Commentary by Arezki Daoud: The highly respected International Crisis Group (ICG) has proposed to Mali the controversial idea of engaging in negotiations between the government in Bamako and the insurgent groups. ICG advised Bamako to engage into negotiations with militants who have been wrecking havoc in the north of the country. Although talks will eventually take place at some point in the future, unless the region is forced to remain into a perpetual state of war, I think the idea sadly will not work now, if it did not work several years ago.
Mali has had plenty of chances and opportunities to do right by its people. But like any bankrupt government in Africa, it ruined all possibility of stability and peace due to its leaders’ lack of vision, and France’s post-colonial gamesmanship in Africa. Several years ago, the Touaregs of the north were begging for the establishment of sensible socioeconomic policies and a political framework that would have given them some autonomy to improve their lives, while remaining Malians. They begged for such attention because Bamako insisted on repressing them instead in every way possible. Paris, which controls everything in Mali, did not want to hear about any form of autonomy. The idea would have opened up the Pandora’s box, incentivizing other regions under French control to seek similar forms of autonomy. With Bamako rejecting every plea from the Touaregs, war was inevitable, and now we know the rest.
Engaging into talks today without the Malian government willing to offer substantial regional autonomy to the northerners and the central population makes no sense and is a non starter. If Bamako wants to extinguish the fire of war, it needs to starve the blaze of its fuel source to begin with and that is to initiate policies that bring the locals as real and pro-active stakeholders in their own future. In this context, yes it makes sense to engage Fulanis, Dogons, and everyone else, but before even talking to locals, Bamako must agree to ease its excessive control over the region and its peoples. Until then, negotiating without compromising will not work.
Mali govt rejects call for dialogue with jihadists
Paris, July 15, 2019 (AFP) – Mali’s government on Monday rejected a call for dialogue with jihadist groups in the restive centre of the country which this year has seen a surge in violence. Despite aid from French and UN forces, Mali still struggles to quell unrest that began in 2012 in the north and spread to other parts of the Sahel country. Central Mali this year has also seen a spate of tit-for-tat ethnic massacres between the Fulani and Dogon communities.
“This is not the position of the Mali government,” Foreign Minister Tiebile Drame told AFP when asked about an International Crisis Group (ICG) report recommending talks with jihadist groups. The report said dialogue should include commanders of Katiba Macina or the Macina Liberation Front, a jihadist group set up by radical Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, who is accused of stoking sectarian tensions in Mali. The group is one part of a wider Sahel jihadist alliance, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), which is linked to al Qaeda. Another allied Mali jihadist group operates in the north of the country. ICG said the conflict between the armed forces and jihadists helped fuel wider intercommunal tensions and violence in central Mali. “I think there has been enough blood spilt by these warlords and it is not an option right now,” the minister said of the possibility of dialogue.
Mali is part of the regional G5 Sahel joint military force set up with four other nations – Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad – to fight Islamist militants in the region. Dialogue with Mali’s jihadists was supported by a peace conference in 2017 looking at ways to end the unrest. But the proposal faced resistance. “The crisis in central Mali is the consequence of the crisis in the north,” the minister said. “It is the prolongation of the occupation of northern Mali in 2012 by jihadist forces. We must not lose sight of the link between the situation in the north and the centre.” French forces in January 2013 intervened in northern Mali after the region was overtaken by jihadist forces. A peace agreement signed in 2015 with other armed Tuareg groups was meant to weaken the jihadists but parts of the country remain out of the control of the government and the armed forces.
By AFP
