Alabama And Mississippi Were Forced To Give Up Slavery... But Mali's Tuaregs Weren't

I don't know... maybe it's because my distant ancestors were slaves in Egypt, but to me slavery is the most horrifying thing that can be done to another human being. And when I was in Mali I saw it close up and personal. I've been wondering why there hasn't been anything in the western press about how the Malian rebels-- the Tuaregs-- were at least in part motivated by their unwillingness to stop using other human beings as slaves. The French, Brits and the U.S. just did not want that to be part of the conversation. There was speculation that the reason was because they had hoped the turn the Tuaregs against the al Qaeda Islamists by looking the other way on the slavery thing.

And then, out of nowhere, USA Today, of all places, blows the whistle on Tuareg slavery this week. They trumpeted that the Tuaregs fleeing the advancing French and Mailian troops have been "taking with them some of their most important possessions-- slaves." Until now all the coverage has been about how the mean Malians have been killing the poor innocent Tuaregs they get their hands on. No context whatsoever-- NONE. That might be just fine for the NY Times but USA Today just put the paper of record to shame.

The Tuareg tribes that overran Mali's military with the help of Arab extremist groups aligned with al-Qaeda have long held slaves and many of the captives are from families that have been enslaved for generations.

"It's no way to live, without your freedom," said Mohammed Yattara, a former slave who ran away from his Tuareg masters years ago.

"You depend on them for everything. If they tell you to do something, you have to do it, or they will beat you," he said as he sat with the chief of the village of Toya and among men and women who were descendants of slaves or former slaves.

"You can marry, but if the master wants to have sex with your wife, he will. Everything that's yours is theirs," Yattara said.

Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic people of North Africa's Sahara desert whose traditional land was divided into several nations, the borders of which were drawn by European colonialist powers.

They predate the Arab tribes that moved into the region centuries ago and in Mali, a former French colony, Tuaregs lived primarily in the north part if the country.

But in March, armed Tuaregs took control of the north from the Mali government and marched south with Islamists aligned with al-Qaeda. They took over the city of Timbuktu and threatened the capital of Bamako. The Islamists imposed strict shariah, or Islamic law, on inhabitants it controlled.

Some Tuaregs took advantage of their newly won control to reclaim freed or runaway slaves, mostly black Africans.

The French military arrived in January and retook Timbuktu from the Tuaregs, who fled into the desert or refugee camps in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mauritania, some taking slaves with them. Tuaregs and Arabs who failed to escape have been summarily killed, activist groups have said.

Human Rights Watch said the Malian army and black African civilians are holding all Tuaregs and Arabs responsible for the recent months of terror and human rights abuses, whether or not they participated in the crimes.

Yattara is one of the few accessible witnesses who was willing to discuss slavery under the Tuaregs.

Like many other residents of his village, Yattara is a farmer in the rice and hay fields in the river's surrounding wetlands.

Each of Mali's dozens of ethnic groups has a traditional occupation, and Yattara is one of the Bella ("slave" in the Tuareg language), the black Africans who have inherited their slave status.

Though slavery was outlawed in 1960, Mali is one of the countries in the world where the practice of human servitude flourishes, with as many as 200,000 Bella living a life of hereditary enslavement.

Not all Tuaregs own slaves, and not all slave owners are Tuareg. There are also black Malian ethnic groups who own Bella slaves.

But in the Timbuktu region, only Tuaregs own slaves. Not only were the Tuareg seen as supporters for the Islamist rebels' harsh rule over the last ten months, but their slave-owning ways fanned racial animosity in northern Mali.

Like all other slave children, Yattara never went to school, and to this day he is unable to read and write. "But my son is in school now," he said proudly.

Yattara said he believes he is in his early 40s but is not certain of his exact age because Tuareg masters do not file birth certificates. He fled his masters as a young man and during his travels to Senegal and Ivory Coast he discovered that slave-owning was in fact illegal.

"In my father's generation, slaves weren't thinking to be free," Yattara said. "But now there are many slaves who want to be free, and they try to find a way, but they are afraid."

