Over the span of just three years, Mauritania, a Northern African country straddling the Great Sahara and the Atlantic, hit international headlines twice, albeit for apparently different reasons. Back in 2005, the country caught world attention following a much acclaimed military coup which toppled the dictatorial regime of Mouaya Ould Sidi Ahmed Ould Taya and promised to usher in a new era of democratic rule. They organized legislative and general polls and oversaw a two-year transition which lead to peaceful handover of power to a civilian government. Yet again, last week, the same military crop of generals stormed the palace, arrested the president and his prime minister and again took matters into their own hands. The question now running on the minds of many is what went wrong with Mauritania’s fledgling democratic exercise? What has gone amiss in the relationship between the president and the military that led to this dangerous development?
Mauritania has a long history of military coups, but the most remarkable of them all is the 2005 military coup which put an end to two decades of dictatorial rule by the former president Ould Taya and laid the groundwork for a successful democratic transition. Of all the six coups which have rocked the country, the military this time came as makers of democracy not usurpers of power and were able from the get-go to ditch long-standing public fear and mistrust of the men in uniform.
This shift in attitude is also spurred by the military being the only viable and functioning institution in the country which had what it takes to survive the calamitous policies of previous governments. Two-decades of dictatorship under the regime of Ould Taya left civil institutions, such as political parties and NGOs as well as state apparatus in complete disarray and people have no other anchor to look up to than the army.
The deposed president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi seemed to be out of touch with this new reality, and his decision to turn the heat on the army was costly for him and for the country's democracy. He miscalculated that his legitimacy as the democratically elected president will be enough to tip the scales in his favor in any face-off with them. He got it wrong because he failed to properly weigh the public standing of his opponents and when he set upon a rebranding mission as the strongman at the helm he was soon given a reality check.
To make matters worse, he was widely tipped to have been backed by the two generals he sought to get rid of and that he relied on their influence in the run up to his election to the office. In an interview with Aljazeera channel, few days before the coup, he tried to shrug off any embarrassment vis a vis this relationship, but he could not hide his intent to lay to rest the general perception that he was handpicked by the army, and too weak to be in charge on his own. Along the course of his attempted makeover, the deposed president not only misread the public support of the army but also made a host of other missteps which saw him limping on all the way long.
If history is any guide, presidents in unstable democracies stand no chance to run counter to the army if they don't enjoy strong public backing. And in the case of Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, this equation can not be more true. Judging by the record of his first year stint as president, he is by all accounts the most unpopular fist year president in the history of the country.
It's true that not much can be achieved in a year and few months in the office. But the president raised expectations sky high and promised to push through sweeping reforms, stem corruption and restore the credibility of public administration. During his campaign trail, he pledged to enact these reforms at once, insisting that only an immediate implementation of his reform policy will change the life of the people for the better. Yet three months from taking the office, he is nowhere to be seen.
The demons of economic crises, which ranged from soaring fuel and food prices, unemployment, etc. kept hitting hard on a population which already can not make ends meet. It took the capital city, Nouakchott, to be gripped by repeated blackouts and severe water shortages for the president to be jolted awake from his slumber.
The president's lack of action came to haunt him when violent protests broke out in the eastern part of the country, his electoral base, and spread nationwide. It was the first time that the country has seen such violent protests which left one person dead and many injured.
The president's handling of the crisis proved to many that the much desired change is still put on the backburner. With no end in sight to the growing public anger, it became clear the president's popularity has slumped and that his lame duck attitude is not helping to fix it. It was at the point that the cracks began to show in the power structure which supported him, i.e. the army, the ruling coalition and the MPs of the presidential majority. He sacked his own government of technocrats and formed a new political one without consultation with the ruling coalition and its MPs. Worse, the new government featured notorious figures from the former regime of Taya who are known for their corruption and mismanagement of public wealth.
The new team tried to sugarcoat the President's change of heart towards the figures from the former regime of Taya as indicative of his determination to be his own man. It hoped to refurbish the image of an isolated leader by misleadingly portraying the collapse of his power base as a calculated move to counterbalance the influence of the detractors form within his camp and outside it. And as the president rushes toward making enemies left and right, matters started to spin out of control with the massive walkouts from his ruling coalition and the emergence of what has been dubbed "the breakaway parliaments". It became clear that the president's fall from grace becomes a matter of time as his own supporters turned against him, spearheaded by the furious MPs' attempt to try, convict and impeach him. Both upper and lower houses of parliament were for some time sites of tireless efforts to bring the president to task, charging him and his spouse of corruption and mismanagement.
The brief tenure of the deposed president is certainly a successful story abroad. The international community, keen to see democracy alive and kicking in the unstable, war-torn sub-region, was quick to embrace Mauritania as a role model, hoping that the rest of Arab countries will learn from it and follow in its footsteps. But the trappings of democracy which the world saw were a far cry from the reality inside the country as the failure of the president to adroitly manipulate the levers of power sent the country into an economic, legislative and power crisis his departure was the only way to fix it. Thus, the army stepped in to put an end to a dictator in the making as it did in 2005 when it put an end to a full fledged dictator.
mom
57 comments:
I WAS BROWSING FOR INFO ABOUT THE MAURITANIAN COUP AND CAME ACROSS THIS INTERESTING BLOG. I LIKE THE ANALYSIS AND THE WRITING, THOUGH I ALWAYS VIEW THE MILITARY WITH A PINCH OF SALT.
Welcome back mom from a long retirement. The description is right regarding the reasons for Sidioca's failure. However, lilke ano above, the military never saved anything. They took power in 2005 to save themselves from others taking over and certainly eliminating them. They even tried to hold on power through their famous vote blanc and they have been trying for months to weaken an already weakened president and remove him from power that take back what they feel is their. What is dusgusting is the use of tribal alliance to topple a president that was somehow accepted and indeed never let him to use his prerogatives to run. I understand that Sidioca was also very corrupt as evidenced by his handling of the drug, winfield, SNIM and other cases and turning the other eye away while his wife was doing like Imelda Marcos.
Your note is an excellent background for a lengthy debate here. With what we know now or think we know now, lot of truth will come out and thanks for providing the rest of us the opportunity to debate here and agree or disagree on the best way to get us out of this crisis.
Back to you later and welcome back. Informing the historic members that the blog is back. Chers. Tidinit
Welcome back mom!
I have to strongly disagree with you over the intentions of the army and its role in the country.
Our army is the worst army on the face of the earth. They have never achieved any success what so ever: they lost against polisario, against senegal, against the salafists de l'algerie and against their own local salafists. They are, however, good at raping the population.
And let me tell you, they DID NOT come to save jack shit.
It doesn't matter how bad sidioca was, he got elected by the people and only the people can decide not to elect him again.
The army did not react until the generals were removed from their duties and they deserved to be removed.
mom,
I think the passage below is a problem:
"Of all the six coups which have rocked the country, the military this time came as makers of democracy not usurpers of power and were able from the get-go to ditch long-standing public fear and mistrust of the men in uniform".
These guys cannot make democracy. They are in the business of looting. What graduates from military schools know about running a country? Their chief used his own tribal cousins to lead the uproar against the man they put in power when the latter revolted because he could not run the bloody country without their interference. He was also crokked himself, our national Sidioca because he played the game of cheating the Mauritanian people of AOD who should have won. We care less about who got in: he stays the duration of his terms and no military has the right to decide to remove him before the end of his tenure. If he is bad, we should assume until 2012 and society has the right to make mistakes in choosing their leaders. Definitively the military chapter should be closed and we should be very clear about it so that the military men get the message accross.
more on this after few have debated. A-
welcome back mom, you turned up at the right time, though i still have to say we expected you to tell us about your plans to take this long break before you set out on it.
I'll come back to comment the excellent article.
Welcome also to the great Tidinitt and UN CHINGUITTOIS.
a passer by
Missing you a passer by,
Just read a summary of the tough talk of the US Ambassador today. I think the junta will have no option but to go into exile, now or later. Certain that by Monday they will have all their stashed money frozen in their accounts. Once frozen, it is frozen. The problem is that they choose who to freeze or not. So certainly some traders otr businessman close to them and will suffer, ghaving only camel trade in ouguiya left as business.
I am not hiding my views: I am against the coup and against Sidioca that I feel corrupt like the others. The solution is not to do elections now, but after puting the country under UN/AU trusteeship for 2 years at least as the bandits left will trick future elections to bring us to square 1, that is 1978 style. Otherwise you will have another coup, blood this time and a dibided country. Your views, please.
Forgot to sign above. It is your serviteur Tidinit
tidinitt
i share your condemnation of both the coup and Sidioca and i think most Mauritanians do. Those who supported the military were not driven by the love of Aziz but hatred of and disgust from the deposed president. Likewise, the ant-coup movement is animated by fear of the return of the army to power and not by any genuine support of Sidioca. But in politics, you can not make u r case if you don't take sides, reason why people are divided over their support of the military and Sidioca.
On the other hand, i don't think you are serious about the UN take over.
a passer by
international pressure is mounting on the new leaders and it makes me worry. it's the people who suffer not the rulers.
no body gives a shit to Sidioca or Aziz and their democracies or luck of them. A democracy which is not at the service of development is sham. It's not enough to come to power through the ballot boxes or to organize polls, you need to put power at the service of the people. And the first step towards a viable democracy is to fight corruption, not to encourage it. Both Aziz and Sidioca failed miserably to be on the right side of reform. So let them go to hell and move one.
Beidel Ould Hmeid said his ant-coup front is opposed to international sanctions and supports a "Mauritanian" solution to the current poltical stand off.
Howdy a passer by,
I am dead serious about international trusteeship as the boys home will not bring any sustainable solution to this crisis. One side will win, the other (s) will lose and we will be back to square one with still the military in forever.
Do anyone think that Boidiel - as ano above has indicated - is a real anti-coup?. Nope. He checked with Aziz before saying to the international community not to embargo the country. How then you can solve the crisis with democracy hijacked by the military despite their promise during the transition? Ely is nowhere to be found, but I am certain he went to Ireland knowing that this will happen and is certainly thinking about an alternative to be the solution or the Zorro who can save the country.
Even if we find a way to have the military leave, they will be around and take power as soon as oil start pumping out, either on their own or with the help of another neighbor or powerful country telling Aziz and Co. to get lost. Who said countries have no friends, but interests? Who said il n y a que les imbéciles qui ne changent pas d'idées?
Don't forget that the sahara-sahel region is getting the attention of France, the US, China and Russia and there is a lot of competition: look at what is going on in Chad and in Sudan. Look at what is happening in Mali with the manipulation of islamists and tuaregs? If we do not have a strong and clean government, 'they" will use us like a plate of sushi or couscous among "them": you finish, you pass it to the other and get it back. This is tthe situation in Mali being used a couscous plate between Algeria and Libya. Why? Oil goddamit.
If we do not have a clean system of governance, we will not get out of the woods. The current political class home is corrupt, has no interest in the future of the country and will side with any force that can help them to get to power. You said so. We are starting just to slip into a failed state status and it is my opinion to use international trusteeship to clean-up the bloody place before we become like Sudan, Cote d'Ivoire or Iraq.
