<
http://world.time.com/category/africa/mali-africa/> Mali-Destroying
Timbuktu: The Jihadist who Inspires the Demolition of the Shrines
The charismatic military leader of Salafist rebels in Mali may just be
helping to found an Islamic caliphate but he is also taking apart an ancient
city's heritage
By <
http://world.time.com/contributor/julius-cavendish/> Julius Cavendish |
July 10, 2012 |
<
http://world.time.com/2012/07/10/destroying-timbuktu-the-jihadist-who-inspi
res-the-demolition-of-the-shrines/#disqus_thread> +
Omar Hamaha is a one-man whirlwind of piety and fury. For more than a decade
he has been accused of raiding government outposts in Mauritania,
<
http://topics.time.com/algeria/> Algeria and Niger; he has allegedly held
Western hostages for extravagant ransoms, and - without any doubt - preached
a ferocious asceticism through the barrel of a gun as he proselytized across
the region. Riding with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, he crisscrossed the
shadowless Sahara in the service of a god he envisioned as unforgiving as
the desert itself. He invoked Koranic verses to protect himself from the
"evil work of devils" and "the biting of snakes and scorpions," learned to
navigate by <
http://topics.time.com/the-sun/> the sun, moon and stars, and
believed that meteor showers were battles between djinns and angels. It has
been a ferocious transformation for a former student of accounting.
Since April, Hamaha, a man with a flaming red tuft of a beard and an
oratorical style to match, has emerged as one of the most visible figures of
the Islamist takeover of Mali's ethnic Tuareg rebellion-even though he is an
ethnic Arab. Clad in a camouflage smock and turban and clutching his
Kalashnikov, he has become a familiar sight on the streets of Timbuktu.
Residents say he mixes his fiery sermons with small acts of kindness - and
poses for photos. He is implacably bound to a 21st Century re-imagining of
7th Century Islam. "We are fighting in the name of religion," he tells TIME
by phone from Timbuktu, in one of several conversations over recent weeks
that paint a rare portrait of the jihadist. "You know," he says, "Our
struggle has just begun."
(LIST:
<
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2112644_2112566_
2112625,00.html> Timbuktu - The Most Influential Places in History)
He has championed the demolition of several Muslim mausoleums that UNESCO
had declared historic. He said the destruction was justified on the grounds
that "those who believe" in the veneration of such shrines "are driven by
Satan." On Tuesday, the Islamists in Timbuktu reportedly destroyed two more
tombs at the 14th Century Djingareyber mosque."It's forbidden by Islam to
pray on tombs and ask for blessings," says Hamaha, "Ansar Eddine is showing
the rest of world, especially Western countries, that whether they want it
or not, we will not let the younger generation believe in shrines as God,
regardless of what the U.N., UNESCO, International Criminal Court or ECOWAS
[the Economic Community of West African States] have to say. We do not
recognize these organizations. The only thing we recognize is the court of
God, shar'ia. Shar'ia is a divine obligation, people don't get to choose
whether they like it or not."
Officially, Hamaha, who is in his late 40s, is the military chief of Ansar
Eddine, the predominantly Tuareg, Salafist outfit that emerged from the
slipstream of a secular Tuareg rebellion before quickly supplanting it. But
he has become the loudest proponent of jihad. "Our war is a holy war, not
one of frontiers and limits," he thundered in one video posted on YouTube
earlier this year. "We are the mujahedin. Holy war!"
His zealotry might have remained a relatively obscure part of the Saharan
underworld had Mali's Tuareg rebellion and the subsequent military coup in
Bamako not devoured the country this spring. The sudden tumult opened the
door for al-Qaeda, which, in league with allies like Ansar Eddine, seized
several major towns.
(MORE: <
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2110804,00.html>
Gaddafi's Posthumous Gift to Mali: The Tuareg Seize Timbuktu)
Hamaha occupies an unusual position in Africa's jihadist firmament. He first
fell under the spell of Islamist teachers in the mid-1980s in Algeria-a
connection that years later would help propel him to a privileged position
in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the local franchise of the
terrorist movement. By 2008 he was one of the few Malians trusted by Mokhtar
Belmokhtar, a powerful Algerian emir known for his Scarlet Pimpernel-like
ability to avoid capture, and who for the most part surrounded himself with
fellow nationals. Yet as northern Mali fell apart this spring, and Ansar
Eddine muscled aside the secular Tuareg rebels of the Mouvement National
pour la Liberation de l'Azwad (MNLA), Hamaha suddenly emerged as a key
player among the jihadists of Ansar Eddine. He isn't the only one. "Omar
Hamaha and [Ansar Eddine spokesman] Sanda Ould Boumama were certainly
longstanding AQIM figures before the rebellion," explains Andrew Lebovich,
an analyst with the Navanti Group who focuses on Sahelian issues. "And I'm
sure that there are others who fit that mold as well."