In the Timbuktu region, slaves work on farms or as household servants or shepherds. Deeper in the vast desert of the north, inhabited by Tuaregs and Arabs, the slaves mine salt, a back-breaking task done under the Saharan sun.

Salt is the north's main economic product and black slaves deliver the giant grayish slabs by boat or truck to the black Africans, who then take it to markets in the south.

Yattara and his companions agreed that Tuaregs were the worst slave-masters in Mali.

..."In my life I will never forget what it feels like to be a slave," Yattara said. "Whenever I see Tuaregs I will be angry."

And, as we said a few weeks ago, it still isn't time to start planning a vacation in Mali. Seriously, I'd wait. A guerilla war looks likely... and, at least in the north, long-lasting.

Read More

Timbuktu Liberated... But Don't Book A Trip Quite Yet

Bassekou et moi à Bamako... better days

Roland and I capped off a month in Mali with a trip to the city that had lured us to the country in the first place: Timbuktu. And it was worth the grueling drive in a jeep over dirt "roads" to get there. We both loved this throwback of a city to ancient times. The city has gone through-- to put it mildly-- some pretty hard times, first at the hands of barbaric Tuareg slavers and then at the hands of just as barbaric Islamic religious freaks, since we were there. Now the town has been, let's say liberated by the Malian Army and their French allies. But I wouldn't book a flight in yet-- even if there are already sparks, miraculously, of a tourist industry revitalizing. Today the President of France, François Hollande is visiting the city, although I doubt he'll be staying in any hotels.

The Hotel Colombe in Timbuktu closed its doors at the end of March last year. In Mali's capital Bamako an army mutiny had begun while in the Saharan north, the town of Kidal had fallen to rebels using arms looted in the aftermath of Libya's civil war. The Colombe's energetic manager Mohamed Toure thought the death knell had sounded for tourism in Mali.

With no money coming in, he was reduced to one meal a day. "I didn't think I would ever see another European again." He was proven wrong this week as the jihadis fled in advance of the French troops in Mali's fabled city. Now Mr Toure's crumbling hotel is back in business. After one of the darkest years in its long history Timbuktu is coming back to life.

The artisans' market, a hive of weavers, tailors and jewellers, has reopened. Ben Ali, a jeweller, was already back working on a silver ring. Most of his business came from the traditional ceremonies that punctuate Malian life. He pointed to an ornate silver headdress in the display box behind him: "They stopped our women from wearing traditional jewellery," he said. "This is nonsense, they just came in with their sharia. These guys knew nothing about religion, they're just gangsters."

DJ Ali Biko was also back in action across the street. A young looking 19-year-old, his speakers had come out of hiding to blare reggae through the market area. "When the Islamists were here I was really stressed," he said. "We couldn't listen to music."

Me & Mohammed in downtown Timbuktu

He chose to play music in this store because it had belonged to Arab traders, whom locals accused of backing the al-Qa'ida affiliates who occupied Timbuktu. With Malian rapper Milles Mots at full blast, Ali joked that seeing his friends dance in the looted wreck of the store was his revenge.

Me and Mohammed again-- still downtown Timbuktu

Such small acts of defiance are visible everywhere in a city that was famed before last year for its diversity. In the warren of stalls behind the artisan market, Abou Bakry Moussa was selling things he wouldn't have dared to display one week before. Obama belts featuring the stars and stripes and a grinning American President are outselling Chelsea hats and Real Madrid socks. "We had hidden them before," he said. "People had to ask for them." Upstairs, Radio al-Farouk has become the first station in northern Mali to go back on air. The DJ, in clear defiance of the jihadis who ruled the city until last week, relaunched by playing tracks from the legendary Malian musician Ali Farka Touré. The station should be back in full operation within a month. Four days after the first French soldiers swept into the city, cigarettes and alcohol have also made a comeback.