Let me quote you something from an excellent article in Foreign Affairs of 1 September 2005 (article by stephen Ellis, Volume 84, Issue 5):
"Fortunately, there is now a growing body of international jurisprudence defining the circumstances in which the international commmunity is justified, or even required, to bypass such nominal sovereignity in order to protect people who have been abandoned or abused by their governments. And several African governments, most notably Nigeria's and South Affrica's , have started to signal a new flexibility on this question, as have the leaders of the new African Union (AU) . All seem to agree that in some cases, when states are unable or unwilling to prevent massive human right abuses, intervention is appropriate - whether local powers like it or not. Intrusive outside meddling often smacks of colonialism and is thus a bitter pill for African natiionalists to swallow. But sometimes there is simply no alternative". The author uses human right abuse in this case, but we can also use coup d'etat and power crises to justify putting a country under an international administration until it cleans itself out. So I am serious about it if there is no lasting solution and I see none.
More on this later. Do someone has a solution so that we stop complaining after we shoot ourselves in the foot?
N.B: to know how things are complicated, please visit the other DB blog and read the article ffrom Jeremy Keenan entitled "The Collapse of the Second Front". Please read it carefully. The coup we got is a failure of that plan because Aziz and his body screw it up because they did not have time to check with their accomplices between 7 and 8 in the morning. The accomplices are thosse who gave them the okay to make the coup in 2005 ...
I made my case. Cheers. Tidinit.
Dear All,
A 248 pages on Maghreb terrorism by South Africa's Institute for Security Studies (ISS) concentrating on Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, just released. Don't know why they did not add Mauritania. But I've quickly seen reference to Tuaregs and there is certainly something on Mauritania. Hope it is a great read. Keep it if you can't read it as you might need it to check some facts regarding our country. Let me tell you that most people are not aware of what is going on on that front.
cheers. Tidinit
http://www.iss.co.za/dynamic/administration/file_manager/file_links/MONO144FULL.PDF?link_id=32&slink_id=6358&link_type=12&slink_type=13&tmpl_id=3
what do you guys read in Boudeil's statement? Any power sharing under way bteween the pro and anti coup rivlas? hope so. please brainstorm on this.
ano above,
Boudeil is ano for or aginst the coup, he is too corrupt to stand for anything.
Beiddel said he was misunderstood by the press and that he never called for an end to international pressure. But the problem is not about who wins or looses, who goes or stays, the problem is that we are left only with thiefs on all sides. One one side we have Aziz and on the other we have Beiddel and Ould Waqf. guys we're stuck.
a passer by
yakouti hada Mahu Maaqul! They say Ould Med Vall is back in Nck. What the heck is he planning to do?
Ramadankoum Moubarak ya daybreakers, May God bless us and protect our country against all evildoers.
We are stuck indeed as a passer by said. listened carefully the debate between AOD, Messaoud and the other two. They just missed someone in the middle who knows what is going on and free to said his/her mind. I though about Prof Ely and someone from CR such as Jemal or El Arby Ould Saleck, although they might have different views on the solution and how to go about this crisis. I have been thinking about a solution and I could not come with any. You can't throw Sidioca because it is anti-constotutional and you cannot keep the soldiers because it is a bad precedent.
Just read around that Ould Guig is secretary-general of the Presidency (he was quiet all these years) and Ould Mohamedou as Foreign Affairs Minister (I did not like his interviews with an Algerian newspaper nor his article in the US media justifying the coup and they did not fly. With no experience and a tribal-tainted reputation, I don't know what this Mohamedou can achieve. He might just have his savings from his Harvard salaries frozen with the loot of the Dalton brothers (Aziz, Ghazwani, Ely and Felix).
Any solution guys, besides puting the country under UN/AU trusteeship? (lol - A Passer By enta vem?). We have to think for the guys home and the only solution is to put back that useless Sidioca on the throne and let him suffer with an adverse Parliament and Senate. He should not have accepted to make any deal with the military in 2006/7. He did so in my opinion for the position and the $$ that goes with it. He is not different from the other guys.
Cheers. Tidinit
Ramadan Mubarak Tidinitt
About solutions, i don't think the country is short of them, at elast bad ones. Some would be politically blind enough to call for the return of Sidioca and some would be dangerously corrupt and ask the military to stay. I, like many others, think the best way is to do away with both. With Sidioca already out of the game, people from the opposition and independents have to ccordinate efforts to pressure the army to set a date for elections and pledge not to run for office. This is the only way out but until now politicians are too much taken by their rivalry to think properly about a deal to set the country back on truck and move forward.
mom
Correct mom. The problem is that getting out Sidioca will be a wrong precedent in Mauritania and everywhere: you can threaten a head of state of government of getting him out by coup d'etat, even if you have to give back the power later. Can you imagine someone running a country with the army telling him everyday do this or else? Like in Algeria, right?
On anotther issue, Iselmou ould Abdel Kader has made some revelations behind all this, among them the drug trade and the islamists. For the islamists, his revelations fit with some hypothesis I advanced earlier here and somewhere else that the djihadist acts in December et even before that (Lemgheity) were manipulated by our own security apparatus for several purposes such as establishing a US military base in Mauritania and scaring the shit out of Sidioca to weaken him and get him out (by the way A Passer By: I shared with you some excellent sources on faked djihadism while mom was on "vacation" and you never reacted. You may be just the whole bunch of documents and forgot to tell me what you think).
For those of you who read French, get the link below:
http://www.taqadoumy.com/fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=334&Itemid=30.
The anti-coup front is increasing and I think the junta will fall. Stupid question: how the foreign minister will carry-out his job when the government is not recognized by those who count the most? That is the UN, the EU, the AU, France and the US. Something is wrong with us Mauritanians, whatever we went to school or stayed in lkhyam.
Good day, Ramadan Mubarak and pleasse read carefully Isselmou ould Abdel Kader. I never understood where he stood all these years, but the guy is sharp and is a living library when it commes to the militarisation of power in Mauritania. I think he is the best to tell the rest of us what the hell is going on home.
Tidinit
Why all this? Tidinit
Is my lecture of the events right? The military are to stay because their friends in the Parliament and Senate will change the constitution to allow them designate Aziz as President until 2012. If this is the case, we are back to square 1. More coups are expected as Aziz will side up with the Moroccans and either the Algerians or the Libyans would want to have their friends take over for one reason or another. Very embarrassing when we read in the newspaper that the Libyan Leader is instructing Hanena to do this or that. Very confusing the country and the political class really rotten. Sidioca should be brought back as a matter of principle. Otherwise, we would have lost at least three years for nothing. Good night. Tidinit
Tidinitt, i admire your remarkable interest in the unfolding drama in the country, but let me tell you that the problem is that we were duped into believing that the country has turned into a mature democaracy just because it organised a "FAIR" election and had the 2005 junta not running for office. Yes these were good steps, but they were not enough. It took a corrupt president just one year to turn our dream to a nightmare and putting back to seqaure one. The appauling U-turn which the country took under the deposed president and the eventual come back of the army are to me expected because we have to earn our democracy and fight for it. It was good the Sidioca was doen with and it is up to us no to with the Aziz.
The problem is that the junta and the rest of us should assume our mistake in letting the CMJD push for this useless Sidioca and our willingness to look the other way, just to get ride of the military. We spoke about it here at length. As soon as the election was over, Aziz had the dude under control 24 hours a day. It looks like Sidioca could not do anything to run the country as Aziz and his closest friends were sabotaging him already. Sidioca was definitively useless and Khattou did not help as she was also trapped into accepting unlawful gifts for her foundation from the inner circle of the ex-CMJD. I know some names of those prominent people in the system, eating in the hand of Ely and Aziz, and providing this poor lady with tricky gifts right and left to be used against her to topple her useless husband. I fully agree with you that Sidi was not fit for the job and he took the chance of his life for the position and the money with. He has unfortunately a crooked personality, but we all made a mistake and we should have assumed it until 2012.
I realized that the guy was useless when first things he decided for the country to go back to Fridays as weekly holidays,put members of his inner family on lucrative positions, created an anti-corruption team with imams in it, brought back the "iseristes" to the Ministry of Justice after being kicked out by Ely, restructured the ministries into new ones, leading to confusion on who should do what, and of course sitting tight and traveling when everything was going wrong. I wondered how the guy was working for his employers in Niger. The guy was a real disaster.
Now the problem is on princple: you can't get a democratically elected president out by a coup d'etat. We know that if these genrals are given an opprtunity to stay during another transition, they will never go. Never. And it shows on how they are manipulating through Mohsen (a cousin) and Ould Jiddein (an alleged human right violator) to take over the Senate and the Pariament.Who is Aziz anyway to decide to take over the country? He cannot be better than his elders who ran the country down over these 30 years.
The solution? Reinstate that uselss guy, keep the military away and let a hostile Senate and Parliament bring him down ... legally and they will do. A then let have another election.
Another issue: everyone is seeing that Aziz is surrounded by his parents and trying to help him stick to power. If he is not careful, he will fall ino the same trap as Ould Taya fell in. If I were Bouamatou, I will not help as he does not need anything from him and he knows perfectly that Aziz will not be different from Haidalla or Maawiya and any Aziz's mistake, he will share responsibility. So why bother with these militaries?
Now everything is a mess. Where the generals will go if they have to leave power? If the US and France are not manipulating things again, they will freeze their money outside and certain that the Parliament and Senate will go after whatever they have home, if not Khattou if she is back again an she will need a week to clean them dry. We know our people: they will turn their back as soon as they know that power change hands. We see it now, even with CR, UFP, RFD and even APP and the others. On top of all this, the Algerians are angry and they have people in th military .... like every other country that count in our bloody area.
This is my honest assessment. Good night and let's keep the debate open. Tidinit
i could not have made the case of our predicament than you did. You sum it all when you insisted that it was doomed from the started and that Sidioca is as corrupt as the military. The problem is that our elite instead of recognizing this crucial truth is divided between those who mourn the loss of the "Savior" Sidioca and those who worship the regained "savior" Aziz. No one side is willing to see that both guys are the faces of the same corrupt system and that the political momentum should be directed against both.
This being said, i have to admit that waiting for the Sidioca to finish his term would have been disastrous, not only because it means more years of stagnation and backwardness but also because the guy was pumping in the rumuz alfassad from Taya's regime. Sidioca was preparing the ground for ruling for life, just like Taya, and since at some point down the line we would find ourselves forced to call the military to oust him like it did with Taya it was better to do it now and start anew. There would have been nothing good coming form Sidioca, more of him would mean only more of misery and suffering.
Guys, don't read alot into the coup as it was agreed upon by both Sidioca and the army. Did you fall for the lie that mafias of Ould Taya are going to let go of power, emn doukak, u r dreaming. Tell the trusting masses that u r chopping the big heads to give the country a chance, that u r ousting Ould Taya and giving power to the good civilians out there and that u are proud of the first democratically elected president Sidoca. then come back and tell the masses that you love them so much u can not let them suffer under the elected president. Take poer back, organize election and oops, Ould Mohamed Vall is elected to the post.
Guys, this is the scenario, the mafia of ould TAYA, including Sidioca, wants to keep power and it is playing us around. Wake up. Enough.
