Sophie Boukhari, UNESCO Courier journalist
A Tuareg mother and child in Mali. Today, fewer and fewer Tuareg follow their traditional nomadic way of life.
On March 27, 1996, 3,000 weapons were burned in Timbuktu during a “flame of peace” ceremony.
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Blood can no longer be shed. Mothers watching television will not tolerate seeing their sons’ blood being spilled in front of their very eyes. The civilian population will no longer be content with a diplomatic peace. The culture of peace is an economic and intellectual dialogue between peoples. War claims a dreadful price. Peace can bear fruit. Fruit is a better choice than tears. Shimon Peres, Nobel Peace Laureate 1994, Israeli political leader (1923-) |
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Mali factfile Population: 10.6 million. Source: World Bank, 1999 |
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A downbeat disarmament campaign It’s common knowledge that guns are easy to
get hold of in northern Mali. When the rebellion ended, very few were handed in by
the locals. And getting a fresh supply is child’s play. |
Malian President
Alpha Oumar Konaré is committed to a culture of peace. But crime has been
rising in Mali for several years now and the political climate is getting worse
On the edge of the Sahara, donkeys and camels amble around a little square
that slumbers beneath the sunny skies of Timbuktu. On March 27, 1996, it was thronged
with the city’s joyful inhabitants who had come to get a look at “the flame of peace”,
which danced before them as 3,000 guns were burned, to signal with a flourish the
end of the “northern rebellion”.
Over the six preceding years, first the Malian army and then vigilante groups of
the sedentary black Ganda Koy people had fought a war against Tuareg and Arab rebels.
Many civilians were killed and about 200,000 nomads (about a fifth of the population
of the North) fled.
In choosing negotiation and sponsoring meetings between the communities to end the
fighting, President Konaré’s Mali won a solid international reputation as
a champion of the culture of peace. The international community provided considerable
technical and financial aid (development assistance makes up 20 per cent of Mali’s
budget) and the country was held up as an example. Despite recent troubling developments,
the United Nations hails Mali as an island of tranquillity in an ocean of wars and
autocratic regimes. Symbolically, Timbuktu has recently been awarded Unesco’s Cities
for Peace prize.
At President Konaré’s instigation, the authorities always use kid gloves when
trying to curb “residual” violence and new local conflicts. In recent years, especially
1999, several communities in the North and in the western Sahel—the country’s other
“problem” region, on the borders with
Mauritania and Senegal—have been caught up in bloody clashes.
“Negotiation and consensus are at the heart of Sahelian culture, of which Mali is
to some extent the epicentre,” says historian Doulaye Konaté, who has just
completed a study of how Malians see the culture of peace. “We live in societies
that are diverse, hierarchical and very conflictual, where we can’t live together
unless everyone makes concessions.”
Community
peacemakers
Marriage is used to
strengthen ties between clans and between communities. A vast network of alliances
has also arisen from sacred pacts between the ancestors. Sanankouya (“relationship
through jokes”) is a practice that brings together great families such as the Diarras
and the Traorés, socio-professional groups (Peul herders and smiths) and peoples
such as the Dogon and the Sonrhai. “Sanankoun” have a duty to help one another and
to intervene in conflicts between their allies and outsiders.
Some members of the community specialize in peacemaking. Griots (storytellers) and
smiths are the peacemakers among the Mandingo and Bambara people, while village chiefs
and
councils of wise men (ulemas and leading citizens) perform this role in Arab-Berber
cultures. “We’re lucky this tradition still exists,” says Mahamadou Diagouraga, the
government’s commissioner in the north. “The traditional chiefs, the priests and
the notables are still listened to, even if it’s hard to talk to the young people.”
When potentially explosive incidents occur, the authorities gather these conciliators
together for several days, with the help of the United Nations (especially the UN
Development Programme) and many national and international NGOs. “People are all
worked up when they arrive, but when they get talking about their history and all
the other things they have in common, they usually end up making peace with each
other,” says Firoun Maiga, a former Ganda Koy combatant.
For the past seven years, the government has been relying on this underlying cultural
cohesion to try to keep the peace. President Konaré says he wants to build
a model democracy based on the Malian tradition of seeking consensus. The oft-repeated
project of this university lecturer and son of a teacher, with his approachable manner
and reputation for honesty, seems to be one of the most promising in Africa. He wants
freedom to flourish, national identity and memory to be revived, differences to be
respected and grassroots democracy established.
His first task was to end the war and the marginalization of the North, a region
which covers nearly three-quarters of the country and has traditionally been a hotbed
of rebellion. Sidelined for decades and long administered by the military, it has
been a prey to arbitrary rule and abject poverty. The great droughts of the 1970s
and 1980s were the last straw and the region exploded in 1990.