Alcohol is back too and the airport was captured by the French. Obviously it's working well enough for Hollande to have flown in today. When we were there there were two airlines, Air Mali and Air Timbuktu, flying ancient prop planes from to Bamako via Mopti. Leaving Timbuktu, I flew on one and Roland flew on the other and they both left at the same time. I recall them disarming a tribesman when he boarded but giving him back his sword once the plane took off. Air Mali is grounded until September and Air Timbuktu is out of business entirely. Today Hollande's plane flew from France to Sevare. The NY Times reports that "life is certainly a long way from returning to normal. Shops owned by Arab tradesmen have been looted. Some residents have fled, a foretaste of ethnic strife that many fear will roil Mali for years to come. Electricity and running water are available only a few hours a day. The cellphone network remains down."

Many of the residents who left-- first to escape the occupation, then to escape the French airstrikes-- have no way to return. Always remote, the city remains dangerously isolated: the dusty tracks and rivers leading here wind through forbidding scrubland territory that could still provide refuge for the Islamist fighters who melted away from the cities.

Those who remained told stories of how they survived the long occupation: by hiding away treasured manuscripts and amulets forbidden by the Islamists, burying crates of beer in the desert, standing by as the tombs of saints they venerated were reduced to rubble, silencing their radios to the city’s famous but now forbidden music.

“They tried to take away everything that made Timbuktu Timbuktu,” said Mahalmoudou Tandina, a marabout, or Islamic preacher, whose ancestors first settled in Timbuktu from Morocco in the 13th century. “They almost succeeded.”

The occupation of Timbuktu, a center of learning for centuries, was the latest in a long historical list of conquests-- by Arab nations, by the Songhai and Maasina empires, by France. Once again, powerful global forces were in play in this fabled city: a network of Islamic extremists, the armies of France and West Africa, and to a lesser extent the United States, which has flown in French forces and refueled French warplanes during the campaign.

Through it all, the city’s residents, whose ancestors endured such ravages for the better part of a millennium, have adapted as best they could.

On April 1, the day rebels arrived in this city, Mr. Tandina had just returned from the first, predawn prayer of the day. He made bittersweet tea to the murmur of a French radio broadcast. The news was bad: Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, had fallen to Tuareg rebels, the nomadic fighters who had been battling the Malian state for decades.

His hometown was almost certainly their next target. When shots rang out in Independence Square, just behind Mr. Tandina’s house, he knew that Timbuktu’s latest conquerors had arrived.

“The barbarians were at our gate,” he said with a sigh. “And not for the first time.”

The Tuareg fighters took control of the city, and for two days they looted its sprawling markets, raped women, stole cars and killed anyone who stood in their way.

“Then the man with the big beard came,” Mr. Tandina said.

Barrel-chested and dressed in a blue tunic, the leader of Ansar Dine, an Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, arrived with several truckloads of fighters. The new rebels called the city’s people to a public square and made an announcement.

“They said, ‘We are Muslims. We came here to impose Shariah,’” Mr. Tandina said.

At first, Timbuktu’s people were relieved, he said. Beginning a hearts-and-minds campaign, the group garrisoned the fearsome Tuareg nationalists outside of town, which stopped the raping and pillaging.

They did not charge for electricity or collect taxes. Commerce went on more or less as usual, he said.

Then a mysterious group of visitors came from Gao, heavily armed men riding in pickup trucks, trailing desert dust.

“They told us they were here to establish an Islamic republic,” Mr. Tandina said.

It started with the women. If they showed their faces in the market they would be whipped. The local men grew angry at attacks on their wives, so they organized a march to the headquarters of the Islamic police, who had installed themselves in a bank branch. The Islamists greeted the protesters by shooting in the air. Many fled, but a small group, including Mr. Tandina, insisted that they be heard.

A young, bearded man came out to meet them. Much to Mr. Tandina’s surprise, he recognized the Islamic police official. His name was Hassan Ag, and before the fighting began he had been a lab technician at the local hospital.

“When I knew him he was cleanshaven, and he wore ordinary clothes of a bureaucrat,” Mr. Tandina said.

Now he was dressed in the uniform of the Islamist rebellion: a tunic, loose trousers cut well above the ankle, in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad, and a machine gun slung across his shoulder.

“I told him our women were being harmed,” he said.

Mr. Ag was unmoved.

“This is Islamic law,” he said, according to Mr. Tandina. “There is nothing I can do. And the worst is yet to come.”

