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Building Peace in Mali: Calling for a Second Miracle from Civil Society, Inspired by the 1996 Peace of Timbuktu

2013; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

1556-5068

Robin Poulton, Safiatou Ba,

African Studies and Ethnography

The Republic of Mali collapsed in March 2012, under the weight of government mismanagement, a vast trans-continental network of cocaine smuggling, and the unexpectedly heavy fall-out of NATO's destruction of the Gadafy regime in Libya. Social Capital has bound Mali's diverse peoples together for generations, in webs of economic interdependency and through a complex system of 'cousinage' called 'sanunkuya' in Bambara (each of Mali's ten national languages has its own appellation for these 'joking relationships'). Under the stress of cocaine and drought, with the additional toxin of jihadist fanaticism and personal ambition that have divided the Saharan Tuareg communities of Kidal, will the nation's social fabric be strong enough to heal the wounds of war and drive out the new signs of racism that have infected the discourse of angry politicians North and South? The Peace of Timbuktu, that healed the wounds of the 1990 Tuareg revolt, was put together by Malian civil society (including women) under wise political leadership from Bamako. Is there any sign that similar ingredients will be able to produce another recipe for peace in Mali? The lessons learned from the 1996 Timbuktu Flame of Peace are presented in our 1998 book A PEACE OF TIMBUKTU. Mali has shown positive progress since French and Chadian troops drove the jihadists out of northern Mali in OPERATION SERVAL, during January and February 2013. But the Malian army has fallen to pieces, with green berets shooting red berets and all of them being accused by the UN and other observers of killing unarmed civilians and being guilty of rape. Is it possible to reform the Malian army? Without doing that, will it be possible to convince the Northerners (Fulani and Sonrai, as well as Tuareg and Arab) that they should 'buy into the new Mali'? Has the breakdown of social capital and the famous 'cousinly relationships' known as 'sununkuya' reached breaking point between ethnic groups? These are the biggest challenge facing Mali's newly elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (known as 'IBK'), whose name recalls the glory days of the Mali Empire founded in the year 1235 by IBK's illustrious predecessor Mansa Sunjata Keita, the Lion King. Mali's legislative elections will be taking place almost as the ASA conference meets in November, so we will be looking at a fluid and unstable and exciting period in Mali's history.