Tidinit has read last night the latest of Prof Ely regarding what to do and I fully agree with him. Please just check it out. This of course does not clear Sidioca from being the crookest 70-year man I have never seen. The guy is just a disaster. Aziz is worse and he has an ego like this big. If I were God, I just call them up, give them a hell of a beating and just sit on them so that Mauritanians nevver see them again. There is no other option but to let him in and leet Parliament et Senate to chop him off. Aziz and the two generals could be excused and their belonging home preserved, but their accounts outside the country frozen or something like that. Tidinit
hi daybreakers
i have nothing to say, only want to wish everyone good Ramadan and pray for a good fix of our situation.
a passer by
dudes, what do you think Aziz has given to the Senegalese president to call for the recognistion of the coup leaders?
Money to Karim
Aziz is selling the country to gain support of our poor and weak African neighbors as Sidi has sold our economic resources our brothers in the Arab Gulf States.
The junta will not gain this game. The African Union (AU) will not move because of Nigeria and South Africa. Yard'Ua changed his generals after the coup in Mauritania and at the AU you cannot go against Nigeria. The Chairman of the AU is Kikwete of Tanzania and do not listen to Wade. He made him shut-up in one instance in Yokohama. So, there is no chance for Kikwete to give up and he was elected cleanly, like his predecessor. Others will may be try to soften their stance, but there is no way out but exile for the generals. It will take time, but that is the only solution. The junta is trying the same trick last time after getting out Ould Taya and it will not work this time. I just wanted to share with you what you should expect from the AU. The junta should not count on Jean Ping to ease the situation with them hanging to power. The guys is on his first term and there is nothing to gain for him in going the junta way. Anyway, Mauritania is a small country that does not count much geopolotically because of the reputation of its leaders since the departure of Moctar Ould Daddah. So, the only hope is to reinstate Sidioca, with Khattou helping him to fire right and left, until the Senate and the Parliament fire him legally. Cheers. Tidinit
P.S:
- A Passer By: you should comment more often. Ramadhan Mubarak.
- mom: after weeks of stalemate, what do you think? The junta losing is a no brainer for me. There is no way around.
Old article from the Oil and Gas Journal. But the last sentence seems to come straight from a pissed off neighbouring country. They believe that the junta is pro-moroccan. Military coups and manipulation of jihadists started when there were indication of oil and gas in the country. Hope this is not the generals are looking for in the first instance. I think it is and they don't know what they are doing. They are filthy rich and could just play the game of manipulating Sidioca until 2012 and get in their next President. The Algerian generals are much more clever than our generals. The HCE is an invention of the Algerian generals, but included civilians such as a President to run the country while they are reaping the benefit of oil wealth. Our generals were so stupid that after trying few hours to get some civilians in the HCE and not getting anyone prominent, they decided to fill the HCE themselves. Deadly mistake. Tidinit.
===
Bloodless coup threatens Mauritania's oil and gas industry
06-08-08 Mauritania's nascent oil and gas industry, already under threat from the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, is facing more uncertainty following a bloodless coup staged by Army commanders.
The coup began when President Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdallahi fired the country's top four military officials. According to reports, the officials had been suspected of supporting lawmakers who had accused the president of corruption and disagreed with his efforts to reach out to Islamic hard-liners.
Abdallahi was detained by presidential guard units and held against his will at the presidential palace compound. Meanwhile, a military junta, which took over state radio and television, announced the formation of a new "state council," led by Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, one of the four generals fired earlier in the day.
A US spokesman issued a statement condemning "in the strongest possible terms" the Mauritanians' military's overthrow of the democratically elected government of Mauritania, while European Union Development Commissioner Louis Michel said the president should be quickly released and returned to his post.
In July, Malaysia's state-owned Petronas said it obtained positive results from its exploration program in Mauritania when a well drilled 2 km away from its original Banda-1 discovery confirmed the existence of "significant" quantities of oil and gas. Petronas said further exploratory work will be necessary to determine the overall size of the reservoir, but gas resources could be in excess of 1 tcf.
Around the same time, al-Qaeda's North Africa network said it planned to attack interests held by the US, which it said was establishing military bases and seeking control of the region's energy sources.
Source: http://www.ogj.com
Tidinitt
good analysis, but how could you bring Sidi back to power without Khatou being around (lol)? And how can the parliament put pressure on him to resign when he has all the constitutional jurisdictions to dissolve it? Sidi has threatened several times, during the crisis with the MPs, to dissolve the aprliament, he never thought about stepping down to spare the country the dangers of the political standoff which brought us to where we are now. Instead, he held on to power and tried to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, including the generals.
I think the best scenario is what was proposed by the Opposition-AOD, REFUSING THE RETURN OF SIDI AND PUSHING THE GENRALS TO GIVE UP POWER.
L
seems like we're past the peak of the crisis as some sort of mediation is now under way to bring this stalemate to an end.
My dear L,
Sidioca will never abdiquate. I repeat: HE WILL NEVER LET IT GO. Also, the generals will never leave power willingly. Getting Sidioca out is illegal and disolving the Parliament by Sidi once he comes back with Khattou (lol) is legal. Let him disolve the Parliament and get new elections to redress the manipultions of the military surrounding these elections and restart afresh with new truly elected people (we can have at least 50%of them rigt, instead of 100% wrong - Khattou enti vem?)) . Sidioca will not dare to disolve the Parliament a second time and the inquiry into alleged corruption by his entourage should proceed then. Otherwise you got the generals with Ely around, manipulating as before and we are back to square 1 (1978). The worse the country will have are these generals: they will embezzle everything and make not dent on poverty. They are known for that and these three re not different.
Ano above: we are not yet a the peak of our stalemate. We are somewhere in the curve moving upward still. We will atteint the peak when the generals realize that there is no other option but to go. Sidioca threaten to disolve he Parliament when the generals attacked him through Mohcen and Co. He was then in his right to dismiss the generals. What kind of civil war we can have if he let go Aziz, Ghazwani and Felix? I knowonly people who would say good riddance ! No one outside the country wants a solution with the generals in because it will be a bad precedent for everybody: potential Samuel Does are in the waiting to do the same thing if we let the generals win. For sure, the African Uion will not move and no one else will do the contrary. What our soldiers should know is that the era of coup d'etats is over. You want power? Go through the polls, please and not the other way around.
I don't know if the article on Ahmedoua sabotaging RFD in Taqadoumy is correct. But the approach of giving positions to prominent politicians (and/or their children)to help them make people swallow the military pill est just shameful and remind us of Ould Taya's tactics with power. So, this is an indication that the generals and their soldiers (civilians) are the worse the country can have. It is my own view that the AU, the EU, the French and the US will not let it go. They have so much to lose in doing that and Mauritanin politicians and military re not espected at all because of what they did since after taking up from Ould Taya.They are all considered as a bunch of liers, crossing and double-crossing everyone. We double-crossed the IMF and got the main culprit as a PM, we double-crossed the international community in cheating with our elections. We continue today to try to double-cross again and enough is enough. The departing US administration by the mouth of Condolezza Rice the other day in Algiers said they will strive to go leaving democracy kicking in (visit www.algeria-watch.org and see the articles on Rice's visit). Moreover, the Algerians know that Aziz and his friends are pro-moroccan and they will not let them stay long. This is evidenced by the reception they made to Ghazwani during his recent visit there. There are so many geopolitical interests that having a truly democratic regim in Mauritanie suits everybody but our military. To achieve that we need to reinstate Sidioca and let the Parliament and the Senate get ride of him LEGALLY now or later before 2012. The country cannot forewer carry the ilitary on her back like a monkey. 1978-2008 is 30 years. If you did not achieve something in 30 years, you will not achieve it in another 30 years. Enough is enough.
Cheers. Tidinit
Dear All,
To get away from the misery of the crisis home, I want to share with you this joke and its moral which says " The moral of the story is .. . . being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery . Even shorten your life".So read it, have laugh and don't take seriously my views if you don't like them. Cheers again. Tidinit
===========
The Pastor's Ass
The pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won.
The pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the Race again, and it won again.
The local paper read:
PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT.
The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the pastor not to enter the donkey in another race.
The next day, the local paper headline read:
BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR'S ASS.
This was too much for the bishop, so he ordered the pastor to get rid of the donkey.
The pastor decided to give it to a nun in a nearby convent.
The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day:
NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN.
The bishop fainted.
He informed the nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey, so she sold it to a farmer for $10.
The next day the paper read:
NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10.
This was too much for the bishop, so he ordered the nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild.
The next day the headlines read:
NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE.
The bishop was buried the next day.
The moral of the story is .. . . being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery . even shorten your life.
So be yourself and enjoy life.
Stop worrying about everyone else's ass and you'll be a lot happier and live longer!
Have a nice day and sharing is caring. Please let's continue the debate. Tidinit
Good article in CRIDEM. Tidinit
http://ns203689.ovh.net/~cridem/index.php?id=82&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=22273&tx_ttnews[backPid]=36&cHash=563f1c95a4
looks like the malnutrition levels are down and the food security for outlying regions in the country is improving according to an international reports. Well, this is to the credit of Aziz.
Ano above,
Thanks for sharing with us the links to this good news. Well, I don't think that Aziz is in a good position to influence anything. Have you heard about spurrious relationships in statistics? It look like this: my camel gives more milk as the negotiations between the US and Iran stall. Tidinit
Any idea which country "did" Tourine? The generals should be lost in this game. Had we had a clean election, we would not be in this situation. Everything was easy. I see a "family" feud soon around grabing power. And then this will waken the military coalition. Definitively, Aziz should tell us who did it. Tidinit
enough with this stupid logic of either sidi or aziz. to the hell with both, ours is a failed state because of the kinds of these two corrupt men who have been running our country since independence. It's silly to assume that the return of sidi or the recognition of aziz will make any difference. Both have no solutions for our problems as they are part of the generation of leaders who are behind our misery. Yes, Tourine is a proof that we don't have a military, the same way that the famine and hunger nationwide are proof that we don't have an economy, etc. It does not matter who is in charge as we are doomed anyway. It's time we call a spade a spade, define our common enemy in order to move forward. Our enemy is the political class which has been running the country from Moukhtar Daddah on. Unless we press ahead for a more drastic and radical change of leadership nothing positive is going to happen.
so, please, stop it. i'm sick with this game of either sidi or aziz, pretending they are different!
ano, scarp the crap: no one is stupid here. plus, would you tell us the way to resist these two men and how to win. Ideas are good but we need a working plan, something tangible to help us shred the scavangers who suck our blood.
tidinitt, that's a really scary scenario, when bloodletting becomes the way home. God forbid.
Difficult this situaton. Indeed sidioca is the crookest 70-year old the country can ever have. Aziz and Ely are military men, raised by Ould Taya, that cannot move nything. They re only interested in power, with the money and other perks that go with it. It is evident from what they tried to do, with manipulting the brother in law in this mess. I do not know if I said once here or elsewhere: look around Sidioca and you will discover that the coup in 2005 was a tribal coup. Kind of Ould Besabaa/Ideyboussat clanic overthrow of Ould Taya and Smacide gang as Ould Taya could not manage to calm them down in the wake of oil coming (they thought oil will be comming earlier than in reality - read carefully the report of the International Crisis Group on Mauritanian transition published in May 2006 and it is free from its site). I do believe that the military was made to make the coup against Ould Taya to get ride of them later. More on this when I will have time.
