More on why France intervened in Mali

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From A World to Win News Service; Ethnic groups, the national question and Islam   The Tuareg minority, related to the Berbers of NorthAfrica's coastal mountains, is itself composed of several different tribalgroupings. Together with people of Arab origin, Tuaregs are estimated to makeup 10  percent of the 15 million total population and live primarily inthe North. Since 1960 Tuaregs have led four separate rebellions against thecentral Malian government and its neglect of the northern region, centredaround the demand for autonomy there. Mostly nomadic herders, they are spreadacross a more or less contiguous area in several countries –  Algeria, Libyaand Niger as well as Mali.   With significant investments in Mali and ties to both the Malianstate and the movement for autonomy in the North, Gaddafi had also incorporatedTuaregs into the Libyan army. Thus after the imperialists invaded, led by thenFrench president Nicolas Sarkozy's Mirage jets in March 2011, and Gaddafi'sgovernment eventually collapsed, Tuaregs seized modern Libyan weapons andheaded for northern Mali, according to numerous reports. Although this islikely only one reason for the plentiful supply of guns and equipment in Mali, it beginsto explain why the poorly organized Malian army was easily defeated when theTuareg movement took over northern cities and declared Azawad independent.   Then also heavily-armed and well-equipped jihadist forces,organized into groups such as Ansar-al-Dine, Mujao and Al-Qaeda in the IslamicMaghreb (AQMI), took over militarily as the MNLA pulled back and reportedlyoffered to negotiate. The French maintain they are bombing only the jihadistgroups (with numerous civilian casualties) and many within French politicalcircles are arguing for talks with the MNLA, while others say they are only apolitical cover for the jihadists who settled in the main town of Timbuktu aswell as Gao and others along the Niger River. Competing heads of clans stillfigure heavily in the social structures of the northern territory and are said to beanother factor in what appears to be constant reshaping of alliances and splitsbetween Islamic armed groups. Local residents apparently told reporters thatthe armed group who invaded and took over Konna last April 2012 was composed oflighter-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs as well as blacks speaking several differentlanguages from Mali and fromthe neighbouring countries of Nigerand Nigeria.According to press accounts, Canadian and French citizens also were involved inthe militias.   As soon as the French launched their air strikes inmid-January, driving the Islamic forces further into the desert areas, someemboldened Malian army soldiers carried out retaliatory acts against peoplethey suspected of supporting the Islamists (perhaps this was not unrelated tothe army's having been routed by them a year ago). This helped fuel pressreports that ethnic conflicts were behind the war. In addition, local residentsfuriously targeted mainly Arab businesses, many run by merchants fromneighbouring Mauritania witha long history in Mali.When these stores were ransacked, large caches of ammunition where found insome of them that merchants had either stocked willingly or under pressure forthe Islamic forces. This increased suspicion that Arab merchants had supportedthe Islamists during the 10-month occupation.   In fact imperialist meddling does stir up the possibilitiesfor these divisions to take nasty forms among the people. The African Arabslave trade predating colonisation also left its mark on ethnic divisionsbetween North and South. Many Malians are quick to say that they have lived forcenturies with numerous different and languages and tribal groupings, mostlyblack-skinned, but also mixed (Peul) and lighter skinned peoples, and thatthese ethnic differences are not the main factor driving this crisis as themedia has sometimes implied.   Ninety percent of the Malian people are Sunni Moslems, theremaining 10 percent mostly animist. Thus much of the local population in thenorthern cities initially did not see a strong distinction between themselvesand the Islamists, and did not put up much resistance to them. However, reportssay most people quickly turned against the fundamentalists who made lifemiserable for them by banning radio and television (including televisedfootball events!), beating women, cutting off hands for "blasphemy"or "loose moral behaviour", and carrying out executions under the newand much harsher version of Islamic law they rapidly imposed on the population.  In the process of the foreign grab for Africa'sland, resources and zones of influence that has also benefited small parasiticruling classes and elites, imperialist relations of domination and organiseddependence become mixed with remaining pre-capitalist social relations. In Mali, thisincludes a not-so-distant past of slavery, not legally abolished until 1905.Scholars describe a caste-like system in which some tribal/ethnic groups werevassals (often referred to as slaves) of others, including among the Tuaregs.There are reports that the current war has also created the social terrain for"masters" in the North to recuperate their former vassals, or theirchildren, still recognised as belonging to inferior castes, thus stirring upfurther resentment.   Under Islam, the traditional social code of polygamy andchild marriages as well as female genital mutilation represents a hugeoppressive burden on Malian women. On top of this, when Islamic fundamentalistsoccupied the northern cities they began flogging women in public for not fullycovering themselves with the newly-imposed veil, reportedly whether they wereyoung girls, grandmothers or pregnant mothers. Suddenly women were not evenallowed to talk to their own brothers in public.   Scholars argue that the Islamisation of the Malian state hasin fact already been well underway for some time and that Moslem law in theform of shariah is already mixed in practice with "modernjurisprudence". The absence of the state from the daily lives of most ofthe population, heightened by the 2012 coup d’etat, created a vacuum that"moderate" Islamic forces in the High Islamic Council have steppedinto more vigorously, both providing services to the people and taking up acabinet post in the government. The New York Times reports that they oppose thejihadists and have already played an important political role for the Maliangovernment by negotiating the multimillion-euro ransoms paid for the release ofhostages taken in the North by AQMI over the past decade.   