01/2018 MALI - NO PEACE, A LOST REPUBLIC AND MANY PROJECTS. Armin Osmanovic, Head of RLS Office West Africa, Dakar

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1 AFRICA IN THE WORLD 01/2018 WEST AFRICA MALI - NO PEACE, A LOST REPUBLIC AND MANY PROJECTS Armin Osmanovic, Head of RLS Office West Africa, Dakar In 2012 the Malian government and army collapsed. Instead of the colourful tricolour, many cities saw the black flag of the Jihadists flying over them. Before the Islamist fighters, and their cohorts the MNLA Tuareg rebels, could capture the Malian capital of Bamako, France intervened with the consent of the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU), and forced the Jihadists to retreat to the North. 1 The MNLA Tuareg rebels, who had helped themselves to weapons from Gaddafi s arsenal after he was toppled with the help of Nato in 2011, had previously lost their unilaterally proclaimed independent state of Azawad in northern Mali to the Jihadists. Five years after the French intervention many parts of the country still teeter on the brink of collapse. 2 Attacks on Malian soldiers, the MINUSMA (United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), and the French 1 Osmanovic (2013) 2 Wiedemann (2018) military operation, Barkhane, all involved in the process of hounding down Jihadists, are the order of the day. The number of armed militias in Mali has actually risen because the French army uses them, and other criminals, as allies in the battle against the Jihadists. 3 Uncertainty reigns, particularly in northern and central Mali, but also in the capital Bamako, where there are terror attacks on hotels and bars similar to those in the neighbouring countries Burkina Faso and Côte d Ivoire. The Jihadists are specifically targeting westerners because they want France and its allies further involved in the battle for the Sahel. In 2015, a peace and reconciliation agreement was signed in the Algerian capital, Algier. But rather than disarming militias in Mali, the number is on the rise because this is the only way to access UN reintegration funds. The United Nations is threatening the Malian government with sanctions if the peace 3 König (2017) Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung 1

2 process stalls. 4 However, the government refuses to negotiate with Jihadists, albeit that some of their leaders are from Mali, because France does not want this. Likewise, Mali s army has nothing to do in Kidal because the former colonial power holds its protective hand over the Tuaregs who call it home. The government, with President Ibrahim Boubacar Kéita at its helm, is under pressure: there must be progress towards reconciliation because the presidential elections take place in summer. Many security experts already consider the intervention in Mali futile. Invariably, similarities with Afghanistan spring to mind, where the Taliban and the so-called Islamic State are gaining ground. Why are we concerned with Sahel? asks a French security expert, who considers the deployment of French troops to Mali a mistake. "The terrorists who committed the attacks in Paris or Nizza were not from Mali but from the suburbs of French or Belgian towns. Then why intervene in Mali? Echoing the opinion of many people in Bamako and elsewhere in the country, is France more concerned with Malian resources than with the fight against Jihadists? Or is France concerned with uranium that is being mined in the neighbouring Niger by French company, Areva, for nuclear reactors back home? LOST REPUBLIC As stated by former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tiébile Dramé, in order to understand why the government of Mali was merely a spectator during the peace negotiations in Algier, 5 you need to take into consideration the abyss between government and state that has been slowly growing during the past decades. This chasm was caused by the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s. At the time, Mali was the darling of the World Bank. Indeed, the neoliberal reforms reinvigorated the economy. After the stagnation of the 1970s and 1980s, the poor country showed significant growth from the middle of the 1990s until The per capita GDP increased from approx. 500 to over 700 US- Dollar (see Image 1) Image: Per capita GDP in Mali, constant US dollars (2010) from 1963 to Source: World Bank Wiedemann (2018); Jolys (2018) 5 Wiedemann (2018) 2 Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

