Thread with excerpts from “That Desert is Our Country: Tuareg Rebellions and Competing Nationalisms in Contemporary Mali (1946-1996)” by Baz Lecocq

Tuareg call themselves “Kel Tamasheq” which means “the people who speak Tamasheq”

Malians accused the French of instigating a Tuareg rebellion in 1963

colonial-era borders left several nations within the the country of Mali: Tuareg, Mande, Bambara, Songhay, Fulbe, & more.

Tuareg distinguish skin color in their region’s peoples as black (associated with slaves & craftsmen), red (freemen), & shiny/greenish black (nobility). Their neighbours are usually described by their ethnonym, but sometimes as blacks or slaves.

Tuareg had dominated most of modern northern Mali & Niger between the ephemeral Moor occupation of late 16th century & the European occupation. Tuareg viewed themselves as better than both blacks & European infidels.

Tuareg clans would form federations under an Amenokal to coordinate their political relations & wars.

Tuareg had a great deal of autonomy under the French, & their society wasn’t shaped too much by colonialism.

Mali’s government was Marxist influenced, & abolished Tuareg tribes, reorganizing them into fractions. There was a lot of support for abolishing traditional hierarchy, but ease of splitting old & registering new fractions led old system to survive.

Postwar French West Africa & attempts to preserve the empire in various forms, elite support for pan-Africanism, & the fracturing of the various federal entities into new independent states, Mali amongst them.

Postwar French administrators supported the PSP party, which was organized around tribal chiefs delivering their tribe’s votes. USRDA was influenced by French communists & based on bureaucrats & teachers who organized people directly, dominating Mali’s politics by 1959.

Tuareg participation in postwar colonial government was minimal (nomad life & lack of interest in elections), leaving them underrepresented in what would become Mali government.

Independent Mali took action in late 1950s to weaken power of Tuareg chiefs, but didn’t want an open conflict with them since Mali’s authority with Tuareg was weak.

USRDA pushed to free the slaves of the Tuareg, the “bellah”, in hopes of gaining more control of their territory, promoting liberty, & creating a new loyal voting constituency. Cattle were redistributed after freedom was granted.

French exempted Tuareg & Moors from conscription & forced labor, embittering others against them as France’s colonial favorites. French only did this out of fear of another expensive guerilla war in desert.

French intelligence worked with Tuareg & Moors to organize the OCRS - a loyal colony in the Sahara to secure her oil & minerals, hurt Algerian rebels, & win Tuaregs more self-determination than they would have under black rule.

USRDA strongly opposed Saharan independence & the OCRS (Common Organization of Saharan Regions) project, withdrawing Mali from it in 1962. The Tuareg & Moors were to be kept under Mali’s rule.

Morocco became independent in 1956, & had a pro-expansionist faction desiring W Sahara & parts of Mauritania, Algeria, & Mali. Moors invaded Mauritania in 1957, before being driven out by French in 1958. Despite defeat, Moors in & still sympathetic to .

USRDA leadership adopted a socialist development plan for Mali post-independence. They created a number of industries, organized collective farms, & expanded education on ideology & farming. Soviet aid helped.

Malinese government & media under Keita’s USRDA promoted history, culture, & languages of the Mande peoples. This excluded the non-Mande half of Mali’s population, including the Tuaregs.

Mali-Tuareg struggle understood by Mali government as inevitable conflict between regressive nomadic herdsmen & progressive sedentary farmers.

The Tuareg were fiercely independent & refused to pay taxes, much to the annoyance of Mali. They even recited poems about how they preferred hiding or fighting to paying taxes.

Mali’s President Modibo Keita needed more cattle for export in order to finance his industrial program in early 1960s. He tried to get Tuareg cattle by convincing them to settle, but failed. They only started to settle in 1970s due to droughts destroying grazing lands.

Mali used force labor to develop the country & instill sense of civic consciousness. It was resented, especially by the Tuareg who hated their freewomen being forced to work. Women’s labor was normal in Mande society, but not Tuareg.