Now. To save face, I think there should be some trick to bring in someone clean to run the country until 2012, to give enough time to our stupid political class to prepare for elections in 2012, while we do something for the poor. I think Ahmeddou Ould Abdalla will be the trick. He is clean, experienced, respected worldwide, having his own network (read the memoirs of Boutros Ghali who hates him, but respect him), will not be told how to redress the country and will get all the external support he needs o streamline the bloody place. But he will stay only until 2012 and get the hell out of the Presidency. Moreover, this will give Ehl Charg presidency for these years as any other solution without their turn in power may just upset some of their military officers in the army.
let's debate on this or any other solution that will keep away Sidioca, Aziz, Ely and most importantly Ghazwani who might be interested to kick all of the three and try his chance. The past is he past and vrybody makes a mistake.
Can we debate on this? You look home and the muritanian blogs and you find no independence in thinking over his issue. Can we, please?
mom: where are you man or lady? Some people like me o not agree with your text, but we cannot leave his thing as it is. Let not also let this blog die.
Tidinit
Nothing gained in briging Khattou in front of an illegal commisson. The act is small. T
I agree: Ahmeddou Ould Abdalla is the man.
L
I thought so too. Now the issue is to convince Ould Abdallah to move and find a legal solution to bring him in. Without forcing Sidioca to resign as it would be illegal forcing him to do so, I guess. Reading that Aziz is still holding on power and saying that there are plenty of $$ to do evrything. Guess that with the speed at which they are spending $$, the country will soon be unable to pay-off its debt to bilateral nd multilateral institutions. This might just bring he country under suspension: no financing $$ to invest in anything. That might be the big challenge Ould Abdallah may face. But we get to get out of this stalemate. Tidinit
Some great read for you ladies and gentlemen. Don't miss it. Tidinit
====
Jeremy Keenan, in Review of African Political Economy
Uranium Goes Critical in Niger : Tuareg Rebellions Threaten Sahelian Conflagration
jeudi 2 octobre 2008, par temoust
Jeremy Keenan, in Review of African Political Economy, No. 117:449-466 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2008
The article analyses the causes and implications of the ongoing Tuareg rebellions in Niger and Mali. While the larger and more widespread rebellion in Niger is generally attributed to the Niger Tuareg’s demands for a greater and more equitable share of the country’s uranium revenues, the article reveals that both rebellions, while centering on grievances associated with marginalisation, indigenous land rights and the exploitation of mineral resources, are far more complex. Other key elements are the continuing impact on the region of the global war on terror ; competing imperialisms and subimperialisms ; the associated interests of multinational mining companies ; environmental threats and the interests of international drug-traffickers. The article also details the human rights abuses inflicted on the civilian populations in both Niger and Mali by the recently US-trained militaries. Introduction
On 14 February 2008, the US State Department issued a travel alert, warning US citizens of armed conflict, kidnappings, armed robberies and the presence of land mines in Northern Mali, especially the Mali-Niger and Mali-Algeria border areas, the Kidal region, areas north of Timbuktu and the city (town) of Tin Zaouatene. It advised them to avoid travel in the area and emphasized that the US-designated terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the recently re-named Algerian Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), and other armed groups presented dangers to travelers. Americans planning to travel in these regions were advised to register with the Department of State or US Embassy. The Americans clearly wanted no prying eyes, for in the same week I received three separate communications from inhabitants of Tin Zaouatene. Their messages were that the Malian army, accompanied by US forces, had ransacked and looted the town, which was now empty and abandoned having driven its inhabitants into the surrounding desert. The incident was given a total media blackout, which is unusual in that this part of the Sahara has, since 2003, been the focal point of the Bush administration’s ‘second front’ in its war on terror in Africa. Four days later, General William (Kip) Ward, Commander, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) and Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, desperate to sell AFRICOM to those prepared to listen, addressed a packed conference on AFRICOM and US-Africa Security at the Royal United Services Institut (RUSI) in London. The General and Ms Whelan denied the presence of US forces in northern Mali. The following week, General Ward was in Bamako reassuring the Malian government and the international media that the US was committed to helping Mali maintain the security of its northern regions. Two days later, a month or so after the Malian-US sweep through Tin Zaouatene, a rebel force of Malian Tuaregs, led by Ibrahim ag Bahanga, undertook a devastating attack on a Mali military convoy 11 miles south of Tin Zaouatene. That was followed by almost a week of continuous rebel action against Mali’s military, including an attack on the desert town of Aguelhok. The rebels seized eight army vehicles, killed at least three Malian soldiers, wounded many others and took a further 33 captive. Representatives of the rebels confirmed that their action was to revenge the Malian-US assault on Tin Zaouatene. On 25 March, Bahanga’s rebels were reported by a Western military source to have moved their 33 captured soldiers across the border into Niger where they were being guarded by members of the Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice (MNJ), a movement of Nigerien Tuareg who had also rebelled against their government. A leader in an Algerian newspaper noted that, ‘What all the countries in the region had been dreading, namely a linking up of the various Tuareg rebellions has happened’ (Abdelkamel, 2008). The Sahelian-wide conflagration that I have predicted in ROAPE and other publications over the last four years is now a reality (Keenan, 2004 ; 2007 ; 2008 forthcoming). The Atlantic and Indian Oceans are now linked by a geographical zone of conflict from Mauritania in the west, across Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Ethiopia to Somalia in the east. The conflagration of which Mali and Niger are now the foci has direct political, and perhaps also military, ramifications for Algeria, Libya, Chad, Mauritania and Nigeria, not to mention the hegemonic interests of France, China and the USA. The Tuareg rebellions in Niger and Mali have escalated since the spring and summer of 2007. They have taken on the appearance of a pan-Tuareg rebellion.
However, while both rebellions share a number of common grievances and features, any attempt at analysis is complicated by the fact that both rebellions are being driven at the local level by a range of not just complex but often quite different political and social issues. While Bahanga’s rebellion in Mali has latterly (March-June 2008) been receiving more media coverage as a result of a number of high profile military engagements, the situation in Niger, where Niger’s US-trained army now stands accused of genocide,1 has and remains likely to be far more serious in terms of humanitarian consequences. Since the beginning of the Tuareg rebellion in Niger on 8 February 2007, Niger’s armed forces (Forces Armées Nigériennes – FAN) have been unable to match the rebels in open combat. They have therefore wreaked their frustration and vengeance on the civilian population. As far back as August 2007, a report commissioned by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) (Keenan, 2007) warned that Niger’s President, Mamadou Tandja, was likely to unleash his armed forces on the civilian population. By December, two International Human Rights Organisations, the UK-based Amnesty International (2007) and the US-based Human Rights Watch (2007) had denounced Niger’s armed forces for committing war crimes, including summary executions of the civilian population. While Mali’s army was suffering at the hands of Bahanga’s rebels, Niger’s army was concentrating its fire-power on the inhabitants of the villages along the old road that runs north of the regional capital of Agades through the south-west foothills of the Aïr Mountains. On 20 March, as Bahanga attacked the Malian military convoy resupplying the Tin Zaouatene garrison, MNJ forces were engaging the FAN in the Tamazélak valley, 100 km north of Agades. Four army vehicles were destroyed with their occupants almost certainly killed or wounded. The army called for reinforcements from Agades. However, rather than engage the MNJ, the FAN reinforcements directed their wrath on the inhabitants of Tamazélak. Having set fire to the hamlets, destroying seven homes completely and the vehicle of a local trader, they coldbloodedly assassinated two children : Liman Houdane and Toukane Assale. From there the soldiers headed back south, stopping first at the settlements at Sakafat, which they looted before burning down ten huts, executing two villagers and ‘disappearing’ another, and then at Tidene where they proceeded to execute two more villagers and ‘disappear’ four others. One gardener had his legs broken as a form of torture while watching his garden being fired. Before leaving, the soldiers burnt down seven more huts and scattered land mines. Two days later, an MNJ contingent caught up with the FAN militia south of Tidene killing at least 15 of them and destroying two of their vehicles. The FAN survivors, although harassed by the pursuing MNJ, nevertheless found time to exact vengeance on the village of Dabaga before retreating to the safety of their base at Agades. The toll was devastating : two villagers were executed and two more ‘disappeared’ ; 43 houses were looted and destroyed by fire ; one vehicle and twelve motorcycles belonging to gardeners were burnt ; the village produce store was destroyed by fire, as was the women’s cooperative ; six gardens were completely destroyed and 60 animals slaughtered. The above exactions are verifiable and eye-witness reports suggest the atrocities committed by the FAN on the civilian population have been considerably greater. But what is less clear is what has led to the latest Tuareg rebellions2 and their escalation into what has effectively become a Saharan-Sahelian conflagration ?
The Onset & Escalation of Rebellion
The incident that precipitated the latest Tuareg rebellion in Niger was an attack on the village of Iferouane in northern Aïr on 8 February 2007 by three heavily armed Tuareg and a handful of followers. Over the next three months, the emergence of anew rebel movement, the MNJ, followed by a number of small military engagements, including an attack by the MNJ on a base of the French uranium company, AREVA, led the Niger parliament to approve more than $60 million in extra budget funds to confront the attacks. By the end of June 2007 the rebellion had escalated. The most serious military engagement was an MNJ attack on the FAN at Tazerzait (N. Aïr) resulting in at least 15 soldiers killed, 43 wounded and 72 taken hostage. Despite the deployment of 4,000 government troops, MNJ attacks continued with further significant actions on the coal mine at Tchighozerine, which provides power for the uranium mines at Arlit, strategic installations in and around the regional capital of Agades, including the airport, as well as more attacks on FAN convoys and emplacements. The government was further embarrassed by the MNJ’s hostage-taking (and subsequent release) of an executive of the Chinese uranium company, Chino-U, and the defection to the MNJ of a significant number of men from both the FAN and the Force National d’Intervention et de la Sécurité (FNIS). By the end of July, Tuareg in north-east Mali had also taken up arms, with several attacks against military personnel and positions in the Tin Zaouatene region.3 On 24 August, Niger’s government declared a State of Alert, effectively placing the region under martial law and sealing it off from the outside world. An Agades resident described the hitherto bustling regional capital as a ‘ghost-town’. In spite of these draconian measures, government forces have not fared well : by the autumn, at least 45 and possibly as many as 60 soldiers had been killed, dozens wounded and many more taken hostage. Since then FAN casualties have mounted. Indeed, the MNJ’s fighting ability, their knowledge of the region and their strategic use of land mines have effectively confined government forces to the immediate vicinities of their barracks and a number of temporary base camps around the region. Pinned down and unable to deal any telling blows against the rebels, government forces have used the cover of the ‘state of alert’ to wreak their vengeance and frustration on the civilian population. In fact, the FAN’s harassment of the civilian population has been the cause of widespread grievance and complaints since before the outbreak of the rebellion. However, as the rebellion has escalated there have been an increasing number of authoritative and mostly verifiable reports of civilian harassment and abuse by government forces. International bodies, such as Amnesty International, have accused Niger’s security forces of using the State of Alert to arbitrarily arrest and torture civilians. For example, on 2 June 2007, FAN soldiers killed three civilians, one of whom was a cripple and the other two aged over 80. A further nine pilgrims were subsequently reported murdered by FAN soldiers. By the end of the year, the MNJ claimed that at least 250 people had ‘disappeared’. Amnesty International claim that the government was detaining and torturing civilians. Two further massacres of Tuareg civilians by government forces in the first week of October led the local population to fear that President Tandja was about to embark on a policy of genocide. The first took place in the Toussasset area near the Algerian border east of Assamakka. According to eye-witnesses, five vehicles were stopped by the FAN, with the 12 Tuareg being separated from the other travellers and shot. The second took place on the following day when soldiers rampaged through nomadic camps near the road between Arlit and Assamakka killing 20 Tuareg in their tents (Society for Threatened Peoples, 2007).