Soon it came. They began destroying tombs of the saints venerated by Timbuktu’s Muslims. Armed with pickaxes and sledgehammers, they reduced to rubble the tomb of Sidi Mahmoud, a saint who, according to legend, protected the city from invaders.

Venerating saints, an ancient practice here, was considered un-Islamic in the austere version of the faith proclaimed by the occupiers.

Mr. Tandina said he tried to use his decades of Koranic education to argue with the Islamists, citing verses about respecting the burial places. They would not listen.

Before long, he said, amputations started. Then came the executions. Again he said he tried to intervene, going to the Islamic court with stacks of Islamic law books under his arm.

“Islam was whatever they said it was,” he said. “They did not respect the holy book. They respected nothing but their own desires.”

For hundreds of years, Timbuktu was one of the world’s most important centers of Islamic learning. The city has dozens of mosques, and it is famous for the ancient, handwritten manuscripts that city residents have collected for generations, preserving them against waves of invaders and creating a priceless trove of knowledge about the Islamic world and beyond. Many families have long traditions of Islamic learning, passed from father to son.

So many here bristled when the Islamists called the population to lecture them about the proper practice of the religion in which they had been raised.

“What they call Islam is not what we know is Islam,” said Dramane Cissé, the 78-year-old imam at one of the city’s biggest and oldest mosques. “They are arrogant bullies who use religion as a veil for their true desires.”

But like many Muslims here, he hid away his amulets, prayer beads and other banned religious items. In his mind his faith remained the same.

How soon before Timbuktu's famous Festival au Désert is back in business? Well... no time at all! They're kind of sponsoring a desert caravan of artists this year-- a Peace and Unity event-- with concerts in Morocco, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Burkana Faso. The Islamists sacked the regular site of the Festival, destroying the water systems, looting the generators and electrical equipment, and "crushing all that had appealed to the promotion of culture and tourism." So this year-- starting February 7 in Bamako, the Caravan of Artists for Peace and National Unity heads off to Kobeni in Mauritania on the road to Nouakchott (the capital) and play two nights of concerts, February 8 and 9 sponsored by the Al Hawa Cultural Foundation of Mauritania. They'll partner with the Festival on the Niger in Ségou on February 14 and two days later at the Festival of Mali in Bamako. A second caravan will leave Tamanrasset, Algeria and travel through the Tuareg heartland to Niamey, Niger and on to Burkina-Faso and the two caravans will hook up in Oursi 350 kilometers from the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou for the Festival in the Desert 2013 (on February 20, 21 and 22). The last stop in at the Festival International of Sélingue in Mali on March 1, 2 and 3. The artists participating are primarily Malian, although the Festival's press release says other international artists will also play to show their solidarity. None have been named yet and I suspect Robert Plant and Bono won't be making it this year.



Unesco has pledged to help rebuild Timbuktu's destroyed cultural heritage. My friend Sophie runs an awesome hotel in Djenne, Djenne Djenno, which is-- amazingly-- still open. She blogs about her life in Mali and it's a great place to check out what's really going on there.

Read More

Mali's Tourism Industry Devastated-- And The Overflow Is Wrecking Burkina Faso's Tourism As Well

I've visited a lot of countries that are tough for tourists these days: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Greece, Sri Lanka, Palestine... but none as tough as Mali. The restaurant on the banks of the Niger in Ségou in the video above... Roland and I sat on that terrace. I was in Mali for about a month in the winter of 2008. Since then it has been consumed by a civil war, which has torn the country in half and immersed it in bloodshed. Foreigners are routinely kidnapped. When we were there, the tourism sector was exploding. Wonderful, charming boutique hotels-- rather than the ugly soul-destroying chains which would have come later-- were popping up everywhere and a growing stream of foreign visitors were helping fuel an economic resurgence, especially in Timbuktu. Timbuktu has now been wrecked by anti-Sufi fundamentalist jihadis, who have destroyed the city's historical treasures and cultural heritage.

