Strange bedfellows: The MNLA’s on-again, off-again marriage with Ansar Dine
By <
http://www.france24.com/en/category/tags-auteurs/leela-jacinto> Leela
JACINTO (text)
21.06.2012
One day, they’re allies burying their differences. The next day, they’re not
– but they’re still trying to sort it out. A few days on, it’s splitsville:
irreconcilable and official. Then hours later, they’re back together again –
or not.
In the ungoverned breakaway region of northern Mali, the Tuareg separatist
group MNLA has been on-again, off-again with the Islamist Ansar Dine,
forging and breaking alliances, with all the impetuousness of a Hollywood
couple.
But unlike a celebrity romance, the mercurial Malian rebel alliance saga has
been largely ignored by the international community, although the
implications are grave for regional and global security, as well as for the
countless ordinary citizens entrapped by the latest destructive forces of
history.
In a shock announcement on Saturday, May 26, the secular MNLA (National
Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad) announced its
<
http://www.france24.com/en/20120529-mali-tuareg-rebel-islamist-ansar-dine-n
egotiation-independent-islamic-state> merger with Ansar Dine, an al
Qaeda-linked Islamist group, declaring that the two groups had agreed to
turn northern Mali into an Islamist state.
But days later, as analysts were attempting to study the implications of the
new development, a top MNLA official emailed a
<
http://www.france24.com/en/20120601-malis-tuareg-rebels-scrap-unity-pact-wi
th-islamists-ansar-dine> statement that categorically rejected the
organization’s merger with Ansar Dine due to differences over the two
groups’ interpretations of sharia law.
Nevertheless, hours later representatives from both groups insisted their
organizations were still bound by the May 26 in-principle agreement.
Such confusion has reigned across northern Mali for over two months, ever
since the region fell from government control following a March 22
<
http://www.france24.com/en/20120406-mali-conflict-tuareg-islamist-coup-tour
e-azawad-sanogo-rebels> military coup that ousted a democratically-elected
president.
“The situation has been changing almost every minute; it’s very dynamic,”
said Jeremy Keenan, a professorial research associate at the London-based
School of Oriental and African Studies. According to Keenan, the real
question to ask is: “In the beginning, we were hearing that the MNLA
controlled between 2,000 and 3,000 men returning from Libya, whereas Ansar
Dine had only about 100 to 200 fighters. So, where are the MNLA’s great,
battle-hardened fighters?”
That question cuts to the heart of many myths and reports in a lawless,
no-go zone the size of France, where a motley mix of rebel groups control
different areas, and even sites, within a city.
A ‘very big mistake’
The MNLA appeared to be in the lead shortly after the northern regions of
Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu fell from Malian government control, with MNLA
officials declaring the independence of the north in early April. In
interviews to the press, MNLA spokesmen – many of them based in Paris –
vehemently denied any Islamist or al Qaeda links.
When pressed about the presence of Ansar Dine fighters in the area, MNLA
representatives insisted they had the situation under control and would turn
their attention to Ansar Dine when they could. It was only a matter of time,
they suggested, before their larger, better organized group rid itself of
those turbulent jihadi cronies.
But over the past few months, the tide appears to have turned in Ansar
Dine’s favour.
MNLA leaders seem more willing these days to compromise on their dearly-held
– and much-emphasized – secular principles. Analysts note that the
ideological volte-face is a matter of exigency, rather than conviction. In
statements defending their May 26 announcement of a merger with Ansar Dine,
MNLA spokesmen have somewhat weakly argued that all Tuaregs are Muslim.
Yet the Islam of hardline jihadist groups like Ansar Dine is very different
from the Islam practiced in northern Mali, a region that is home to the
ancient Muslim city of Timbuktu, or “the city of 333 saints”, all of whom
are considered heretical by the type of austere Salafists that make up Ansar
Dine.
The MNLA’s insistence that it has no ties to al Qaeda has also worn thin
following the disclosure that the group is holding talks with Ansar Dine.
According to Salma Belaala, a political science scholar at the University of
Warwick and an expert on North African Islamist groups, the recent
revelations of negotiations between the MNLA and Ansar Dine are a
game-changer in the world of jihadist groups.
“I think the MNLA did a very big mistake when they formed a coalition with a
radical Islamist group like Ansar Dine,” said Belaala shortly after the May
26 merger announcement. “They will totally lose support in France and the
international community.”
France ‘passes the buck’
France, the former colonial power and Mali's fourth-largest aid donor, plays
a vital role in training and equipping Malian government forces and is an
important player in the region.
Shortly after northern Mali fell from government control in early April,
then-French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe
<
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Mali+France+urges+talks+with+Tuareg+rebels
+unity+against+Qaida/6415386/story.html> acknowledged that Paris was in
contact with the various players in Mali, including the MNLA, which he
called a credible interlocutor. Juppe also stressed there was a clear
distinction between the MNLA, which was seeking independence, and Ansar Dine
Islamists, who had been "infiltrated" by al Qaeda’s North African branch,
AQIM (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb).