The Causes of the Rebellion(s)
As the rebellions have developed so they have taken on a new agenda and explanations for their origins have varied. While the MNJ states that the main cause of the Niger rebellion is the exploitation of Tuareg lands by uranium mining companies, a more nuanced analysis shows that both rebellions have been ‘overdetermined’ : although there has been more than enough ‘sufficient’ cause to determine the outcome – the rebellions are ‘multilayered’. Yet when we look at each ‘cause’ or ‘layer’ we are left with a perturbing question. Although each single ‘cause’ was the basis of justifiable grievance and at AREVA’s uranium mines, even resistance, were any of them on their own actually sufficient to precipitate a rebellion ? The answer to this question is no, especially when we consider it in the context of two further facts. First, with the memories of the 1990s rebellion and the way it was crushed still fresh in their minds, the vast majority of the local population had no desire for another rebellion. Second, none of the three Tuareg responsible for the Iferouane attack had any credibility as either a popular or legitimate rebel or political leader. All three had known criminal records. The ringleader Aboubacar ag Alembo, was regarded by many who knew him as a psychopath who had already brought shame on his people. Indeed, it was because of his dastardly and shameful behaviour that senior Tuareg, with the blessing of the government, had unsuccessfully arranged his ‘elimination’ four years earlier. In other words, while the Tuareg of Niger had many legitimate grievances, we have to face up to the possibility that the rebellion, like those of 2004 in Aïr and 2006 in Mali, may have been initiated and orchestrated by external forces. But first, before we consider either what those external forces might have been, or analyse how and why the rebellion came to take on a momentum and dynamic of its own, we need to understand the grievances that have built up amongst Niger’s Tuareg over the last few years. At least three major issues can be identified.
1) Anger at the Fabrication of a Sahara-Sahel Front in the US global ‘War on Terror’
The latest Tuareg rebellions are the product of the increasing destabilisation of the southern Sahara-Sahel region since 2003. The underlying cause of this has been the Bush administration’s fabrication of a Saharan-Sahelian front in its global ‘war on terror’. The epicentre of this has been the Tuareg regions of northern Niger and northern Mali. The primary purpose of this deception was to create the ideological conditions for America’s militarisation of Africa (Keenan, 2005 ; 2007). While Washington’s main ally in this strategy has been Algeria, Niger has played a significant role. The most widely publicised incident in this deception was the abduction of 32European tourists in the Algerian Sahara in 2003 by Algeria’s Islamist (‘terrorist’) Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), renamed in 2006 as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), under the leadership of Saifi Amari, known as El Para. The hostages were released in NE Mali after six months, following the reported payment of a 5 million euro ransom. El Para and his 60 or more accomplices were then allegedly chased by a combined military operation of US Special Forces, Malian, Algerian and Nigerien forces across Mali and Niger to Chad, where 43 of them were reportedly killed in an engagement with Chad regular forces in March 2004. Subsequent research has revealed that El Para was almost certainly an agent of Algeria’s secret military intelligence services, the Direction des Renseignements et de la Sécurité (DRS), and that the alleged pursuit across the Sahel simply did not happen. The result of this fabrication is that the US has been able to label the northern parts of Mali and Niger as a ‘Terrorist Zone’, the domain of Al Qaeda training bases lurking deep in the Sahara and threatening both Europe and the oil-rich regions of Africa. Indeed, the main ideological prop of the US’s subsequent imperialist counterterrorism strategies and militarisation of the rest of the continent has been the threat presented by this false, over-hyped, US-constructed narrative of ‘terrorism in the ‘Sahel’. The fabrication of the El Para incident and the US’s subsequent labelling of their region as a ‘Terror Zone’ have not only done immense damage to the local tourism industry and associated livelihoods, but angered the Tuareg populations of southern Algeria, northern Mali and northern Niger who resent their region being labelled as a ‘Terror Zone’ and manipulated to fit the US-authored global picture of terrorism. Their anger, however, has been directed as much at the US as at their own governments, which have used the ‘War on Terror’ as a source of rent and for branding legitimate opposition, minorities and other recalcitrant elements of their populations as ‘terrorists’ or, to use Washington-speak, ‘putative’ terrorists. Niger’s government has been no exception. In 2004, President Tandja attempted to provoke the Tuareg into actions which could be portrayed to the Americans as ‘former rebels turning to terrorism’. He arrested and gaoled Rhissa ag Boula, the former leader of the rebel Front de Libération de l’Azawak et de l’Aïr (FLAA) and its signatory to the 1995 Peace Accord and subsequently a government minister, on a trumped up murder charge. He was released without charge after 13 months, but not until a number of Tuareg had been provoked into taking up arms. That enabled the government to send some 150 of its newly US-trained troops into the Tuareg stronghold of the Aïr Mountains, where they were easily ambushed by the Tuareg. At least one soldier was killed, four wounded and four taken hostage. Rhissa’s brother Mohamed ag Boula claimed responsibility for the ambush. He said that he was leading a 200-strong group that was fighting to defend the rights of the Tuareg, Tubu and Semori nomadic populations of northern Niger.
2) The Exploitative Practices of Foreign (uranium) Mining & Oil Companies
The MNJ’s major area of grievance and demands, relates to the current huge expansion of both uranium mining and oil exploration in the Tuareg regions of northern Niger. The MNJ’s concerns relate to three main issues : the exploitative nature of these enterprises, the threat of an impending ecological disaster and the abuse by both the government and foreign companies of the Tuareg’s indigenous rights.
To take each of these in turn :
(a) Uranium Mining & Oil Exploration : Niger has long been a major source of uranium and is currently the world’s third-ranking exporter after Australia and Canada.4 Annual production of some 3,300 metric tonnes accounts for around 72% of Niger’s export revenue and approximately 10% of global uranium mine supply. Uranium was first discovered in 1957 by the Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières near the current mining town of Arlit in northern Niger. Further discoveries were made at numerous sites in the adjoining Tamesna region during the late-1950s and 1960s, with the Société des Mines de l’Air (Somair) beginning open caste mining near Arlit in 1971. The Compagnie Minière d’Akouta (Cominak) began underground mining at the nearby Akouta deposit in 1974. Today, the two mines, at Arlit and Akokan, are controlled by a consortium led by the giant French corporation, AREVA. The uranium concentrates, known as yellow-cake, are transported overland to Cotonou and then taken by ship for conversion, mostly to Comurhex /Tricastin nuclear site in France. With the world energy crisis giving nuclear energy a new lease of life, the price of uranium has risen from scarcely $10 a pound (543 grammes) at the beginning of 2003 to $45 by mid-June 2006 and to a record $136 in June 2007. The average weekly price in 2007 was $98.55 a pound. With rising supplies, mainly from Kazakhstan, but also from Canada and Namibia, the average mid-range spot price for 2008 is expected to be around $107 and $92 in 2009. Not surprisingly, there has been a scramble by foreign corporations to acquire exploration rights and to expand uranium production in Niger. The first to get in on the act was AREVA (then called Cogema Niger) who signed an agreement with the government in 2004 to expand its exploration. This was followed in 2006 by an agreement to develop the large Immouraren deposit about 60km south of Arlit. France no longer has a monopoly on Niger’s uranium. In 2006 Niger awarded licenses to a group of Chinese companies led by the China International Uranium Corporation (SinoUranium), a unit of China National Nuclear Corporation, to explore for uranium at a number of sites in the Agades-Tamesna region. With the Niger government now targeting a three-fold increase of uranium production to 10,500 tU/yr (tonnes Uranium per year) ‘in the next few years’, the Niger government had granted by October 2007 around 90 mining exploration permits for the northern desert region with a further 90 or so under consideration. Northern Niger has become the focus of a global scramble for uranium as companies from France, China, Canada, Australia, South Africa, UK, India and elsewhere hope to strike it rich. But this scramble comes against a background of increasingly widespread and organised opposition and resistance to both foreign political interventions, notably that of the US, and the practices of foreign mining and oil corporations. Prior to the current rebellion, resistance to foreign corporate exploitation had been directed almost exclusively at AREVA, with the Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC) also becoming the object of opprobrium since it began oil exploration in the Tenere region some four years ago. Working conditions at AREVA’s two uranium mines were so bad that the mines’ employees established a local workers’ NGO in 2003. Almoustapha Alhacen of Aghirin’man (aghirinman.org) drew attention to a number of health issues associated with environmental degradation and the company’s disregard of health and safety measures. It requested the CRIIRad (Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité) to undertake overdue scientific investigations. However, CRIIRad’s attempts in 2004 to undertake the research were blocked by the Niger authorities on behalf of AREVA and the French government. Aghirin’man did, however, succeed in having samples of Arlit’s drinking water analysed by Sherpa and the CRIIRad.5 The analysis revealed that the indices of both alpha and beta radioactivity in the water samples were above the limits set by the World Health Organisation, meeting neither EU directive standards nor French regulations. This put in doubt AREVA’s press statement in February 2004 that its water analyses ‘showed an absence of contamination’. Public demonstrations against AREVA in May and November 2006 so rattled the company that its President, Mme Anne Lauvergeon, visited Niger from 30 November to 1 December 2006 in an attempt to calm the situation and stabilize AREVA’s position in the country. AREVA’s track record of corporate irresponsibility underpinned contemporary resistance to foreign exploitation of the region (www.dissident-media.org/ infonucleaire/niger2.html ; www.sortirdunucleaire.org/acctualites/presse/ affiche.php ?aff=1660 and ‘Arlit, deuxième Paris’ www.newsreel.org/nav/ title.asp ?tc=CN0180). Not surprisingly, it fuelled local anger towards both AREVA and the French government. Indeed, shortly after the Iferouane attack, the French ambassador visited the region only to be given an exceptionally strong rebuke by the local community being informed that France had lost all respect and credibility in the region and that he should leave. In the case of the CNPC, the company’s lack of respect for local people and their cultural practices has also caused widespread anger and hostility. Strikes and labour absenteeism are common. It is not surprising that both the CNPC and SinoUranium have received threats from the rebels. There is also a growing awareness amongst local people, especially the rebels, of what they regard as ‘corrupt’ relations between the Chinese companies and the Niger government in the form of financial contributions to President Tandja’s election campaign. More serious from Beijing’s perspective is the growing belief amongst the rebels that China is giving military support to President Tandja to help crush the rebellion. The Chinese companies operating in the region have been warned by the rebels that they face severe repercussions if evidence of such support materialises.