Collective farms in Tuareg areas under Keita were a faliure, & abandoned under his successor.

Mali in 1960s was essentially a feudal state despite Marxist ideals. Transportation was hard, & communication primitive. Government controlled little directly outside of Bamako, & relied on regional governors to rule in their name.

Merchants protested the socialist government in 1962 after a new currency was adopted, declaring preference for France & her franc over Mali’s less valuable money. Tuareg attempted to emigrate to the west to avoid taxes, but were bloodily stopped by soldiers.

Mali supported FLN in their struggle against France for Algerian independence.

French had kept Mande administrators from abusing the Tuareg. After independence, the Mande administrators were no longer restrained, leading to Tuareg hostility. Tuareg leaders demanded job patronage, political representation, & an end to Mande anti-Tuareg racism.

Tuareg concepts of honor, shame, & collective responsibility. Damaged honor & shame could only be removed by bloodshed.

Tuareg rebelled in 1963. Their stated reasons were that they didn’t like blacks, they didn’t believe in equality, they wanted to keep their slaves, taxes were too high, Mali was oppressive, & they simply didn’t like Mali.

Tuareg leadership knew they were heavily outnumbered & outgunned by Mali, but were ignorant of the broader world & mistakenly believed their Algerian & French friends would save them.

Tuareg rebellion started with only ten men & reached a peak of only 250. They got weapons from raiding a Mali armory & buying old German & Italian WWII guns. They traveled by camel.

Malinese government forces deployed against Tuareg rebels 1963-1964.

Tuareg had 3 types of wars - raids for slaves & livestock, counterattacks for honor, & a war against outsiders with no rules.

Malinese were cruel in counterinsurgency - they slaughtered men, raped women, & forced survivors to work for them in terrible conditions.

Algerian-Morroccan War in 1963-1964 gave Mali a diplomatic opening to convince the warring states to kidnap & extradite Tuareg leaders in their respective countries in return for Mali’s friendship.

Tuareg exiles & their children in Saudi Arabia & Algeria would form the core of the future independence movement after the failure of the 1963 rebellion.

Devastating famine in early 1970s due led many Tuareg to emigrating abroad, migrating to Mande parts of Mali, or starvating.

Growing financial & economic crises led to Keita dissolving parliament & forming a purely party state in January 1968. Angered by party encouraged disorder, the army overthrew Keita, abolished the USRDA, & abolished forced labor.

Tuareg refugees were deported from Algeria & Niger in the 1980s. Muammar Qadhafi’s Libya let them stay, but only as unskilled labor.

After the famine in 1970s, Tuareg adopted sedentary pursuits. Private security & smuggling proved to be the most important - price-controlled goods in socialist Algeria were exchanged for hard currency & transported by camel to markets.

Sedentarization changed Tuareg culture - clothing less elaborate, & men would go out with faces unveiled. Polygamy & valuing virginity highly replaced traditional practice of serial monogamy.

Tuareg exiles in Saudi Arabia & Egypt did well, & spread Islamic piety & Wahhabism they adopted there through the Sahara. Tuareg education in Mali was still limited by fearful Mande.

Revolutionary Algeria sought to use Tuareg separatists as mercenaries in their proxy war with reactionary Morrocco in Western Sahara, while Libya used them as allies against Niger. Tuareg gained military experience, weapons, & training camps in these struggles.

Libyans trained 4000 Irish, Tuareg, Sudanese, Xhosa, Palestinians, Lebanese, & miscellaneous Africans from numerous political groups for war in 1981.

200 Tuaregs fought for the Palestinians in the Lebanese Civil War in 1980s under Syrian direction. They gained a great deal of experience with heavy weapons - tanks, anti-aircraft, howitzers, rockets, anti-tanks, mines, & machine guns.

Internal Tuareg tribal struggles led to Algerians expelling 8000 Tuareg from their oasis city of Tamanrasset in 1985.

Toyota War in 1987 between Libya & Chad gave Tuareg plenty of military experience, ammo, & weapons. Despite harassment from Mali’s security forces, they launched a new rebellion near Menaka in 1990.