As we await
the so-called mandate/resolution from the United Nations about the future
developments in Mali, Africa needs to ask some critical questions about the
increasing chaos and looming regional wars. How did events in Mali spiral out
of proportion? What remedies have the African governments and organizations
such as the Economic Countries of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African
Union (AU) explored and/or endorsed to seek peace. Whose interests are going to
be served if West, Central, and North African states are embroiled in regional
conflicts that would mirror the situations in the Congo where Central, Eastern,
and Southern African countries have been involved in cyclical violence which
has facilitated the fleecing of large amounts of raw materials from Africa?
The last
time Mali received such prominence in the international arena was way back when
Timbuktu was the citadel of higher education and academics pursuits; when the
Moorish people took their knowledge and Science to enlighten Arabia and Europe;
and when King Mansa Kankan Musa flooded the global market with Malian gold. But
Malians, the link between West and North Africa now finds themselves in the crossroads
of African and global affairs with some sprinkling of religion, globalization, and
geo-terrorism. The Malian government is so weak that is has virtually ceded
major swaps of the country to the Tuareg rebels and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb without evidences of sustained armed struggles.
Instead
what the world has witnessed in the African Sahara desert are subsets of
tactical victories and maneuvers that beg for the answers of the aforesaid
questions. Though Mali the land of the Dogon people and Timbuktu Universities
has being a tinderbox on some occasions with dictatorship, restive segments,
and the much romanticized military coups, the contemporary situation amounts to
drastic escalation. After the onset of the Arab/African awakening in Northern
Africa that crumbled authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, few
could have imagined how events in Tripoli the heartland of the self-proclaimed
African and Arab Kings of Kings-Colonel Gadhafi would have affected Bamako.
However,
the fluid situations in Libya were used as the pretext to setup the present
conditions in Mali. When NATO and some Arab states were busy flying drones and
sorties in North Africa, deals were made with large segments of the Tuareg
fighters within the Libyan military to abandon their allegiance to the maverick
Gadhafi and gain save passage to the northern tips of Mali into Western Africa.
Ironically, when these movements were going on the international corporate
media which includes CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera, was busy reporting the rape and
killing of poor Libyans by Black African men in Colonel Gadhafi’s army. It was
as though they could only stomach the rape and killings of Libyans by Arab
Africans which happened to be the majority of committed atrocities but did not
get the sensationalized coverage.
But these
melancholy tales with regards to Libya and West Africa is not unique to the
contemporary occurrences in Mali that threatens to spill into regional wars. In
the late 1980’s the current international war criminal and former president of
Liberia Charles McArthur Taylor was hand-selected and mysterious released from
the American jails by the CIA and handed to the authorities in Tripoli. Libya
was supposed to be under United States sanctions without an official diplomatic
relationship. Charles Taylor commenced his training as a guerilla/rebel fighter
in Libya and ended up in the Western African forest before unleashing turmoil
and wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. Before these
interferences in West Africa the Libyans and Gadhafi were already infamous for
their incursions into the Central African republic of Chad.
The Libyan
connections and forays into other African countries have occurred largely due
to the vacuum of leadership and vision within the African continent. Some of
these strategies would have been rebuffed were it not for the impotence of the
various rulers that have come to dominate Africa and the indolence of
organizations like ECOWAS and AU. Our rulers are hesitant to provide concrete
solutions to the problems in Mali which mirrors those in their respective
countries. For example, political structures built to sustain the interest of a
very few, unresponsive governments that pride themselves on going against the
wishes of their people, and using the security apparatus to repress the few
progressive voices in their various countries.
Rather than
offer solutions in Africa to assist regular people, the African Union (AU) and
the other regional groups are used as mechanisms to reward African Dictators
and their cronies with plump official portfolios. Unlike our leaders of yester years
such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Mr. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Capt.
Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, President Sekou Toure of Guinea, our present-day
rulers are more eager to line their pockets whereas their people suffer and die
needlessly. There are no proposals for regional independent election monitoring
units that would arrest the scourge of electoral irregularities in Africa. Nor
are there efforts to setup regional and African wide courts that would deter
the impunity and corruption within Africa by the African elites, their military
backers, and their foreign enablers.
Consequently,
what we have in Mali are zealous suggestions of war instead of exhaustive attempts
to prevent bloodshed and mass suffering. After the Tuareg rebels were granted
passage from Libya to West Africa by the so-called international community, Malian
military officers that were training by the same international community
planned a coup d'état. Their intervention resulted in more acquisition of the
country by rebels. For Christ sake Capt. Amadou Sanogo of the Malian army and
some of his lieutenants who overthrew President Amadou Toure (who was stepping
down for a new president) just months before the elections was training at the
International Military Education and Training (IMET).
Subsequently,
the quest for the autonomy of the Azawad region morphed into the Al-Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb with Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Qatari cash infusion. It is worth
noting that these countries are also strong pillars of the so-called
international community and are very friendly with the US and Western Europe.
These are all petroleum exporting countries and there are reports of oil discoveries
in Mali and across the Chadian basin that gives traction to the school of thought
that the international petrochemical industries are pulling the strings behind the
scenes. For instance, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad are basically client
states of the international and local petroleum cabals who are plagued by
either massive oil corruption and/or dictatorship.
Ironically,
the Africa Sahel/Sahara that is bracing for war also holds some keys to the
development of solar energies. According to various scientific studies on
global warming and renewable energies, Africa and Europe can be kept afloat for
centuries with such green energies with simultaneous reductions in carbon
emissions. But maybe Africans would come to their senses before embarking on
another avoidable war. As a former member/part of the Mali federation, Senegal
could offer an African path to quelling these stampedes. In spite of the domestic
challenges in Senegal, President Macky Sall could be the conduit to seeking
justice and peaceful resolutions to the international community manufactured
Malian crisis.
Nnamdi
F. Akwada MSW, BA is a Social Justice Activist
