"You cannot wage war without the sound of gunpowder"
Timbuktu, Friday,
Landlocked Mali, an African Republic in which two-thirds of the population is under 25, is often in the news - but for all the wrong reasons. Earlier this month (July) Colonel Assimi Goita, interim president of Mali, survived an attack by two men armed with knives in Bamako. Goita, who took power in June after leading a coup - the second in less than a year - is said to be safe after what his office has called an assassination attempt.
Today, former French Sudan has become a simmering cauldron of competing international interests.
The country is both blessed and cursed by a key geographic location. Historian and archeologist Doulaye Konaté speaks of Mali as "the transition between North Africa and Africa that reaches the ocean and the forests adding: "whoever controls Mali, controls West Africa - if not the whole of Africa... and that's why this region became so coveted".
Apart from its rich gold reserves, Mali doesn't have important mineral wealth, which raises questions about why France is so determined to protect Mali from jihadi invasion? The answer is likely to involve neighboring Niger, which has some of the richest uranium reserves in the world, the same uranium that France relies on for its nuclear plants. In protecting Mali, the French ensure security for Niger and her own domestic nuclear program.
Violent jihadi groups in Northern Mali sprang up after the civil war in Algeria and have been a determined menace ever since, kidnapping Westerners for huge ransoms - even before they affiliated with Al Qaeda in 2007.
The Malian government was slow to recognize the threat, and five years later, the terrorists had already taken control of Northern Mali. In response, France launched Operation Serval in 2013. This was successful in averting the collapse of the Malian state, yet separatist resistance and resurgent jihadi militants held on to vast areas of the north of the country. President Hollande's Malian gambit helped prop up the government, but it also added new international dimensions to an already complex situation and further weakened the flawed Malian state. The bitter irony is that Mali was supposed to show the world that Africans could govern themselves and find prosperity.
The first president of Mali, Modibo Keita, outlined this special role for the Malian people in a speech in 1962:
The first president of Mali, Modibo Keita, outlined this special role for the Malian people in a speech in 1962:
"The mission with which you are all entrusted, with which we are all entrusted, does not concern the Republic of Mali alone, it concerns the whole of Africa. Our experiment is a test. The ex-colonial powers and others are convinced that Africans are incapable of governing themselves, that they always need a tutelary power, whether visible or not, in order to govern their countries. We must prove the contrary."
Win or lose, France's intervention, sadly, only undermines that goal.
A Flag that tells a story
The flag of Mali has undergone several incarnations. Today, it proudly bears the Pan-African colors: the green symbolizing the fertility of the land; the gold for purity, and the red the blood shed for independence.
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