The Tuaregs are in full-scale rebellion against the central government-- and have declared independence-- because, like the Southern rebels in the mid-1800s here in the U.S., they want to preserve their "special" way of life: slavery. The Tuaregs are a brutal, savage people, like American southerners, with an Ayn Rand perspective on how to work and play with others. "Others" are meant to be their slaves and they tie he whole ugly, inhuman package up with a phony religionist fundamentalism. In the future, this will be a picture of the Tuaregs of Mali:



When we visited Mali we laughed at the Peace Corp volunteers who were prohibited by the State Department from visiting Timbuktu and the whole northern part of the country. We were lucky; that's all. No one in their right mind goes anywhere near that part of Mali these days. In fact, no tourists go to Mali anymore at all.

Since the coup last March that split the country in two and left the north occupied by al-Qaida-linked rebels, and the kidnapping of a French citizen in November, France has enlarged the "red zone," a no-go area for its citizens that now stretches from Mali's northern borders with Mauritania and Algeria to the north shore of the Niger river in Ségou-- almost three-quarters of the country.

Other foreign embassies followed suit and warn against all travel to Mali, leaving the tourism sector-- Mali's third biggest revenue generator-- "almost dead," according to Ousmane Ag Rhissa, the tourism minister.

In 2011 almost 200,000 tourists visited the country, each spending at least $100 (£62) a day; barely 10,000 visited last year.

"The impact is pretty severe," Rhissa said. "Since there are no more tourists coming, there is no income generation."

The government has written off as unrecoverable more than a quarter of the targeted revenue for 2012. Spending plans have been slashed and the suspension of donor funding in the form of budget support and project aid has caused a state budget shortfall of $782m (£488m).

This has exacerbated shortages caused by the Sahel food crisis. Rising gas and food costs-- a 100% increase in the price of millet in the last year-- are making it harder for struggling businesses to keep afloat.

And last month, The Economist reported that tourism throughout west Africa is getting hairy. Neighboring Burkina Faso has taken an influx of Malian refugees but now they have their own troubles devastating their small tourism industry.

An army mutiny in 2011 prompted foreign embassies to turn their travel warnings to red. Then in January this year, 37,000 refugees from neighbouring Mali flooded across the border to escape their country's political crisis. The collapse in Mali's tourist industry has been even more damaging. The country has long been a highlight of travel in West Africa. Tour operators got people to Burkina Faso by tagging it on to a trip to Mali. With Mali now off-limits, the bottom has fallen out of regional tourism.

Rerouting circuits to other nearby countries is the obvious solution but this is difficult. Neither Niger nor Côte d’Ivoire is particularly secure. Togo is small and undeveloped. Benin's tourism infrastructure is improving, but it lacks the mythical appeal of Timbuktu and the Dogon Country.

That leaves Ghana. On paper it is the ideal travel companion to Burkina. Its beaches complement Burkina’s landlocked terrain. The slave forts provide insight into an important page of modern history. The bustling metropolis of Accra, Ghana’s capital, offers a glimpse into what the future of Africa looks like, less evident in Ouagadougou, Burkina’s sleepy capital.

But Ghana is Anglophone, and French-speaking Burkina-- like its former colonial power-- has not taken to English. Local guides rarely speak English well enough to shepherd visitors around. They also need an international driving license to drive in Ghana-- unnecessary in its Francophone neighbours-- and vehicles require a special registration permit. Both of these must be renewed every year.

Those in the business say that Burkina’s tourism authorities should do more to promote the country as a safe destination and foster links with Ghana. For many 2012 has been their worst year. One hotelier decided to go back to his native France to work through the summer season to make ends meet. But with a military intervention proposed in Mali next year, things will only get tougher for Burkina Faso.

Meanwhile France is coming to the rescue, even bombing the legendary city of Gao, deep inside rebel-held territory. And starting tomorrow so are Mali's African neighbors. Hopefully, they'll be more successful than this automated news report:



France itself has beefed up domestic security in anticipation of Islamist terrorism at home. Britain has pledged to help France logistically (as has the U.S.) and the Islamist rebels say that the war against "the Crusaders" is just beginning. "This is a holy war. The deaths are normal," said Sanda Ould Boumama, spokesman for the rebel group Ansar Dine, which is linked to al Qaeda. "Our fighters are prepared to die for our cause," he told CNN by phone. People aren't hearing much about the Tuaregs and their role-- their desire to hold slaves again-- primarily because the Western powers want to turn them against their Islamist allies and don't want to demonize them in the press. Pretty sick!

