Psychosocial Identity Conflict in the Central Sahelian States

Psychosocial Identity Conflict in the Central Sahelian States.

In the graphic, the blue-line is the Niger River that runs between the capitals of Mali (Bamako) and Niger (Niamey), represents a profound geographical, geological, and climatological shift from arid deserts that are littered with giant massifs to water-filled lakes and estuaries. North of the line is desert pastoralism, trade, and nomadic/semi-nomadic life. South of the line is sedentary farming and animal husbandry of those species that are unable to survive in the harsh desert conditions. Population flows north and south of the border reflect ancient cooperative interactions between famer and herder and between urban markets and northern routes to the coastal trading ports. The psychosocial and politico-military conditions in the central Sahelian states of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have deteriorated over the past two decades due to failing government, ethnic unrest, and violent extremist insurgencies that have taken control over large parts of these countries. These Mali and Niger’s northern regions share inter-related ethnic populations whose bloodlines and historical narratives carry and replicate generational traumas.

The minority populations of Mali and Niger consider themselves to be ‘non-African’ Caucasian pastoralists, both fully nomadic and semi-nomadic. These communities consist of Arabs, Tuareg-Berber/Tamashek-Tamazight, and Toubou-Goran. An additional cultural ethnic group called the Fula, or Fulani, are African in cultural identity, but are nomadic pastoralists, so are a cross between the two collectives. The African ‘sedentary’ collectives of these three states are the majority populations of the post-colonial organisation created by France, and under democracy, control the political, economic, and security infrastructure of those states. The non-African Sahelian communities in the north hold few if any positions in government and have little voice outside of their own ethnic communities. The Tuareg/Berber peoples are the Kel (people of) Tamashek/Tamazight, the language of the people of the Sahara Desert and its Sahelian Transition Zone. They and the Toubou (aka Gorane), are the only two peoples that Colonial France was never able to subdue during their colonisation of West Africa. After post-colonial democracy devolved political power in Mali and Niger to the African majority, these two ethnic minorities have been in a nearly continuous state of rebellion for the past half century. The African based armies of Bamako and Niamey have never been able to subdue these ethnic peoples, and often resorted to attempts at ethnic cleansing to maintain control over the northern regions of those states. And control over these Saharan and Sahelian spaces has been a powerful motivator for European, Asian, Middle Eastern, American, and African countries because these seemingly barren spaces are also blessed with massive deposits of water, oil, uranium, national gas, gold, and all manner of precious metals, minerals, and rare earths (see figure above). Mining concessions throughout the Sahel are now up for renegotiation as the military coup leaders reevaluate and abrogate past agreements in favour of real-politique enrichment schemes. The ethnic cultural communities that inhabit these vast spaces are unsurprisingly unwilling to give up their homelands to their African neighbouring communities to the south at the expense of their homelands destroyed by uranium and oil leaks into the groundwater reservoirs under the desert floor.

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1990s Democracy & Peace

2000 - 2019 Tuareg Rebellion Returns, Violent Extremist Jihadist Organisations move into the Sahel

2020 – 2024 Mali Government falls, military dictatorship in open civil war against Jihadists and Tuareg MNLA separatists.

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All three countries, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have failed governments and are now under the control of rouge military organisations that have installed violent authoritarian regimes in opposition to the United Nations, the African Union, ECOWAS, and the international rule of law. These three regimes’ linkage as a Russian Federation backed alliance gives them an

ability to resist international pressure to restore human rights and cease ethnic cleansing of their northern regions known as Azawad. Over the last 24 months, it has become clear that the strategies of the international alliance have failed to achieve any of its goals in the Sahel and in Mali especially. The region has witnessed thousands of Malian civilian and military casualties, and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced. Throughout the past half-century, each of the governments in Mali and Niger, interacted with, negotiated with, and compromised with – their Tuareg communities in the north. The Tuareg communities in Niger’s north are called the Kel Tamajek, while those in Mali’s north are called the Kel Tamashek. The Tuareg in the south of Algeria, the only state that has been able to reach a lasting peace accord with them, are called the Kel Tamahak. Each of the three have slightly different versions of their language but are united at the intersection of an imaginary land called the Valley of Azawad, situated between the Mountains of the Nobles in Mali, the Air Massif in Niger, the Hoggar Massif in Algeria, and the Caucasus Mountains in Libya. The central spaces in-between and including these four geological massifs is the historical realm of Azawad, a potential new geopolitical republic in the making in the central Sahel. From Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao in Mali, to Tahoua, Menaka, Agadez, Arlit, and Iferouane in Niger, to Tamanrasset in Algeria and Ghat in Libya, this is the new multinational civil war in the Sahel. This conflict is over a century in the making, and with the withdrawal of the UN, AU, EU, US, NATO, and the intervention of Moscow and Tehran as replacements, there is little likelihood of resolution that does not include violent protracted civil war.