Mali tackles ills — Al-Qaeda and drug trafficking

The tourism minister of Mali, N'Diaye Bah, visibly bristled when asked about the possibility that Al-Qaeda's North African offshoot might kidnap foreigners in fabled Timbuktu or anywhere across Mali's northern desert.
France spread such rumours, he insisted. “They want to create this security issue that does not exist,” he said, wagging his finger. “When you come to Mali, there is no aggression against tourists. How can you say there is insecurity in this country?”
Yet the United States and French Embassies, among other foreign missions, explicitly warn against travelling to Timbuktu and indeed the entire desert that sweeps across roughly two-thirds of this landlocked West African nation. A French Embassy map colours the entire north red, a no-go area.
This uneasy, public standoff has existed for some time, reflective of Mali's insistence that it is not a font of violence like some of its neighbours, notably Algeria. But in a sign that Mali both acknowledges the issue and seeks to address it, the country is rolling out a new development plan, hoping to tackle the problem at its roots.
The problems
The dearth of jobs and prospects in the north helps drive the region's twin ills — narcotics trafficking and Islamic radicalism. By setting up military barracks, infirmaries, schools, shopping areas and animal markets in 11 northern towns, the Malian government hopes to establish a more visible government presence, foster economic activity and form a bulwark against lawlessness.
“The ultimate goal of the project is to eradicate” Al-Qaeda's affiliates in Mali, said Adam Tchiam, a leading Malian columnist.
Mali does not deny that an estimated 200 to 300 fighters from Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (Maghreb being the Arabic term for west) have found a perch in their desert, although most are believed to be Mauritanians and Algerians. But Mali often depicts the terrorists as a problem generated elsewhere.
“We are hostages to a situation that does not concern us,” news reports quoted President Amadou Toumani Touré as saying.
Behind the scenes, however, the President has been more forthcoming. In a meeting with the American Ambassador, Gillian A. Milovanovic, and senior American military officers last year, he said the extremists “have had difficulty getting their message across to a generally reluctant population,” according to an embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organisations. Still, Mr. Touré acknowledged, “they have had some success in enlisting disaffected youth to their ranks.”
Trail of violence
In recent years, the Qaeda affiliate has left a trail of violence across Mauritania, Niger, Algeria and Mali, taking aim at tourists, expatriate workers, local residents and security forces. Hostages taken in the porous border regions have been executed or ransomed. Five French and two African workers kidnapped in Niger last September are believed to be held in northern Mali.
The Algerians and some Western diplomats accuse the Malians of being too soft on terrorism, an opinion reflected in the cables obtained by WikiLeaks. But Mali's defenders argue that the regional problem is far larger than any one poor country can address.
To that end, Mauritania recently moved uninvited troops permanently across the border in Mali to eradicate a Qaeda encampment, diplomats said, and Mali did not object.
For his part, President Touré has been trying to forge a regional consensus on the issue, but the leaked cables and diplomats suggest that Algeria has been reluctant to take part. Algerian officials regularly criticise the presence of French and American training forces, saying they constitute another threat.
Mali's own plan faces two main problems, one domestic and one foreign. Tuareg rebels fought the government in the desert for decades, with the 1992 peace treaty specifying that the government forces completely withdraw from the north. Deploying them there risks reigniting a conflict that still simmers.
Even so, some northerners endorse almost any government action in the harsh environment, where battling sand alone constitutes a daily struggle.
“There are villages that have never seen an administrator, never seen a nurse, never seen a teacher,” said Amboudi Side Ahmed, a businessman in the capital, Bamako, who was raised in the north. “You could stay in a village up there for 10 years and never see a government official.”
Then there is the question of whether these northern hubs are even feasible, given the reluctance of foreign aid workers to venture north and finance projects there. “The President says the poor protect Al-Qaeda because they do not have any means,” said Mr. Tchiam, the columnist. “Where are the means?”
While foreign governments recognise that the north needs development, the lack of security hampers it. American Embassy personnel, for example, can travel north only with express permission of the ambassador, which she said she rarely granted.
‘Development is criticial'
“Development is critical in dealing with the north,” Ambassador Milovanovic said, but “so long as security is unstable, it is hard to get those projects going.”
“We cannot just throw money up there.”
After her own visits, she has tried to meet local requests by offering training for midwives or supplying four-wheel-drive ambulances. As part of its broader efforts to counter extremism in northern Mali, the United States also underwrote a series of radio soap operas whose plot twists emphasised the dangers of extremism.
Beyond that, Washington provides basic military training, sometimes even more basic than envisioned. An exercise on what to do when the driver of a vehicle is shot dead revealed a startling truth — most Malian soldiers did not know how to drive. Lessons were instituted. But Malian officials want more.
Terror operations
“How many people in the north listen to the radio? That is never going to be strong enough to change their views on A.Q.M.I. or religious fundamentalism,” said Mohamed Baby, a presidential adviser working on fixing the northern problem, using the initials of the French name for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. “We need to deal with development, with the lack of resources.”
Qaeda fighters have sometimes ingratiated themselves by paying inflated prices for food, fuel and other goods. Diplomats believe that the extremists have also informed local smugglers that they will pay a premium for kidnapped Westerners.
Aside from collecting ransoms for hostages, Al-Qaeda is believed to be financing its operations by exacting tolls from drug smugglers and traffickers in arms, humans and illicit goods. Since at least the 10th century, Timbuktu has been a crossroads for trade routes across the Sahara, and the modern age is no different.
A series of drug-laden planes make the loop from South America to the Sahel, but numbers are elusive, said Alexandre Schmidt of the United Nations drug office. In one notorious 2009 episode, a Boeing 727 believed to have ferried cocaine from Latin America was set on fire after it got stuck in the sand.
Both the drug smugglers and Al-Qaeda offer young men a quick route to money and symbols of prestige like a pickup truck. The government plan has no easy, short-term ways to compete, officials concede.
“They can recruit young people and undermine both the economy and the religion,” Mr. Baby said of the militants. “We have to build up some kind of resistance.”