3 However, neoliberal reforms had little impact on the majority, or some 80%, of the population, who sought their subsistence in agriculture. The state was never really a strong presence. But the neoliberal structural adaptation programmes, driven by the World Bank, saw the privatisation of the few industrial enterprises that existed and reduced the number of public servants. The government lost control of important positions that could have been handed to its followers. Privatisation of state enterprises further widened the gap between government and state. Only during the first years following its independence from France in 1960 was the government present in the lives of the people. Modibo Keita had placed Mali on the road to African Socialism. Keita and his party, who rapidly transformed the country into a singleparty state, quickly attempted to strip power from the much maligned local chiefs, previously used by the French colonialists to facilitate tax collection. As happened in Guinea when it decided in 1958 to declare its independence from France, Keita cut ties with the former colonial power and booted the French army out of the country. He also introduced an independent Franc malien currency, despite warnings from Paris. Shortly thereafter the currency was devaluate thereby alienating the influential Mali traders. In 1984 the Franc malien was discontinued in favour of once again using the Franc CFA. The Malian government knew no bounds at that time. What is different today? Why is the government now merely a spectator when it comes to talks about the future of the country? The neoliberal reforms of the 1990s launched democratisation, or rather the discourse on democracy in Mali, as it had done elsewhere in Africa. 6 In the 1990s micro-parties mushroomed everywhere. New private radio broadcasters, financed through NGOs, assumed the power of interpretation for the public, previously controlled by the governing party and its radio and television broadcasting. The new culture of debate opened a valve. Anger and malice about those at the top and their mismanagement, their clientelism and their prodigality spread through the country. Anger turned into rage and grew into an avalanche of violence, fuelled by all those who no longer believed in anything and had nothing to lose: the unemployed youths in the cities, the many students with no perspective and who had not yet left the country and the traditionalists and religious people who had a problem with the liberalisation of society, the emancipation of women and the general loss of authority. Schools, universities and public buildings were destroyed and people with different opinions were attacked. 7 A DROUGHT BRINGS PROJECTS The breakdown of government and the army in 2012, along with the intervention by France in 2013, left many African intellectuals embarrassed. 8 What had happened, how was it possible that the republic was going down the drain and why, ironically, did Mali have to ask the former colonial power for help? Before democratisation, political morale and authority crumbled and the hope for a better life in Mali evaporated. As in Ghana, where the father of independence Nkrumah had been toppled by the army, in 1968 Keita and his followers were sent to prison for many years. Under Moussa Traoré, the military gained power through a coup and he shielded the country from the West and the Soviet Union during the years of the Cold War. Initially the people of Mali did not seem to care. The transition from African Socialism to a dictatorship of generals happened silently. Keita had disappointed. Traoré obtained weapons from Moscow in exchange for military bases that the Soviets needed for the war in southern Africa. Yet 6 Bayart (1999) 7 Mann (2015) 8 Amin (2013) Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung 3

4 Traoré was forced to rely on the rich Western states and their non-governmental organisations when a disastrous drought in the Sahel in 1973 threatened the prospects of a flourishing Malian economy. The Sahel crisis caused the global public to focus on Africa. It led to an avalanche of funds and organisations that has since swamped the region. With money, international expertise and private aid, development and human rights organisations, as well as solidarity committees of all religious and political persuasions have gained a foothold in the country with their programmes, projects and campaigns. These organisations have grown into a private, indirect government. 9 Not only did they widen the gap between government and state but, to a large extent, they privatised government. Villages in the Sahel countries are littered with signs that inform visitors of various projects and benefactors. Various aid organisations dash to and fro in their 4x4 s between the many projects. The state, however, remains largely immobile. In the rural areas of Sahel, the presence of the state is hardly perceptible. Merely a few old gendarmerie cars still bear witness to state power. But often they lack the necessary fuel so these vehicles and their occupants spend their days in the shade of trees from where they wave to truck drivers on the bumpy road to their destinations and from whom they can gain a meagre private income. The population, including the intellectuals in the big cities, are jumping onto the project bandwagon. What alternatives do they have when the flood of projects at least provides a secure source of income? Many a compromise is made in order to be a part of this game. CONCLUSION The current oversight of Mali by the international community is not only the result of neoliberal politics. It also has historical causes that must be sought in Mali and the region itself. The rebellion of the Tuareg has a long history. Their first uprising occurred only a few years after independence. For many Tuaregs the government of the South is an imposition because many consider the Africans as mere slaves. In order to understand the interest, you need to understand the interaction of external stakeholders, the dependence on them by the people in Mali and elsewhere in the region, and how they learnt to manipulate this dependence to their own advantage. 10 The droughts of the 1970s and the wave of democratisation of the 1990s introduced new external stakeholders to the game in Sahel. These included criminal networks still prevalent, flourishing and expanding alongside Jihadists, and inter-national armies. After years of a single-party state, competition between parties in West Africa opened new opportunities for criminal organisations to gain influence. Politicians needed money to organise election campaigns and to outdo their competitors. The people of Mali have lost their republic. They now face the prospect of slotting into the international capital flows by way of drug and weapon dealers, developmental organisations, militaries and multinational companies. 9 Mbembe (2001) 10 Jean-François Bayart (1999) coined the term extraversion for this condition that is changing state sovereignty in Africa. 4 Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

5 BIBLIOGRAPHY Amin, Samir (2013): Rescuing Mali from Islamist Militants, in: Pambazuka News of , Bayart, Jean-François (1999): L Afrique dans le Monde : une histoire d extraversion. in: Critique internationale, vol , Jolys, Odile (2018): Malis Friedensprozess stock, in: Neues Deutschland of , König, Jürgen (2017): Umstrittene Mission in der Sahelzone, in: Deutschlandfunk of , Mann, Gregory (2015): From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel. The road to Nongovernmentality. Cambridge/USA. Mbembe, Achille (2001): On the Postcolony. Berkely. Osmanovic, Armin (2013): Afrikanische Staaten stehen hinter Frankreich, in: Neues Deutschland of Posthumus, Bram (2018): We re here to stay : Vigilante policing spreading across Burkina Faso, In: African Arguments of Wiedemann, Charlotte (2018): Viel Militär, weniger Sicherheit. Mali fünf Jahre nach Beginn der Intervention. Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. Berlin. All articles published on this website have been independently written. The views and opinions expressed by authors are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. WEST AFRICA Sotrac-Mermoz Villa 43 BP : Dakar-Sénégal Téléphone: Fax: Website: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung 5