Hamaha's sudden shift in professional identity speaks to the complex
tapestry of interests and tensions prevailing in northern Mali, and helps
explain how al-Qaeda has exploited the chaos to such effect. To the extent
that anyone can control a swathe of desert bigger than France, Ansar Eddine,
led by a veteran Tuareg troublemaker called Iyad ag Ghali, is nominally in
charge. But the specter of ethnic war weighs heavily over the region, where
a previous Tuareg uprising between 1990 and 1996 led to inter-ethnic
atrocities. In Timbuktu, where Tuaregs are a minority, putting a local
boy-like Hamaha, who hails from the city's prominent Arab community - in
charge makes better sense. Such expedients have allowed AQIM to inject
operatives into competing jihadi outfits.
(MORE:
<
http://world.time.com/2012/04/05/malis-crisis-terror-stalks-the-historic-tr
easures-of-timbuktu/> Mali's Crisis: Terror Stalks the Historic Treasures of
Timbuktu)
The inter-mingling makes it hard to tell how extensive al-Qaeda's gains have
been, but in all likelihood there's more to them than meets the eye. "We
have no good sense of how many militants there are, and even in the case of
Ansar Eddine, it's hard to tell how many of them are true 'Ansar' personnel,
versus AQIM fighters or other militants who recently joined the
organization," says Lebovich. "The standard belief is that [Iyad ag Ghali]
has ultimate control over Ansar Eddine, and much of the writing on northern
Mali has treated Iyad as the 'master' of the region. Personally, I think the
situation is more complicated than that."
Indeed, concern that northern Mali is rapidly becoming al-Qaeda's most
successful effort at establishing a caliphate to date has regional players
scrambling for a response. Nigeria, Niger and Senegal have pledged to
provide the core of a 3,270-member peacekeeping force to stabilize Mali's
politically fraught south and then tackle the militants. The announcement
was promptly met with threats of retaliatory terrorist attacks. Even if such
a campaign isn't the jihadists' priority, a suicide bombing deep inside
Algeria by an AQIM ally called the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West
Africa on June 29 showed that it is certainly within their means.
And the fact is any military intervention would be hard-pressed to defeat
the jihadists, who are highly motivated, flush with weaponry looted from the
arsenal of the fallen regime of <
http://topics.time.com/muammar-gaddafi/>
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and have an intimate knowledge of the terrain.
Hamaha claims that the jihadists also have a powerful card up their sleeves
- surface to air missiles seized in Tripoli last year. "We have Russia-made
SAM 7A and SAM 7B [missiles] and U.S.-made stingers," he boasts. "We made
more than 20 trips. between Libya, Niger and Mali [last year] with at least
17 vehicles carrying weapons coming from Libya. Western countries are not
going to take military action against us in northern Mali, because they know
we have the missiles to shoot down airplanes, and it is complicated to
deploy troops in the desert. It's why they say the Malian crisis should be
resolved though dialogue." Although thousands of shoulder-launched missiles
disappeared from Gaddafi's armories, there have been no confirmed sightings
of them in northern Mali to date, and Hamaha refused to furnish TIME with
pictures of the missiles or their serial numbers. His point about the
impregnability of the jihadists' position, however, rings, for the immediate
term at any rate, eerily true.
MORE:
<
http://world.time.com/2012/04/06/escape-from-timbuktu-foreigners-flee-as-ma
lis-rebels-declare-independence/> Escape from Timbuktu: Foreigners Flee as
Mali's Rebels Declare Independence
MORE:
<
http://world.time.com/2012/07/02/timbuktus-destruction-why-islamists-are-wr
ecking-malis-cultural-heritage/> Timbuktu's Destruction: Why Islamists Are
Wrecking Mali's Cultural Heritage
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res-the-demolition-of-the-shrines/?iid=gs-main-lede#ixzz20G02VQSq>
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Received on Tue Jul 10 2012 - 17:27:09 EDT