This report makes more sense, is more up-to-date and more comprehensive:

Read More

No News From Mali Is Good News These Days-- Letter From Mopti

Roland finally found a couple of Bozo ladies to pose for a photo

The thing I liked most about visiting Mopti, Mali's second largest city, wasn't actually in Mopti but nearby. Mopti is a stereotypical seedy African river port. Just outside of it-- as though in another world entirely-- are Bozo fishing encampments which couldn't have possibly been any more primitive a thousand years ago. We rented a boat and went up river 'til we came to an island with some thatch-roofed huts, a Bozo village. Roland and I walked around for an hour, taking photos, poking around. No one paid us any attention whatsoever. Nothing-- neither positive nor negative... nothing.

In town we stayed at the most beautiful hotel in Mali, French architect Amédé Mulin's boutique establishment La Maison Rouge. I've been wondering how the small hotels have been faring now that the country is engulfed in civil war. I know they're all shut down and destroyed in Timbuktu, who has been taken over by slavers and religious fanatics but things in Mopti are just bad, instead of horrendous. The hotel is closed but the most recent letter I got from Amédé is mildly optimistic. He's been in France but he was just back to Mopti for a visit. I'll share a few paragraphs:

I have found that the hotel was generally OK, though degraded by lack of maintenance of the building and the first rains. 6 employees were still in office. The cook resigned during my absence, the mason and his maneuver worked in general maintenance during the month of April and ceased operation in May and June Power cuts, although nearly constant, have not damaged the stock of freezers. The plant has recently commissioned two new groups, the power cuts have almost ceased. Banks are always closed and government in part.

The team is demoralized by the closure of the hotel, the gloom in the city, lack of opportunities and stagnation of the political and security situation in Mali, a certain feeling of abandonment. Some began to develop other activities, such as the cook who has returned from Burkina Faso, or the wizard ruler who would also resign.

We met a few days ago to review the call for support. Staff hoped to reopen the hotel, after listing the charges of the hotel operation estimated at over € 1,500, given the lack of cash and revenue prospects, given the attendance of other catastrophic hotels remained open to Mopti and Sévaré, we agreed that it was reasonable to remain temporarily closed.

The staff, however, has pledged to work towards a quick reopening if special request rental, important booking or processing in offices or rented house in a project... [I]t is unlikely that we have reservation requests. The hotel will remain closed unless major reservations. We hope the situation will evolve positively, particularly in terms of security, so that projects and humanitarian actors can work in good conditions and create economic activity.

It is always possible that the board of the UN Security eventually bow to the many requests for a military intervention that would transform de facto humanitarian hub in Mopti, recreating a certain dynamism to the hotel sector, waiting for the Mali again become a tourist destination.

I don't imagine tourists-- at least not American ones-- will be returning to Mopti (or anywhere in Mali) any time soon. There were very few Americans when Roland and I were there a couple years ago but between the kidnappings and violence and the destruction of everything of historical value (other than in Dogan country down south), the country is being completely avoided by international tourists. There was a decent analysis of the situation at AllAfrica.com this week. It looks like the split between the Tuaregs and the al Qaeda faction has widened... into chasm. I always find it bizarre that no one ever brings up that the Tuaregs capture people and enslave them. I guess that's considered to barbaric to even mention.

'Islamist rebels' have been blamed for a campaign of plunder in Timbuktu this week, but who exactly are they and what do they want?

As momentum builds outside Mali to launch some kind of military intervention into rebel-held territory, the conflict in northern Mali has grown increasingly complex in recent weeks. Even as reports of rampaging Islamists in Timbuktu proliferate our news bulletins, however, the complexity of the conflict has been steadily ignored.

It has been several months since rebel groups wrested control of Northern Mali from government forces. One group, a Tuareg tribal militia known as MLNA, was armed by former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and fought for him during in the Libyan war last year. When Gaddafi fell, the MLNA raised guns for their old cause-- a state of their own. They are ethnic nationalists, embittered against colonialism. And as the MNLA gathered their forces, they formed an alliance with other militias in Northern Mali, all of them rebels with separate causes-- but, crucially, a common enemy.