France’s relations with the Tuareg date back to the colonial era and have
encompassed
<
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11922/the-origins-and-consequen
ces-of-tuareg-nationalism?page=1> anti-colonial rebellions, as well as
decades of cultural ties with educated Francophone Tuareg elites.
In a country with a history of animosity between the Berber Tuareg groups,
based in the Saharan-Sahel north, and the black settled sub-Saharan African
groups dominating the south, suspicions over the former colonial power’s
role in the latest Tuareg rebellion run so deep that, earlier this year,
France’s ambassador to Mali had to write an open
<
http://www.maliweb.net/news/la-situation-politique-et-securitaire-au-nord/2
012/02/17/article,48512.html> letter denying allegations of a French
conspiracy.
In his blog, “
<
http://bamakobruce.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/au-revoir-sarko/> Bridges From
Bamako”, Bruce Whitehouse, an anthropologist at the US-based Lehigh
University, noted that, “It’s certainly true that the Tuareg have a
sympathetic following among the French and that rebel spokesmen have
frequently appeared in the French media.”
But in an interview with FRANCE 24 from the Malian capital of Bamako,
Whitehouse explained, “If a Malian in Bamako sees an MNLA spokesman on a
French channel, they conclude the French government wants that message to
come out, which is a selective interpretation, because the same broadcaster
can also interview a Malian official denouncing the rebellion. It’s almost
impossible for most Bamakois to look at the question of French involvement
impartially. There’s so much bias toward France’s role; it goes back to the
colonial era.”
Most experts agree that Paris is well aware of the sensitivities surrounding
what is commonly called “Françafrique”, a term referring to France’s
neocolonial relations with its former African colonies. That, they say,
accounts for France’s reluctance to get actively involved – or to be seen as
being actively involved – in the Malian crisis.
Noting that shortly after his election, French President François Hollande
<
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE84U00M20120531?pageNumber=2&vi
rtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true> urged the African Union to ask the UN Security
Council to help restore stability in the region, Keenan believes that,
“Hollande is passing the buck to the UN Security Council.”
Overrated fighters ‘sitting around’ in Gaddafi’s barracks
Whatever the support, be it real or imagined, that the French government or
people may have had over the decades for the Tuareg cause, it has certainly
cooled following the MNLA’s negotiations with Ansar Dine. Even within Mali’s
divided Tuareg community, there is
<
http://www.france24.com/en/20120411-fearing-backlash-bamakos-tuareg-communi
ty-dwindles> little evidence of popular support for the MNLA or Ansar Dine.
Why, then, did the MNLA risk what little international and domestic goodwill
it could muster at such a critical time by negotiating with Ansar Dine?
The answer, Keenan suggests, is that in the anarchic breakaway region of
northern Mali, Ansar Dine militants have upstaged the MNLA’s fighters on the
ground.
Circling back to Keenan’s earlier question – What happened to the Tuareg
group’s celebrated battle-hardened fighters returning from their mercenary
stints in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya? – the answer, according to Keenan, is
that the MNLA’s military skills were overrated.
“They haven’t done much fighting,” said Keenan. “When they were in Libya,
most of the guys hadn’t been fighting, they were just sitting around in
barracks. They definitely brought a lot of ammunition with them [from Libya]
but they were not hardened fighters.
When it comes to the people actually fighting, the cold-blooded killers,
they are from Ansar Dine. They are the warriors defending the faith, the
ones trained to kill.”
‘A West African Afghanistan’
While the embattled transitional government in the south is locked in a
power struggle with coup leader Capt. Amadou Sanogo, and the Malian army is
in shambles as senior military officials jockey for power in Bamako,
northern Mali risks turning into what French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le
Drian recently called “
<
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/us-africa-mali-un-idUSBRE84T1FU20
120530> a West African Afghanistan”.
MNLA officials – or some of them, at least – may vociferously denounce any
deal with Ansar Dine, but the dangerous marriage between the two groups is
almost irrelevant in the chaotic reality of northern Mali today.
According to residents of northern Mali, foreign jihad fighters have been
flocking into the region in recent months, with
<
http://www.france24.com/en/20100924-aqim-al-qaeda-islamic-maghreb-key-figur
es-north-africa-branch> senior AQIM figures such as Algerian-born Abdelhamid
Abou Zeid, Mokhtar Belmokhtar (also known as “Mr. Marlboro” for his
smuggling operations) and Yahya Abou Al-Hammam sighted in cities such as
Timbuktu.
MUJWA (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), a little-known jihadist
group that some analysts believe emerged from AQIM units in the Sahel, the
rock-and-sand belt between the Sahara desert and the African savannah, is
also believed to be operating in the region.
In a historically unpoliced region that has long been a home to smugglers –
including, in recent times, the drug trafficking routes from South America –
the MNLA does not have the luxury of being fastidious about who its partners
are. Neither, it seems, can it go it alone in what is increasingly becoming
one of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones.
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Received on Thu Jun 21 2012 - 17:51:07 EDT
