will now have to start from zero to try to mollify these very tribal folks, but I don’t see it happening. As usually happens in this part of the formerly-colonized world, tribal loyalties are far stronger than flag loyalty.
Neighbours will also not like their own populations getting ideas. But, as the Balkens showed in the 1990s, separating countries is a messy and nasty business,
I remember a lecture I attended by a fairly well-know journalist on international affairs. His point - very logical - was that the United Nations was founded, basically, on one simple principle - DON’T MESS WITH BORDERS.
First, the last World War was attributed to the incredibly muddled mix of ethnic groups within Europe. Trying to figure out where Sudentenland or Prussia ends and Czech or Poland begins, whether Alsace is French or German, etc. - that is a strictly internal affair and the outside countries should not mess with other countries’ borders - because once you start, where does it stop?
Africa is particularly aflicted by this problem. The current lines were drawn by Europeans without regard to ethnicity - often by a bunch of people sitting in European capitals and drawing lines on a map. Once you accept the principle that ethnic=independent homeland, there is no end to the process. Scotland (sound familiar?), Wales, Basques, Flemish and Waloons, Corsicans, Catalonians, all those messes in TRFKAY - The Republic(s) Formerly Known As Yugoslavia; not to mention a few dozen or more ethnic groups in Russia alone… You think Europe’s got it bad, after a few hundred years of enforced national identity, Africa has it worse.
As a result, whether Mali gives Tuaregs a homeland, independence, a province, or just VW 4x4’s, the overriding rule is the rest of the world does not help a splinter group unless there are serious human rights problems… (i.e. Southern Sudan) and then it’s a big and long drawn out process.
This even goes for situation like Sadam annexing Kuwait. The UN had no problem with an expeditionary force, not because he was a bad bad boy, but because the big no-no was annexation. Notice in these conflicts, you still don’t get situations very often where for example Turkey would say “we’ve decided to help ourselves to this slice of Syria”. This is why old Jerusalem’s annexation is still contentious even among Israel’s friends. Not just splits, but re-drawing borders must be consensual.
We all know that when you transport people into the future, making them a delivery boy will never work out.
LOL
And the splitting up of Czechoslovakia showed that it doesn’t necessarily have to be so.
It is very nice for distant people to preach to the Mali about the Touareg, but the reality of the state of the Mali is that the desert of the Touareg is not easy to develop and the greatest of the problem is the desertification intensification and the greater and greater population that the Sahara of the Touareg can not handle on the ecological basis. This is a fact that no government can change, not even a rich government.
The Mali is very poor, there is only per capita GDP of $US 1,100 and the idea that the government somehow has these great resources that can solve the demands of the Touareg or that their independence would change these things has not a connection with the realities. The government can barely do what it must on the very basic services in the productive regions of the Mali. It is not rich to pour great resources into the Sahara when any honest evaluation will say that it will be as pouring water into the sand and waiting for a garden. And the efforts of promotion that have been done with outside helps, for desert tourism which had good chances, they were not destroyed by the actions of the Mali government, but it was the Qaddafi Touareg sympathies to AQIM and the kidnapping and murders that has destroyed this business and hurt the great majority of the Touareg who are not like that.
It is also true that the Europeans and Americans who have been seduced by the Touareg propagandas have very romantic ideas and they ignore the racism of the Touareg against the idea of the peoples of the south ruling them, they think themselves better by their colour.
This is also not a problem of tribes. The Touareg are not a tribe, there are tribes of the Touareg, it is a problem of the ethnicities, and that the Touareg do not consider themselves part of the Sahel, but that they are different and better. It is like the racism in Mauritania of the Bidaane against the blacks of Mauritania, where they still pretend to the right to slavery. But the romantic image of the Touareg which is vehiculed by european NGO has covered up this side.
Giving the autonomy to the Sahara region sounds very nice to people sitting far away, and I have no thing against the idea of it, except the realities say that it will not solve the economical problems of the Touareg and it will most likely mean only that there will be more trafficing of the contrabandes of all kinds. Maybe it is a price to pay, but the naive idea that the gouvernment of the Mali has been withholding resources that would make a great difference to the problems that are ecological, this is false.
Whether Alsace is French or German is pretty much by definition not an internal affair.
“First, the last World War was attributed to the incredibly muddled mix of ethnic groups within Europe”
By whom?
I think most scholars in main part attribute WWII to the results of harsh economic terms imposed on germany after its last war of aggression (WWI) which allowed realization of Adolf Hitler’s ambition for world conquest and worldwide ethnic cleansing by the “Aryan” race. Certainly japan’s conquests in the far east had nothing to do with the Balkans etc.
Not sure who you were intending to address with this, but I personally don’t care about the Tuaregs one bit. I’m very familiar with their arguments for nationalism, but today at work someone asked what Bamako’s counter-argument was, aside from obviously trying to maintain the status quo with regard to national integrity.
This is a common argument levied against colonialism, and there is some truth to it. On the other hand, these regions are so ethnically diverse that it would be impossible for anyone to draw agreeable borders.
I recently read a paper on the subject (Kisangani, Tuareg Rebellions in Mali and Niger and the US Global War on Terror) that claims Africans in that region cling to their colonial borders as “sacrosanct” because without artificial political borders, it would be impossible for the various tribe and ethnicities to merge into coherent states. Therefore, their leaders conclude that the colonial borders, however flawed, are still preferable to anarchy and Balkanization.
Thoughts?
There are only two precedents of changing the colonial borders. Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to what seemed like a completely amicable divorce, as friendly as Czech from Slovakia (who got custody of the “o” in that case?), since the Eritrean and Ethiopian leaderships at the time had been allied against the Dirgue (the tyrannical Marxist regime that overthrew Haile Selassie) for many years. However, they soon got into a quarrel about the territory of the Kunama tribe (Kunama is a linguistic isolate, not particularly associated with any of the neighbors on either side, so there was no good reason to think them “naturally” a part of either country), because when Italy mapped the area and defined a border (Italy took Eritrea and tried unsuccessfully to take Ethiopia in the 1890’s; between then and Mussolini’s second attempt to take Ethiopia for Italy the border was set by a treaty defining what claims Italy was relinquishing), that section was mapped very poorly. It was a small patch of land, and of no strategic importance to either side, but once blood had been shed it became a matter of pride for both, and the fight has dragged on and on, with a rising corpse count that hardens the bitterness.
South Sudan from the main body of Sudan is the other negotiated secession. Unlike Ethiopia/Eritrea, in this case there was considerable hatred already. How badly it will turn out remains to be seen.
Much of what you say is true, but doesn’t address the OP. Yes, I’m far away, as your snide remark points out, but did live there for two years. Not enough to make me an expert, but enough to become familiar with Mali and her people.
The War Nerd’s take on Mali:
https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/everythings-coming-up-mali
You lived there as an agent of a foreign government.
Plus the WarNerd is an idiot.
Now that’s an incisive rebuttal of the War Nerd’s Mali piece. The detail, the nuance, the logical construction and persuasive rhetoric, the … :smack:
I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Does that mean I’m stupid? Does it mean I’m unable to read? Does it negate the six months of French training I had with African teachers who talked about their cultures? Or that I didn’t travel in-country or talk to people who, while also agents of our government, were experts on Malian culture and politics? Please enlighten me. You’ve contributed exactly four sentences to this discussion, two of which were snark.
I thought it was obvious. You were there as an agent of a foreign government. A government which like all governments had an agenda which all of its agents are influenced by and whose views are based upon that.