One of these groups, Ansar Eddine (Arabic for helpers of the faith), has been described by commentators as the Taliban of the Sahel. This is the group currently in control of the town of Timbuktu, a city that once was the hub of cultural and intellectual pursuits in Africa.

The MNLA captured Timbuktu without a fight after the Malian army abandoned the city. A day later, however, Ansar Eddine drove out the MNLA, and has held the city ever since. Andrew Lebovich, a Washington DC-based researcher on the Sahel, says that although Ansar Eddine was formed late last year, its leader, Iyad Ag Ghali, has long been a power broker in northern Mali. Analysts say Ag Ghali's importance as a leader lies more in his kinship and tribal roles in northern Mali than in his new-found role as the leader of a so-called Islamist faction. Ag Gali has repeatedly fallen out with the MNLA, who accuse him of humiliating them.

The MNLA, then, was drawn into conflict with Ag Ghali. Crucially, though - and unlike the MNLA - Ansar Eddine's Islamist credentials have increasingly been linked to the Al-Qaeda branch in west Africa (AQIM)."Reports indicate that Ag Ghali has grown more religious in recent years, but initially Ansar Eddine appeared no different to the MNLA," Lebovich tells Daily Maverick.

Other analysts say Ag Ghali has emerged as a committed Salafist in recent years, and declared his intention to put all Mali under Sharia law-- angering the MNLA, who disagree with his interpretation of what the identity of the new Malian state should be. Negotiations between the two factions have been futile. What is becoming clear is that Ansar Eddine does have stronger links with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb than previously suspected. "There is a general belief that much of the support lent to Ansar Eddine came from AQIM," Lebovich says, noting that this includes weapons, money and ideological support. There is, however, very little credible information on the exact nature of the influence of AQIM on Ansar Eddine.

Ag Ghali's embrace of the Salafi brand of Islam is significant to understanding Ansar Eddine's rampage on the heritage of Timbuktu in the last week. Salafists believe that any innovation from the original version of Islam, as practised in the Arabian Peninsula in the time of Mohammad, is akin to polytheism-- blasphemy. Now that Ansar Eddine has firm control over Timbuktu, they've started to purge the city of its religious relics and destroy historic cultural sites deemed blasphemous.

Great mosques and mausoleums to local saints-- of unique architectural design-- were erected in the 15th and 16th century, and the city is home to a long tradition of a local Sufism, which is an Islamic mystic tradition.

It's little wonder, then, that this campaign has been compared to the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

As international condemnation of the destruction of United Nations world heritage sites in Timbuktu grows, so, too, do the calls for international intervention in northern Mali. Lebovich, however, is sceptical of the prospects of international intervention taking place, let alone succeeding. "Everyone knows that international intervention will be very difficult. This is one of the harshest climates in the world, infrastructure is poor, international interventional may not be favourably received in Mali and then it's not clear what these groups actually want," he explains.

Attempts by regional body ECOWAS to negotiate with rebels in northern Mali have yielded nothing so far. As one negotiator put it, "We're in talks at the moment, but obviously they're not going well because we want different things." Rebels with separate causes defeated a common enemy, but now it remains to be seen which cause will trump the other.

The rebel insurgency in northern Mali began as yet another expedition in the life and times of the Tuareg people to win sympathy from the world.

But while the MNLA will win some sympathy for being victims of Ansar Eddine, in the end, the prospect of broad international support for a Tuareg state is now in tatters, much like Timbuktu.

The two factions are now fighting for real and the al Qaeda Islamists have driven the Tuaregs out of Gao, the other big prize after Timbuktu. The third "city," Kidal, is also under their sway. The Tuaregs are out in the cold.