(b) Fear of an Impending Ecological Disaster : Aghirin’man sees the current expansion of uranium mining as the continuation and acceleration of what it refers to as ‘Niger’s economic, social and environmental tragedy’. The particular environmental tragedy to which it is referring is the impending ecological catastrophe facing the Talak and Tamesna regions. Local people are anxious that the expansion of uranium mining across Talak and Tamesna will lead to an extension of the pollution, disease and ill-health that has characterised uranium mining at Arlit. They see the expansion of the present system of unregulated uranium mining around Immouraren, Sekiret, In Gall, the Ighazer valley and elsewhere as a major and extremely serious threat to the region’s unique and complex ecosystem, which plays a pivotal and very complex socio-ecological role in the livelihoods of tens of thousands of pastoralists. The people threatened by this impending ecological disaster are not just the 100,000 or so Tuareg who inhabit the Aïr and adjoining plains of Talak and Tamesna, but Tuareg and other nomadic peoples, such as numerous Fulani nomads to the south, as well as Tuareg from as far north as the Ahaggar and Tassili-n-Ajjer regions in Algeria.
(c) The Abuse of Indigenous Rights : The US intervention in the Sahara-Sahel outlined above has done much to raise the conscientisation and politicisation of local peoples. This increased awareness of the international political scene is nowhere more acute than in the complex international politics of ‘indigenous rights’ issues. For example, in July 2006, within a matter of days of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Tuareg of Niger lodged a formal complaint about the US presence and its activities in Niger with the UNWGIP (UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples). The Tuareg are very aware of their indigenous rights to the Aïr-Talak-Tamesna region and this poses a challenge to uranium mining companies. Few places in the Tuaregs’ extensive domain are perceived as being more indigenous, almost ‘sacred’, than Tamesna. These sentiments are deeply rooted and go beyond the bounds of this paper but suffice it to say that with Niger’s independence in 1960, Tamesna became a sort of no man’s land, a ‘Tuareg reserve’, legally part of Niger but effectively beyond the reach of either the Nigerien or Algerian administrations. It became a uniquely Tuareg area in which traditional pastoral rights and practices were largely retained. It was the region to which Tuareg went, both from Algeria and Niger, when they ‘wanted to get away from government.’ International mining companies, the Niger government and Tuareg political leaders, are all fully aware of both the attempts to recognise and protect indigenous rights and the current legal status of the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights. Although the Declaration, which would give some degree of international legal protection to the Tuareg’s attempts to protect their domain from international corporations is still awaiting adoption by the UN, its moral weight is indisputable.
3) Government’s Failure to Adhere to the 1995 Peace Accord
The extent to which the Niger government has adhered to or fulfilled all the conditions and agreements of the 1995 Peace Accord is debatable. In the government’s defense, many of the Tuareg rebels were integrated into the FAN and the FNIS. There has also been some devolution of government, especially at the local and regional levels. It can also be said in the government’s defense that it has not had the resources to undertake many of the 1995 development proposals as it might have desired. However, the MNJ’s claims that the government has not delivered on what the Tuareg regard as the biggest issue, namely a say in the management of the region’s resources, notably uranium, hydrocarbons and other minerals, and an equitable share in their development are quite true. The Niger rebellion is rooted in this growing resentment at the rapacious exploitation of their lands and their exclusion from its benefits. Indeed, the financial terms and operating practices of these companies, sanctioned by the Niger government, are in complete contravention of the 1995 Peace Accord as well as the many global declarations and conventions on the exploitation of indigenous land rights. In short, the way in which the region’s mineral and hydrocarbon resources have been, and still are, being exploited is seen by local people as bringing no benefit to themselves or their communities.
The Role of National & External Interests in the Causation & Escalation of the Rebellion
I suggested at the beginning of this article that the present rebellion, like those of 2004 in Aïr and 2006 in Mali may have been initiated and to some extent even orchestrated by external forces. In the early stages of the rebellion, the external parties deemed most likely to be involved were France and AREVA, followed by Algeria, the USA, Libya, international oil and mining companies, Islamists, drug traffickers and, nearer to home, the ruling elites and governments of both Niger and Mali. However, as the rebellion has escalated and dragged on, not only have these interests changed but a more complicated picture has emerged.
France & AREVA
France jealously guards her economic and political ties with la francophonie, especially Niger, whose substantial uranium deposits have supplied France, via AREVA, with a secured source of energy and a guarantee of nuclear independence. Not only does France need Niger’s uranium to run her own reactors, but AREVA is currently the world’s leading builder of nuclear reactors, a position which is helped in no small measure by being a leading marketer of uranium. She is thus able to deliver turnkey systems : the nuclear reactor package as well as the fuel to run them. This position was assured until Niger decided to place its own self-interest ahead of that of France/AREVA by opening its mineral rich north to international competition. France was then faced with the reality of international companies from China, South Africa, Canada, Australia, India, Nigeria, Algeria, the UK and elsewhere helping themselves to what she had hitherto taken for granted as her own national energy supply. It is therefore not surprising that there have been rumours and suspicion from the outset that France/AREVA instigated and financed the rebellion in order to frighten off foreign, especially Chinese, competition. The Niger government went so far as to accuse AREVA of financing the rebels. Although denied, and without any solid evidence being provided. Niger expelled AREVA’s head of operations in July 2007 in a move that provoked the direct intervention of President Sarkozy and high level Franco-Nigerien talks in Niamey between Jean-Marie Bockel, France’s cooperation minister, and President Tandja.6 France certainly has the means to initiate Tuareg unrest in Niger. Its own security agents, for instance, have long maintained close surveillance of the region, while AREVA management has close ties to both the MNJ leadership and other parties in the region. The president of the MNJ, for example, Aghaly ag Alembo was formerly the sous-préfet at Arlit where his business was as much to meet the needs of the uranium producer as to administer the mining town and its environs. However, if France/AREVA was behind the rebellion two points should be made. The first is that if France intended to create a bush-fire in the region, it appears to have got dangerously out of control. The second is that if this was France’s intent, she would be more likely to operate through the more covert channels of her own foreign intelligence service, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), which has especially close ties with Algeria’s Direction des Renseignements et de la Sécurité (DRS) which, more than anyone, has the means to trigger such a chain of events.
Algeria
Evidence suggests that through its counter-intelligence service, the DRS, Algeria may well have been involved in the instigation of the rebellion. The evidence for this is as follows :
(a) The three Tuareg who carried out the initial attack on Iferouane, Aboubacar ag Alambo, Kalakoua and Al Charif (Acheriff Mohamed), were known to the DRS. Aboubacar (reported dead, killed 22 June) and Kalakoua both have criminal records, while Al Charif was a former rebel who had subsequently deserted the Niger army. The leader of the attack, Aboubacar, came on the political scene in 2002 after deserting from the Niger army and killing two policemen. Since then he has been responsible for numerous acts of banditry, being described by his former comrades in the 1990s rebellion as ‘psychopathic’, enjoying ‘violence’ and always being entrusted to do the ‘dirty work’. More significantly, he was well connected through a complex network of kinship ties to influential members of the regional governments on both sides of the Niger-Algeria border. For example, his brother Aghaly ag Alambo was formerly the sous-préfet at Arlit, while a cousin is the Commandant of Niger’s Force National d’Intervention et de la Sécurité (FNIS), which, amongst other things, is responsible for the protection of foreign companies, such as AREVA and the Chinese oil and uranium companies, in the region. Another cousin is reputedly the director of security for Algeria’s Tamanrasset wilaya. Since 2002 he has been protected and used by the DRS. There is also evidence that the vehicles and arms used in the Iferouane attack came from northern Mali and may have been provided by connections with the DRS. This is particularly significant as the DRS was instrumental in promoting the short-lived Tuareg rebellion at Kidal on 23 May 2006. This clandestine operation was supported by 100 US Special Forces who flew from to Tamanrasset (Algeria) from Stuttgart on 15-16 February 2006 and progressed overland into northern Mali.
(b) Algeria has been the main agent in assisting the US in its policy of creating a ‘Zone of Terror’ across the Sahel since 2003. This has involved the fabrication of numerous ‘terrorist’ incidents in the region ; countless media disinformation reports ; the provocation of unrest in the region and exaggerated (or fabricated) reports of armed engagements between Tuareg, DRS-supported rebels and GSPC elements in northern Mali in the period September-November 2006.
(c) Algeria has political and economic hegemonic designs on the Sahel, most notably in NE Mali (the Kidal region) and northern Niger. Precisely how the MNJ rebellion might further these interests is not at all clear. However, some local people believe that Algeria sees the ongoing destabilisation of the Sahel (Mali and Niger) as playing into its own long-term interests, perhaps by making the region less attractive to foreign exploitation, or by enabling it to play the role of ‘peace-maker’ and thus strengthen its political influence in the region. This relates especially to the challenge posed to Algeria by similar Libyan interests in the Sahel. For instance, Algeria’s orchestration of the Kidal (Mali) revolt on 23 May 2006 was designed to discredit Libya’s presence in the region (Keenan, 2006). Libya’s involvement in northern Niger, especially the Agades region, has been far more invasive than in northern Mali. Therefore, at the outset of the rebellion, it was possible to think that there was a replay of Algeria’s Malian strategy : to engineer a Tuareg ‘rebellion’ and blame it on the Libyans. This, however, now seems less likely. That is because Algeria has become increasingly anxious that the Niger and Mali rebellions will spread into Algeria where the bulk of the country’s population, not least the Tuareg, are increasingly discontented with Algeria’s domestic economic conditions for which they blame their corrupt and repressive government. For instance, when a group of discontented Tuareg youths carried out a high profile but ineffective attack on Djanet airport of 11 November 2007, the government could not move fast enough to attribute it to al-Qaeda.
The Niger Government
As the rebellion has developed, the role of President Tandja and his government has become the major cause of its prolongation and escalation. Since the US launched its global war on terror in the Sahara-Sahel in 2003, every country in the region, without exception, has provoked unrest amongst sections of their populations (usually minority, marginal groups) to exact ‘rent’ from the US in the form of further military and financial largesse. Niger, the world’s poorest country, has punched far above its weight in this regard. Following the Iferouane attack of 8 February 2007, local Tuareg believe that the government used what they call ‘The List’ to deliberately provoke armed unrest. This was a list of several dozens, perhaps hundreds, of former rebels whom the government was allegedly planning to detain. Irrespective of whether this was an act of retribution or provocation by the Niger government, it was enough to persuade many of the former rebels, several of whom had since become responsible local community and political leaders, to take to the mountains with their arms. It is estimated that as many as 200 former rebel fighters, having sent their wives and families into hiding, converged on Tamgak, a near-impregnable massif approximately 150 km in perimeter and over 2,000 metres high a few miles east by north-east of Iferouane. The number of fighters has now increased to at least 1,000 and possibly as many as 2,000. Having used AREVA’s alleged involvement in the rebellion to help break its monopoly on uranium production in Niger and thus gain a greater revenue stream by creating an expanded, internationally diversified and competitive market, there is no obvious strategic benefit to Niger in prolonging the conflict. Indeed, the country is already on the brink of deterring rather than attracting foreign investment. Further rents from US counter-terrorism are also limited. Almost from the outset, the rebels have argued that President Tandja is hell-bent on an ‘ivoirianisation’ policy of exclusion against the Tuareg.7 They believe that he has longstanding personal grievances against the Tuareg, stemming from the time when, as Minister of the Interior, he was responsible for the Tchin Tabaradene massacres that precipitated the 1990s rebellion. There are now an increasing number of Tuareg, rebels and civilians, who believe that the successful pursuit of this policy, manifesting itself through what they regard as genocide, will enable him to avoid recompensing the Tuareg for the exploitation of their indigenous lands, as agreed in the 1995 Peace Accord. Now that Niger as a member of the TSCTI falls under the US security umbrella, and with the EU, France, China and Niger’s more powerful neighbours having little immediate incentive to see the restoration of zonal stability, President Tandja can rest reasonably assured that his ‘low-key’ genocide policy will invoke little external intervention.
