Abdullah Attayoub/Azawad: autonomy is not a utopia!Monday, January 23, 2012


The resumption of hostilities in northern Mali (Azawad) between the Malian government and the MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) is a new political landscape in the sub-region. This new escalation of violence clearly illustrates the failure of the Malian government to provide practical solutions to problems and accepted the Azawad.Last twenty years, in fact, regular episodes of violence oppose the Malian Tuareg Movement without a real political will can be observed by the Malian authorities to take seriously the issue. The thousands of dead civilians killed by the Malian army and its militias, several peace agreements signed between the two parties, hundreds of billions of CFA francs incurred by donors and immediately engulfed in corruption and mismanagement have not enough to convince the power of Mali that things will not ever happen according to the comfort of a few barons of Bamako, which does obviously not interested in solving problems of the people of Azawad.


The power of Mali has always favored small tricks in between the children of the Azawad and fostering the creation of militias community as a diversion and present the conflict as an ethnic issue. The Tuaregs, for their part, know their neighbors, bound partners in their activities and vital allies against their common environmental challenges and climate. They have no problem, or within their community or with other communities in the region or country, except those who have been deliberately made to weaken them all together to manage without them, very far from of them matters which vitally concern them and to enable them, if they were the real managers, to live quietly, to educate, to modernize and grow really, but here it is these obstacles that make worse and worse and are more concerned!




Nevertheless, the authors of abuses against civilians are prosecuted by name before international courts for potential victims do not see their torturers and criminals parading covered in this by the indifference of the international community.The time of impunity is over and the perpetrators will be prosecuted by the beneficiaries based and international organizations to do so. The international community now realizes that she can not remain deaf to the calls of the people robbed and threatened, whether in Benghazi or Menaka. And criminals should be systematically sought, tried and punished by the International Criminal Court.
We call the international community to assume its responsibilities vis-à-vis the region and not to encourage the escalation of violence by military and political support to a blind man in the past has shown its contempt of some of its population.Indeed, the silence of the international community is always interpreted by government torturers as support for their expeditious methods and repression of the people seeking freedom, justice and peace.




The issue of Azawad can not be settled by negotiation between the Malian government and the communities of this region. Violence can not be a solution, although, obviously, is the only expression that is seen by the international community as indicative of a problem.
On the issue Tuareg as a whole, only the language of arms could raise awareness of the existence of a problem, even if the answers are far more choking techniques that a real search for solution policy. Until this issue is not taken head on by the international community, we will experience continued military tensions that could eventually install permanent chaos in the sub-region.
The Tuareg reject any equation that would be to drown their struggle for freedom in the same security considerations involving traffickers and other bandits who roam now the central Sahara and the Sahel. See in this issue and its consequences is a safe refusal of some to contribute to the achievement of a just and lasting peace, earnestly and freely negotiated by all parties concerned.
It is significant to see the importance means that Mali now mobilizes against the MNLA, so he never really tried to fight armed groups and drug traffickers plying the Azawad quietly for years.
It is as if Mali had more fear of the Tuareg community that these groups that create insecurity in the north and choke the region. How the installation of some mafia groups organized and prosperous in the north, with kindness, even complicity, of the Malian government seems to have intended only to create chaos and thus preventdemocratic expression of the people of Azawad ...
Mali has not been able to take advantage of periods of peace to find a political solution to the dispute between the Azawad.
Yes, the Tuareg have the right to imagine and build their future. The international community has shown in recent years that it can find the legal and operational support of the people who aspire to freedom, democracy and justice. It is curious that the Tuareg people continue to make an exception and suffer indifference or neglect, the actors who were also in front of the stage to defend these universal values.
To recap, the Malian President is no less responsible for the massacre of thousands of Tuaregs in the 90's that Laurent Gbagbo is not what happened in the Ivory Coast. Why the international community accepts Does this difference in treatment, whereas it is, in both cases, civilians massacred by an army?
Algeria and France, in fact involved in monitoring the issue, must change their positions and accept, finally, to foster the emergence of a real political solution under the leadership of the international community. The failure of various peace agreements signed over the last twenty years shows that there is at least a lack of political will of the Malian government to take seriously the issue. And benevolence of the present authorities in respect of armed groups and drug traffickers who swarm in the north can only be explained by the desire to contain the legitimate demands of the people of Azawad.
No national or international law can not deny the people the right to a better life, the right to preserve its language, culture. The right to participate effectively in decisions that directly affect their lives and their future. Today, Mali has shown its limits in its ability to create the conditions for coexistence of its citizens in a unitary state which gives them the same rights and opportunities to grow and develop.
But perhaps the real geographical and socio-cultural of Mali that the current nature of the state can not meet the diversity of territories and across the country. The Azawad is an entity that has its own personality with communities that have always coexisted and mixed. A special geopolitical and with a notable distance south of the country are, in effect, the Azawad a real entity, not only in the minds of its inhabitants, but also in other Malians!
Special status and autonomy must allow Azawadiens finally to concentrate their efforts on the development of the region in accordance with the aspirations of all communities of this area and in an intelligent and constructive with Mali.


Last twenty years, Mali would not give priority to dialogue to find a lasting political solution to the concerns and final populations of Azawad. He chose to get stuck in the patronage and encouragement of a militarization of communities that is dangerous to run for the stability of the region. He preferred the scattering and the accentuation of the security logic in which the victims are the communities of Azawad. This security policy is conducted at the expense of development policy that could help create the conditions for a genuine political dialogue and avoid any recourse to violence to cause political demands. The arrest last year, young NAM (National Movement of Azawad) then was an obvious indication of the nature of a fully democratic system that appears to be used by Western governments and refuses serious dialogue on the inside.
Today, the MNLA must show responsibility vis-à-vis the entire population of Azawad and not fall into the trap of communitisation or tribalization of this conflict. He must learn the lessons of recent history and conduct a job of explaining both to all communities of Azawad and Mali in the direction of the international community.Clear speech, which would prevent any confusion sought by proponents of the status quo, who are bent still scramble the message, deliberately obscuring the political demands of the Movement and all communities of this territory. The MNLA, which now bears the aspirations of the people of Azawad, has a favorable international context through which a strong desire of peoples to free themselves from oppression. Now more than ever, institutions must serve the people and not vice versa. A state has the legitimacy and purpose when it serves the people. The centralized state, inherited from the French colonial administration, does clearly not in the nature of countries such as Mali and does not constitute an appropriate instrument to ensure coexistence, the growth and development of the peoples concerned . The State is finally a tool, it can not be sacred, especially when it is not the emanation of the will of the people they claim to be necessary.


MNLA officials should not lose sight of the real issues of their commitment. By delivering to the agenda the aspirations of the people of Azawad, they challenge all leaders in their communities, Malian civil society, politicians and the international community.
Abdoulahi Attayoub
Survival Tuareg-Temoust
Lyon (France)
temoust@hotmail.com
http://www.temoust.org