Read More

The 3 Scariest Things I Ever Did On My Travels

For those who think hopping on a plane for a trip to London or Paris or Mexico City is adventurous and dangerous, this post may be hard to relate to. I started hitchhiking across America when I was 13. I hitched from Brooklyn to L.A. when I was 15 and stowed away on ship so I could make a new, simpler life for myself on Tonga. I celebrated my 21st birthday in my home-- a thatch-roofed bungalow steps from the Arabian Sea in Goa. But this morning, after reading about the latest deprecation in war-torn Mali, I tried to recall what the most dangerous stunts I had pulled on my travels.

Because I was swimming when I was thinking about it-- and because I get really scared of crocodiles and alligators-- one that popped into my mind was a trip to Esteros del Iberá a swampy section of northern Argentina where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay all come together. They call it the Serengeti of Latin America because of the abundance of wildlife and, as I noted at the time, "the most important thing was to get the idea of "swamp" out of my head. This was easy because the place is not only gorgeous, it is fresh and even cooler than everyplace around it. The water is so beautiful that if it weren't for the alligators, pirhanas, capybaras and anacondas, you'd want to jump right in-- as many of the folks who live around there do anyway (and have the missing fingers and toes to prove it)."

Alligators-- they call them Yacare Caiman in the neighborhood, like the fella in the picture-- are something I usually go out of my way to avoid. So, for me, the scariest moment came when I agreed to go with a local in a dugout canoe for an afternoon of caiman, capybara (word's biggest rodent) and anaconda watching. And for hours that's all I saw... not anacondas, just a billion alligators and giant prehistoric rats.

Years earlier I had a run-in with an even scarier creature. I was bumming around Afghanistan in 1969 and found myself captured by a militia up in the mountains. I didn't understand a word of Pashtun at the time-- I learned a few months later when I got snowed in and stranded in a tiny Pashtun village for the winter-- but I sure understood the universal motions and grunts for "put your hands over your head or I'll unload this Kalashnikov into it." So I did. Maybe they wanted to go for a Ripley's Believe It Or Not Record, but they just had us keep our hands over our heads for hours. Eventually some Australian hippie who was with me-- and peaking on acid-- just started laughing and lowered his hands. At first the Afs all started screaming menacingly and made like they were about to shoot us. Then I started laughing and lowered my hands too. And then everyone else did-- and soon we were sitting around the campfire drinking tea with the militia all laughing away and smoking opiated hash like we were all best friends.

Most recently though, Roland and I went to Mali and wound up in Timbuktu on the outskirts of the Sahara Desert. It's not really the outskirts anymore; the desert is encroaching rapidly and the streets get covered in sand all the time. One night we decided to go with Mohammed, our Tuareg guide, into the Sahara itself. It's trackless; there's nothing but sand dunes and the light is the moon and stars and our flashlights. Our destination: a Tuareg encampment a few miles away where some nomads had come down from the desert to trade. We were leaving for America in a few days and there was plenty of stuff to trade-- from my high-end REI walking sticks to cans of sardines Roland had brought... and toilet paper, airline shaving kits, bits and pieces of clothes... all kinds of stuff we didn't want to schlepp back to L.A. It went pretty well. It might not have. As I've been writing in the last few months, a Tuareg rebellion was brewing and it's boiled over... big time. They've seized two-thirds of the country. And these are bad guys; they believe slavery is condoned by their religion, for example. And in the name of their primitive and ignorant concept of Islam, they are destroying Timbuktu, ironically a centuries-old center of Islamic learning.

Armed fighters of Mali's al-Qaida-linked Ansar Dine Islamist group on Saturday destroyed mausoleums in the ancient trading city of Timbuktu, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, witnesses said. 

The attack came just four days after UNESCO agreed to a request by the West African state to place Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger following the seizure of its northern two-thirds in April by separatist and Islamist rebels. 

"They have already completely destroyed the mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud (Ben Amar) and two others. They said they would continue all day and destroy all 16," local Malian journalist Yeya Tandina said by telephone of the 16 most prized resting grounds of local saints in the town. 

"They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly," he said, adding that the Islamists were currently taking pick-axes to the mausoleum of Sidi El Mokhtar, another cherished local saint.

Roland is protesting because I didn't include the time I was stranded on a coral reef in Sri Lanka and the time we almost drove over a cliff in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco south of Marrakech.

Read More