Trafficking hub with state complicity fuels parasitism,warlords, and jihadis   In a word, the North is awash in money and guns, but has nopaved roads or electricity. In addition to not developing the region, thedeposed central government in Bamakois accused of tolerating organized criminal trafficking networks, from which itprofited nicely. Customs officials are apparently generously compensated orrare in the porous border area that Malishares with Mauritania, Algeria and Nigerand some Bamakobureaucrats are said to have become rich on sources other than governmentsalaries.    Centuries-old trading routes have become conduits for cigarettes,drugs and other forms of trafficking in the northern region, at the vortex ofthe southern Algerian and Libyan Sahara, Nigerand west from Mauritania.In addition to cocaine, Moroccan cannabis resin and a significant amount ofransom "business" through hostage-taking in the past several years,trade has expanded into guns, through the changing political situation in North Africa. The control of smuggling also appears to beintertwined in the Tuareg political rebellions. At stake are large profits bothfrom trafficking and from taxes numerous networks controlling the routes imposeon each other as goods are moved through the region. To try to maintain itsauthority and keep control over the north, in 2006 the Malian governmentutilised these rivalries by pitting one group of Tuareg rebels against others.   Geopolitical stakes being played out in Mali   Malishares borders with seven West and North African countries, all former Frenchcolonies and the dynamics of the conflict are clearly regional in nature.Stretching from Senegal onthe western coast across the Sahel to Sudanand Chad,Islam is historically the main religion, and most countries have radicalisedIslamic movements.   Whatever France'sstated immediate aim and belligerent means of achieving it, clearly France has beenaccelerating its efforts to shore up its influence in the Sahara-Sahel.Contrary to its image after refusing to join the war against Iraq initiatedby former president G.W. Bush, the French state has not been idle militarily.Far from it. Sarkozky dispatched troops to Afghanistanand into the conflict in Ivory Coast,and recently special forces into Somalia. Deploying 2,000 Chadianmercenary soldiers in Mali's North, who are not part of ECOWAS but have plentyof experience in previous conflicts in Central African Republic on France'sbehalf, also figures into its strategic plans, experts point out. Despite thetalk of ending "Francafrique", the business daily Les Echos wrotethat in Mali the stakes for France are its future presence in Africa.   A new political order and the role of the imperialist powerswithin it are being fought out and recast in the region. The crumbling of theold order of post-independence states in the Sahel-Sahara has been acceleratedby the mass uprisings against the U.S.'sMubarak in Egypt and France's Ben Ali in Tunisia. There is also theinstability and opening that Gaddafi's fall in Libyacreated, together with other armed conflicts in the Sahel, notably Sudan. And theantagonism between Western imperialism and the political Islam shaping manydevelopments in the Middle East is influencing the internal dynamics andstruggle over this recasting of political configurations in West and North Africa as well.   Algeria,also a French colony until Francelost a bitter war of independence, is considered by many a key player in themachinations behind the crisis in Mali. In worrying that France may finds itself bogged down in Mali like the U.S.in Afghanistan,Le Monde writes that it must rely on the Algerian army. At the same time Algeria's links with the U.S. have grownsteadily stronger in the "fight against terrorism" since the 1990swhen the Algerian army carried out massacres of both civilians and armedjihadists following the Islamist electoral victory. This has includedsignificant provisions of arms.   The U.S.is increasingly a major player in this geopolitical recasting of the region,through active intelligence bases in several countries, training soldiers andsolidifying ties with the leadership of a number of West African armed forces.The US-Africa command, or Africom, was set up under George W. Bush in 2008expressly for the purpose of monitoring Islamist forces and preventing theirimplantation in a West African state where they could find a haven. Accordingto Rudoph Atallah, former U.S.director of counter terrorism for Africa, the Sahelis a "destabilized region with ethnic conflict that if not dealt withquickly many disgruntled groups will be recruited by Al Qaida". He saidthat military intervention is one approach the U.S.is considering in Mali,while assisting Franceand helping to pay the bill. USdrones are already flying in Malian skies. In fact it appears that theimperialists are actively destabilising the region for an outcome more to theirliking, sometimes cooperating and sometimes acting on their own. Already hugecamps of Malian refugees fleeing the fighting sprawl along the borders and arecausing tensions with neighbouring states.   Economic interests and particularly exploring new energysources also underpin the scramble to reshape states and politicalconfigurations in the Sahel. France is heavily dependent upon uraniumdeposits in Nigerfor its nuclear power. Several imperialist countries, together with Algeria, Qatarand China (a risingaggressive presence throughout Africa) have their eye on the untapped gasfields, oil and uranium deposits apparently lying under the northern desertsands in Mali.China recently constructed athird bridge in Bamakoand in many African countries it has combined commercial penetration withinfrastructure development.   For the people of Mali nothing good can come out ofFrench imperialist military intervention, with or without West African or UNtroops to project a different image, or out of religious  rule. In fact,imperialist domination has provided the conditions for obscurantism to persistand grow in new forms. Both imperialism and Islamic rule maintain the Malianpeople in a position of continued subordination to dominant interests and thewhole ensemble of economic and social relations they need to break out of tobuild a radically different society. A World toWin web Site http://www.awtw.org aworldtowinns@yahoo.co.uk