The USA
The USA, with its overarching ‘security’ interests in the region, is the one party with sufficient clout to point President Tandja in the direction of peace talks and a negotiated settlement. The fact that it has not done so suggests that in terms of Washington’s perceptions of its national strategic interests in Africa, the ‘pros’ of Sahelian instability outweigh the ‘cons’. In fact, this is probably becoming an increasingly marginal call. On the ‘pro’ side, the USA (along with other western powers) is still getting mileage from its al-Qaeda game in the Sahara-Sahel. This is a game to persuade the international community that putative terrorists are active in the region. Claims that al-Qaeda affiliates are active and that ‘ungoverned spaces’ are havens for terrorists provide the ideological legitimacy to pursue Washington’s militarised ‘development-security’ discourse and the need for AFRICOM. On the downside, the Tuareg rebellions are taking the Bush Administration towards two major pitfalls. The first is not so much that these rebellions are a product of Washington’s post-9/11 intervention in the region, but that they are absolutely nothing to do with the threat of ‘Islamism’, ‘Islamic extremism’ or ‘Islamist terrorism’ that the US claims has mushroomed in the region over the last five or so years. With Algeria accusing Washington of exaggerating the terrorist threat (L’Expression, 18 November 2006 and 4 December 2006 ; L’Express, 17 November 2006 ; Liberté, 18 November 2006) and detailed field research revealing that nearly every supposed ‘terrorist’ incident in the region over this period has been fabricated (Keenan, 2006), the current Tuareg rebellions are simply exposing the US enterprise in the region as a grand deception. Second, the major prop used by the US to sell AFRICOM to an unconvinced world is its claimed success of its Pan-Sahel and Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiatives, notably the training the US has given to the security forces in these countries in combating terrorism. That success is declared in the training the US has given to the security forces in the countries combating terrorism and securing their borders. And yet, what we are now witnessing in Mali and Niger is how these US-trained militaries, far from bringing security to their citizens or their borders, are accomplished in little more than the criminality of harassing innocent citizens (Mali) and conducting genocide (Niger). As the truth of what the PSI and TSCTI have brought to the peoples of the Sahel permeates across Africa, AFRICOM will become an even harder sell.
Other External Interests
China
Chinese companies in Niger are now at the centre of the rebellion. However, they will argue that they have been sucked into the conflagration and had no part, at least wittingly, in what was happening in its early stages. However, the MNJ believes China is giving military support to President Tandja and has consequently warned Chinese companies that they face severe repercussions if evidence of such support materialises. Recent actions by the Chinese uranium company Sino-U have now severely prejudiced China’s interests in the region. Around the beginning of March 2008, Sino-U, accompanied and protected by Niger’s security forces, began denying local pastoralists access to their wells. Sino-U explained incorrectly to the local pastoralists that as it had paid for the land (through its uranium concession) it also had acquired the right of sole usage of the wells. The pastoralists most affected are those in the Talak region, the rich pastoral zone between Aïr and Tamesna. After several days of armed stand-off, the Chinese found a temporary solution by agreeing to build a concrete drinking trough by the wells. However the FAN have regularly slaughtered Tuareg livestock as part of their ‘genocide’ policy, and with reports (as yet unverified) that Chinese have been accompanying the FAN on these missions, armed confrontation with both the Chinese mining companies and the FAN over the pastoralists’ rights of access to their wells cannot be ruled out.
Libya Libya’s recent designs on the Sahel have been reflected in Mouamar Ghadafi’s many pronouncements on some sort of ‘Tuareg political entity’ or ‘Saharan state’, which at one point he envisaged as stretching ‘from Mauritania to Iraq’.8 Such pronouncements may be seen as part of Libya’s attempt to compete with Algeria, the other regional sub-hegemon, forinfluence in the Sahel. There has been widespread speculation about Ghadafi’s involvement in the rebellions although this appears to have been ill-founded. Libya’s primary role so far has been as a potential peacemaker. However, this role should be seen as part of the regional competition for influence in the Sahel being played out between Algeria and Libya.
Mali
Although the Tuareg of Mali are not yet suffering the same sort of invasive exploitation of their lands by mining companies as is happening in Niger, the Mali rebellion has certain key similarities with that in Niger. These are the perceived failure of the Malian government to fulfil the agreements reached at the end of the 1990s rebellion and the abuse and harassment of the Tuareg civilian population by the Malian army. The first act of rebellion by Bahanga, namely his attack on a police post near Tin Zaouatene and the killing of two policemen in May 2007, was provoked by the violation of Tuareg women by Malian soldiers. At the same time, there were disturbing indications that the Mali government was moving in the same direction as that of Niger by encouraging the resuscitation of the Ganda Koy, a Songhai-based militia that was responsible for many of the attacks on Tuareg civilian populations in the 1990s Tuareg rebellion. Although denied by both Malian rebels and the MNJ, they met on 20 22 July to discuss a common strategy and formed what they called the Alliance Touareg Niger-Mali (ATNM). After a series of attacks on the Malian army at the end of August and through September and the mining of many of the routes around Tin Zaouatene, a tenuous peace held through the month of Ramadan. It was broken in March as a result of the atrocities committed by the Malian and US forces at Tin Zaouatene. In other words, both the initial act of rebellion and its subsequent escalation, as in Niger, were in response to the commitment of atrocities by the security forces against the Tuareg civilian populations.
Drug Traffickers
The governments of both Niger and Mali assert that the rebels are simply criminals and drug traffickers fighting to get more control over the lucrative trans-Saharan drug trafficking business. This claim is nothing more than the Malian and Nigerien governments’ attempts to divert international attention from the real political problems associated with the Tuareg in their countries. This is especially true of Niger, where the Tuareg rebellion is directly associated with the exploitative behaviour of international mining companies and increasingly the genocide being perpetrated by its security forces. This perversion of the truth is assisted by international agencies, notably the UN Secretary General’s representative (and other UN officials) in West Africa, Said Djinnit, who has explained the renewed tension in the Sahel as the result of a combination of factors. ‘There are the old rebellions,’ he said, ‘on which have been added the new phenomena of terrorism, which is present in the region, but above all the drug trade and organised crime, which have grown dramatically’. As I have already explained, the terrorism to which Said Djinnit refers was fabricated by the US and Algeria as part of the ‘war on terror’ and has subsequently become a ‘mythologised’ element of the region. This is not to deny that drug trafficking across the Sahara is on a massive scale, or that some Tuareg, especially now that the US war on terror has deprived many of them of their livelihoods, are involved as drivers and low-level operatives. There is also good reason to believe that both rebel forces are cashing in on the drug trafficking to finance their rebellions. Drug trafficking, however, is not the cause of the rebellions in the way that the governments of the region and the UN are speaking. Drugs trafficking across the Sahara may be major business but it is run by international organisations in association with rogue elements within the North and West Africa’s political-military elites. It is not run by the Tuareg rebels. In fact, the key element in controlling the trans-Saharan part of the business is largely in the control of what is euphemistically referred to as ‘the sons of the generals’, that is the families of some of Algeria’s powerful generals who comprise the power (le pouvoir) at the core of the Algerian state. These elements want to secure more control over north-east Mali, the ‘funnel’ through which much of the drugs traffic enters Algeria. It is this desire by elements within the Algerian military to secure more control over north-east Mali that is being challenged by Bahanga’s forces.
Conclusions
Although it may be too early to make definitive pronouncements, we can offer some pointers relating to the pressures on the western half of the Sahel and some of the consequences of securitisation in the region.
Uranium Mining
Apart from an attack on AREVA’a Immouraren Base in April 2007 and the abduction of a Sino-U executive for five days in July, the MNJ has refrained from any direct attacks on the uranium mines or the yellow-cake convoys. However, on 31 January 2008, Rhissa ag Boula, speaking from Paris, announced the launch of an offensive against the uranium mines, works and convoys (Le Nouvel Observateur, 31 January 2008). The announcement caused much anger amongst the MNJ rebels in Niger, largely because Rhissa is not a member of the MNJ and was not speaking on their behalf. Nevertheless, on 14 March gunmen attacked a yellow cake convey south of Arlit, killing one civilian and wounding another. Although the attack is presumed to have been undertaken by the MNJ, the attackers have not yet been identified. Indeed, some Tuareg in the region say the attack was not undertaken by the MNJ but by one of the many groups of ‘troublemakers’ who have moved into the region. Since March, there have been no further attacks on the uranium industry. Whether the MNJ will respond with more attacks against the uranium industry remains to be seen. It seems unlikely that the MNJ under Aghaly ag Alembo will launch such attacks but, if new rebel factions emerge, as discussed below, an offensive against the uranium industry cannot be ruled out. The uranium industry is Niger’s economic jugular. If the conflict escalates and the industry is targeted more directly, it will have serious effects on uranium mining : foreign investment may be deterred if security costs escalate. As it is, the rebellion has already placed the industry in Niger under the spotlight. Irrespective of whether AREVA was involved in the instigation of the rebellion, the reported presence of French military advisers in Agades will make it very difficult for both France and AREVA to distance themselves from the genocidal actions of the FAN. Quite apart from its long history of labour exploitation, not least its appalling health and safety record, it will be extremely difficult in the future for the company to develop good relations with a local workforce. Neither can most other international companies afford to be tarred with the ‘genocide’ or ‘war crimes’ brush. Western companies, however, are more susceptible to share-holder concerns. For example, if Electricité de France (EDF) should proceed with a bid for the UK government’s 35% holding in British Energy (BE), BE’s advisor, as part of its defence, might well start asking awkward questions regarding AREVA’s guarantees of uranium supplies, while the Labour government, which not so long ago had an ethical foreign policy, might find it awkward selling its stake to a company associated – if only through its government’s military assistance to the FAN – with genocide. It should be noted that the Tuareg are not opposed to mining in their region per se. They want a fair share of the revenue and better controls and regulation of the mining process to protect their environmental interests and concerns.