After the “Timbuktu peace agreement”, the government set about bringing some 12,000
former rebels back into civilian life, says commissioner Diagouraga. About 2,400
ex-combatants were absorbed into the army and the civil service. A total of 9,530
others were given demobilization payments of 300,000 CFA francs (about $500), sometimes
topped up with micro-credit to start a small business. Only about 10 per cent of
the former rebels subsequently deserted the army or abandoned their new civilian
jobs and the rate of their absorption into the private sector is reckoned to be 70
per cent.
“Today you can even find Tuaregs in the president’s personal security unit,” says
the armed forces and veteran affairs minister, Mohamed Salia Sokona.
The government believes long-term peace cannot be achieved unless poverty is rolled
back, so it has spent money to try to bring the North up to the level of the rest
of the country. “We’ve built schools and clinics, bored wells, and created ponds
and rice paddies,” says Diagouraga. “This government has done more in eight years
than was done in the previous 30.”
“Nearly all the Tuaregs are semi-sedentary,” says Houloulou ag Mohamed, who is involved
in socially integrating them. They live in big camps where there is often a school
and sometimes a clinic. Each family has a few goats, the children are healthier and
they go to school. The legendary lords of the desert feel uncomfortable in their
new situation but they are resigned to working at a regular job.
Decentralization
As the final component in its peace plan and to encourage people to organize their
lives in one of the world’s poorest countries, the Konaré government has set
up 682 decentralized villages, adding to the 19 that already existed. This reform
is “the political answer to the rebellion,” says Ibrahim ag Youssouf, a Undp consultant.
“There is no other choice. When everything is run from Bamako, you see the result.
Civil servants posted in the provinces are either absentees or are only there to
keep people down.”
However, the “culture of peace” the president and UN officials talk about so much
seems fragile. The different communities still distrust each other. “It’s OK as long
as the money keeps flowing in, but if it stops fighting will flare up again,” says
a former combatant. On top of that, the pace of completed projects is too slow and
the democratic process has suffered serious setbacks.
The disbursement of more than $200 million earmarked for the development of the North
has been held up since 1995 by red tape, rampant corruption and the lengthy bureaucratic
procedures of the funding agencies, say all the experts.
“You can build schools,” says Youssouf, “but if you want to hire a teacher, you have
to have a green light from the World Bank because Mali is under a structural adjustment
programme. Who’ll pay the teacher? The villages don’t have the money and the government
has just enough to pay the civil servants.”
Some jobless young people have got tired of waiting for the peace dividend and are
choosing to go abroad or make easy money by joining gangs of bandits and smugglers
who roam the country. Crime is on the increase and large-scale smuggling of American
cigarettes is growing. A packet of Marlboros bought for 250 CFA francs ($0.40) in
Burkina Faso sells for 650 ($1) in Mali and 850 ($1.30) in Algeria.
The government does not have the means to curb these illegal activities over such
a wide area. Local people are calling for military posts to be set up again, on a
temporary basis. “When the government’s strong, it crushes us, and now it’s weak,
we’re dying,” says an inhabitant of Timbuktu.
“Democracy is a hard road to follow,” stresses Gen Amadou Toumani Touré, who
overthrew the dictatorship of Moussa Traoré in 1991. Decentralization led
to local elections in June 1999 which upset the balance of power. The subsequent
redefinition of territorial boundaries has stirred up old land disputes.
“The North is experiencing a social revolution,” says Diagouraga. “Decentralization
disturbs people’s habits and their vested interests and arrangements. Disputes are
often settled under the palaver tree and sometimes in court, but they can also degenerate
into explosions of violence.”
Clashes have already taken place. In the second half of 1999 about 40 people were
killed in the most serious confrontation, between “Arabs” and “Kountas” (Muslim spiritual
chiefs, who are also Arabs). The minority Kountas, who lost the elections, refuse
to yield control of an area they had dominated for centuries.
Stalled
political dialogue
The Arabs have become
rich in recent times by smuggling cigarettes, which has enabled them to buy arms,
one of the country’s most frequently traded items (see box).
This old rivalry also takes the form of a “modern” political conflict: the Kountas
have stood as candidates for the ruling Adema party, while the Arabs have supported
the opposition.
Political dialogue has been completely broken off ever since the “failed” elections
of 1997, which human rights organizations said were marred by many irregularities.
They were boycotted by the opposition and produced virtually a one-party
parliament.
“We don’t recognize the present institutions,” snap Choguel Maiga and Mountaga Tall,
the two main opposition leaders, who accuse the government of bias in settling local
crises.
Such a situation is unlikely to boost the legitimacy of the state, which sprang from
colonial rule and 23 years of dictatorship, or to strengthen the authority of modern
institutions such as the legal system, which allegedly lacks resources and independence.
And no one knows how much longer traditionalism can keep the lid on the old hatreds
lurking beneath the Saharan sand.
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How can we talk about a culture of peace, if that peace is predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction? How can we persuade the young generations that they should cast aside the culture of violence, when they know that we are relying for peace on a balance of terror? If we genuinely want to develop the culture of peace in the new millennium, we will have to get rid of nuclear weapons. Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Laureate 1995, British physicist (1908-) |