Ivory Coast: an expert view

A tragedy is unfolding in Ivory Coast that will have regional and international ramifications. More than 100 people have been killed since the election, 16,000 Ivorians have fled to neighbouring Liberia while thousands of others have been internally displaced. Ivory Coast is heading for renewed civil war.
Laurent Gbagbo is internationally isolated, but still not prepared to accept an offer from the African Union and Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), to make a dignified exit as an elder statesman.
The standoff is the latest crisis since civil war erupted in 2002, splitting the country between north and south.
That conflict was partly over citizenship rights of many residents from the north, and fuelled by youth unemployment caused by the decline of international cocoa prices. A large French military base and French expatriate dominance of many key Ivorian businesses also fed anti-French sentiment.
A 2007 peace deal called for new elections, which were delayed several times before a vote was finally held in October, with a run-off in November.
This crisis is differs from the past, however: the opposition clearly won a significant amount of votes even in Abidjan and France, the former colonial power, is no longer trying to single-handedly influence the outcome.
The only promising aspect of this crisis is the leadership of African institutions. The Economic Community Of West African States (Ecowas) and the AU have suspended Ivory Coast, and supported sanctions and military intervention to remove Gbagbo. The U.S. and EU have slapped their own sanctions on Gbagbo and his inner-circle, while the World Bank and the West African regional central bank have cut financing.
The Jeunes Patriotes youth militia leader, Charles Ble Goude, who has agitated for Gbagbo, is already under U.N. sanctions. In 2006, when I chaired a U.N. sanctions inspection team in Ivory Coast, I saw the temporary calming effect sanctions had on his behaviour; if he unleashes the violence he has promised, he would not only destroy any future chances of running for the Ivorian presidency but risks courting the attention of the International Criminal Court.
Sanction on cocoa?
International markets have reacted to the crisis by pushing up cocoa futures prices to a four-month high, although there is no talk of an immediate sanction on cocoa — Ivory Coast is the world's top cocoa producer. Renewed civil war will further destroy one of Africa's leading economies, affect the region, and possibly divide the country for ever. ( Alex Vines is head of the Africa Programme at the Chatham House international affairs think tank in London.