Factional Splits in Niger
On 31 May, a new rebel group, the Front des forces de redressement (FFR), announced its split from the MNJ. The FFR is led by Mohamed Awtchiki Kriska, who only joined the MNJ in November 2007. He was a spokesperson for the Tuareg rebel forces in Niger in the 1991-95 rebellion and is believed to be close to Rhissa ag Boula. With little love lost between the present MNJ leadership and Rhissa ag Boula, this split, if it gathers strength, could have serious implications for both the local Tuareg and the course of the rebellion. It is possible that the FFR, because of certain familial and other ties with Libya, might get more support from Tripoli. With Alembo’s MNJ forces currently receiving sympathetic support, such as hospitalisation for their wounded in Tamanrasset, from the Algerians, such a development could increase tension between Algeria and Libya.
US/AFRICOM
The US has given a huge amount of publicity to the success of its PSI & TSCTI military initiatives in the Sahel, above all the military training of Niger’s and Mali’s armed forces. When the rest of Africa digests how the product of this training, in reality, is little more than uniformed gangs of looters, arsonists, torturers and murderers of innocent civilians (aka the FAN), the US should not be surprised to find even less enthusiasm for its AFRICOM. Indeed, these words may be fortuitous : on 1 June 2008 the Pentagon announced, in what may be interpreted as the beginning of the US retreat from Africa, that it was scaling back its ambitions in Africa and that AFRICOM will be based for the foreseeable future in Stuttgart.
Widening the Conflagration
During the course of writing this article, events in Mali have changed significantly. Following the rebel attacks on the Malian army in late-March 2008, Mali government delegates and representatives of Bahanga’s rebels met for peace talks in Libya. A peace deal, which was to have been entered into at 12.01 a.m. on 3 April, was delayed for 24 hours. In the intervening day, the Malian army had called in air support. For the first time it attacked the rebels using Russian-made Mi-24 helicopters. The initial, unverified reports suggest that as many as 60 rebels could have been killed. While this action might have been seen by the government as a way of putting an end to the rebellion, it has merely led to an intensification of hostilities. There have been two significant developments in the middle of 2008. One has been sweeping changes in the command of Mali’s armed forces. This has led to the army going much more on to the offensive, turning north-east Mali into little less than a ‘war zone’. And it then led to the second development, namely the flight of civilians from the region and at least 1,000 refugees were reported in Burkina Faso in June 2008 and 80 families’ were reported to have sought refuge across the Algerian border. While this number is small in comparison to the estimated 150,000 who fled Mali in the 1990s rebellion, it could increase rapidly if peace is not achieved soon. The Mali government is committed in principle to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, but Niger is still insisting on a military solution. It says there will be no peace talks until the Tuareg lay down arms. For their part, the MNJ believes it can maintain the rebellion indefinitely, while at the same time hoping that the UN will intervene and mediate a peaceful settlement. At present, it is President Tandja’s refusal to countenance a peaceful settlement that threatens a more prolonged and widened conflagration.
Questioning the Legitimacy of States & State Borders
The rebellions have led many Tuareg, especially the younger generation, to question the legitimacy of their states’ borders. They argue that the borders of the states that encompass Tuareg lands are a product of the colonial era. But, as colonialism is now ‘dead’, so too, they argue, should be its borders. The more the conflict escalates, spreads or just drags on, the more likely younger Tuareg will challenge not merely their state borders but the legitimacy of their states themselves. Indeed, it is perhaps significant that a new website, believed to be run by young Tuareg rebels, emerged on 19 September 2007 proclaiming the founding of the Tuareg ‘Republic of Toumoujagha’ (http://toumoujagha.blogspot.com/). Toumoujagha comprises most of the northern half of Niger and all north-east Mali, with its northern limit being the border with Algeria. More recent modifications to the website show Toumoujagha incorporating the traditional Tuareg lands of southern Algeria and southwest Libya. The idea of a Tuareg state has been aired in the past although never very seriously. The first is believed to have been in 1957 within the context of the OCRS (Organisation Commune des Régions Sahariennes), which was France’s futile last-gasp attempt to control the Sahara’s recently discovered oil resources. The most recent has been Gadhafi’s advocacy of such an entity on several occasions since April 2005. Indeed, as the rebellions have spread and seemingly linked up, the idea of a Tuareg state has gained ground. That worries Algeria. The DRS is rumoured to have done a deal with the rebels in Niger and, it is believed, in Mali : this is that neither the Algerian military nor its DRS will intervene against the rebels south of the Algerian border, as long as the rebels ensure that their rebellions do not spread north of the borders. The other side of this deal is that Algeria hopes that its sympathetic ‘humanitarian’ support for the rebels, especially in Niger, will ultimately bear fruit by increasing Algerian influence south of the border.
Jeremy Keenan, e-mail : jeremykeenan@hotmail.com
Endnotes 1. UN formally notified by Tuareg representative on 29 March 2008. 2. Tuareg rebellions broke out almost simultaneously in Niger and Mali in 1992 and continued throughout much of the decade, especially in Niger. In 2004, the Niger government attempted to provoke a further Tuareg uprising (see text), while the Algerian counter-terrorism intelligence services played a key role, along with US Special Forces, in orchestrating a rebellion of Tuareg in Mali on 23 May 2006. 3. These were under the leadership of Ibrahim ag Bahanga. His first attack was on a police post near Tin Zaouatene on 11 May 2007. In late August he kidnapped some 50 soldiers in a series of attacks on military convoys and positions, before the Malian army, assisted by the US, recaptured the Tin Zaouatene positions in late September. At least 16 civilians were killed by land mines with a handful of soldiers being killed in the skirmishes. 4. At the end of 2005 Niger’s Reasonably Assured Resources were 173,000 tonnes of uranium oxide at less than $40/kg, and a further 7,000 tonnes (tU) at up to 80/kg. Inferred resources are 45,000 tU at up to $80/kg. 5. See, Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité, SHERPA, la CRIIRad et Médecins du Monde dénoncent les conditions d’extraction de l’uranium en Afrique par les filiales du groupe AREVA, April 2007, and other documents on the CRIIRad website, http:// www.criirad.org/ (accessed August 2007). Uranium Goes Critical in Niger : Tuareg Rebellions Threaten Sahelian Conflagration 465 Downloaded By : [Oxford University] At : 14:54 5 September 2008 466 Review of African Political Economy 6. Bisbilles entre Niamey et Areva, L’Humanité (Paris), 3 August 2007, http://www.humanite.fr/ 2007-08-03_International_Bisbilles-entre-Niamey-et-Areva (accessed August 2007). However, other than the announcement of the broad terms of a new contract between Niger and AREVA, with France talking diplomatically of there having merely been certain ‘misunderstandings’, the talks did nothing to further a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The two parties issued a bland statement regarding Franco-Nigerien cooperation and the offer by France of de-mining aid (Reuters, France Sees Areva Progress, Offers Niger Mine Aid, Niamey, 4 August 2007, http://www.alertnet.org/ thenews/newsdesk/L04331253.htm [accessed August 2007]). 7. The term ‘ivoirité’ – ‘Ivoirian-ness’ – was coined in 1994 by President Henri Konan Bédié of Côte d’Ivoire in his campaign to exclude and disenfranchise politicians and potential voters from the north of the country, in particular presidential candidate Alassane Oattara and his supporters, on the grounds of parentage in neighbouring countries, especially Burkina Faso. The term – and the policy of exclusion – has continued under President Laurent Gbagbo. 8. His first such proclamation was made at Oubari (Libya) in April 2005 ; then subsequently in a speech at Timbuktu on the occasion of the festival of the birth of the Prophet in April 2006.
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Abdelkamel, K. (2008),‘La rébellion touareg malienne soutenue par des groupes de pays voisins’, 26 March ; www.liberte-algerie.com/send_jour.php ?idjournaliste=66&journaliste=K
Amnesty International (2007), ‘Niger : Extrajudicial executions and population displacement in the north of the country’, Amnesty International, 19 December.
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Keenan, Jeremy (2004), ‘Americans & ‘Bad People’ in the Sahara-Sahel’, ROAPE, Vol. 31, No. 99, pp. 130-139 ; ‘Terror in the Sahara : the implications of US imperialism for North and West Africa’, ROAPE, Vol. 31, No 101, pp. 475- 496 ;
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ACP discusses Mauritanian coup, ICC charges against Sudanese leader
APA-Accra-(Ghana) Among issues discussed at the sixth ACP heads of state and government summit which ended Friday in Accra, the Ghanaian capital included the coup in Mauritania and the accusations against the president of Sudan Omar al Bashir by the International Criminal Court.
Speaking to APA at the end of the summit, Lesotho’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Popane Lebesa said Lesotho was opposed to the overthrew of the democratically elected government of Mauritania.
The Lesotho minister said even though ACP did not expel the representative of the junta from the summit, it made it clear that ACP does not support a government that came to power through unlawful means, especially when that is against the principles of their constitution.
About the issue of Sudan, Minister Lebesa said the ACP encouraged the suspension of the charges against President al Bashir by the ICC, in order to give him a chance of making efforts to bring peace in that country, but added that Lesotho again opposed those who proposed that the ACP should order the ICC to cancel the charges.
He said Lesotho’s stand was that the courts of law should be independent, which is the case in Lesotho.
The minister added that the council of ministers and the summit of heads of state and government discussed issues that affect their countries which included climate change, gender equality, financial crisis, rising food and oil prices, among others.
Meanwhile, according to the final communiqué of the summit, the leaders urged developed countries to deliver fully, on long term commitments, regarding financial support to developing countries.
They emphasized that the ultimate aim of development, as viewed by the ACP group, is human development in its economic, political and cultural dimensions, and they resolved to focus their immediate considerations and future actions on the theme of the 6th summit, which is promoting human security and development, with a view to eradicating poverty and promoting sustainable development, thereby guaranteeing peace, security and stability for all their communities.
The objective of the summit was to afford the ACP heads of state and governments, an opportunity to deliberate and provide political guidance on a number of issues relating to human security and human development of the ACP states.
The summit ended on Friday with the adoption of the Accra Agenda for Action (ACC) by heads of state and governments.
MBR/daj/APA
This is my last visit here. Grateful to have known so many great countrymen anonymously. Regards and good luck. Tidinit
time can never mend the careless zhisper of a good friend...
come on guys it is time for a come back,
by the way c moi le chinguittois ;)
coming back to you only makes the obvious more so, and the obvious is that no place feels like home. Indeed, it feeld good to be back home. But home is only a blessing because of the people who inhabit it and gives it meaning. That's why i feel on the cloud nine when i see names like "Chinguittois" and Tidinitt, people who populated my time and my life for a long time and still do. Not forgetting the Godfather, CAL, who is always on my mind as certainly he is on yours, and the rest of of the family members who used to crowed the place with their ideas, warm feeling, disputes, anger, etc.
I have to avow that keeping a blog alive and kicking is a hell of an assignment, especially for someone like me who is always trying to catch up with a hektic and demanding job. I, therefore, though it would be suitable to turn the website into a kind of newspaper article store. This means that i'll be posting here the articles i publish on other website and newspapers.
mom
guys, sorry for the many typing mistakes. I was rushed to duty as i was writing this note and didn't pay attention to the wrting.
mom
Ould Taya is absolutely not a dictator, he is a democratically elected President and he is the best President of Mauritania !!
LONG LIVE PRESIDENT MAAOUIYA OULD SID'AHMED TAYA.
OULD TAYA IS THE BEST PRESIDENT !! THE OTHERS ARE TRAITORS.
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