Libya: in the throes of change

The political survival of Muammar Qadhafi, Libya's strongman for 42 years, is under serious threat. Much of this has to do with the transformation of the opposition, now closing in on the capital Tripoli. It had started an unarmed campaign for change but, in the face of excessive State violence, has transformed itself dramatically into an armed revolutionary movement.
With the uprising raging, and eastern Libya already under opposition control, the regime's survival is now almost out of the equation. Mr. Qadhafi no longer has influential friends within and outside Libya who can bail him out. The question now is how will he go, and what will replace him? Will the regime collapse suddenly, the end brought about by a coup, or will it disappear after a brief civil war, when the debilitating ranks of Mr. Qadhafi's loyal forces, make their last stand to defend Tripoli? Alternatively, could there be an unlikely sting in the tail, which might reveal itself in a war of attrition, between Qadhafi-loyalists, whose numbers and commitment the world has underestimated, and the opposition forces, now rapidly advancing along Libya's eastern Mediterranean coastline towards Tripoli?
Mr. Qadhafi's problems have become insurmountable because he has a very thin support base left. For decades he has not been critically challenged because his regime has adopted a combination of selective tribal patronage and co-option, made possible on account of a windfall in oil revenues, and the fear that police states can instill in their citizens. In the initial years, after the 1969 coup that brought him to power, Mr. Qadhafi's firm commitment, in the footsteps of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, to revolutionary Arab nationalism, did earn him accolades at home. But when the cost of raising legions to enforce Arab unity from Sudan to Palestine became prohibitively high, and hefty oil revenues did not lead to more food on the table, Mr. Qadhafi's social contract with fellow-Libyans began to fray.
The slow accumulation of woes over the last four decades, finally appear to have exploded, leading to his undoing. Some of the resentment has come from the state of the economy. Despite Libya's status as a leading oil exporter, large sections of Libyans live on an income of less than two dollars a day.
Then, there are the forces of sub-nationalism, which refuse to go, partly because Mr. Qadhafi's personality cult, a lack of pluralistic institutions, and a denial of civil liberties that has disallowed Libyan nationalism to flower.
For long, Libya's east, which was a part of the traditional Cyrenaica, as well as the ruling power centre under the regime of King Idris, toppled by Mr. Qadhafi in the 1969 coup, has felt discriminated against. Under Mr. Qadhafi, Tripoli, a part of the old Tripolitania, became the new power centre, and members of the Qadhadfa tribe, to which the leader belongs, and who are dominant in this area, were among the chief beneficiaries of the new regime. It is therefore not surprising that the revolt, on February 15, and reflecting old animosities, began in Benghazi, Libya's capital, pre-1969.
There are also human rights issues and political demands as well, which have been brewing. The rebellion in Libya was sparked by the detention, on February 15, of Fathi Terbil, the 39-year-old human rights lawyer, based in Benghazi. Mr. Terbil represents the families of around 1,000 inmates, who were killed in 1996 by the regime in Tripoli's Abu Slim prison. His detention preceded a planned protest on February 17, in which the families of these inmates were to have participated. The revolt was also preceded by a peaceful two-year campaign for a new constitution, and demands for rule of law by a lawyers' syndicate, based in Benghazi.
Aspirations for economic justice, the rule of law, civil liberties and regional equality, seemed to have all coalesced when the uprisings, led by youth, in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, had successfully brought down entrenched dictatorships. As in other parts of West Asia and North Africa, these movements have transformed mindsets in Libya, imparting a powerful sense of self-belief, especially among the youth, who have realised that with careful preparation, fundamental political changes are indeed achievable.
Information is still sketchy about the role of the youth in using the internet as a tool for political mobilisation in Libya. “We will hear more about that in the days to come as the haze over the uprising settles. The only thing that I can say with certainty is that cyber-space was hyper-active ahead of the revolt,” says Tarik M. Yousef, a Libyan-American, who is currently the Dean of the Dubai School of Government in the United Arab Emirates. However, it is now emerging that unlike Facebook and Twitter, that Egyptian and Tunisian youth used effectively, some among the Libyan youth, preferred — perhaps to escape the regime's scrutiny — to use a popular football website to plan and organise the protests.
Mr. Qadhafi's slide towards isolation, driven by a combination of deep seated insecurity, and megalomania, began soon after the popular September 1969 coup. Deciding to monopolise power, Mr. Qadhafi, trusting his formidable charismatic powers, ensured that his potential political rivals have remained marginalised. He towered over the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) comprising several military officers, where power was concentrated after the coup. A failed attempt, by Major Umar Mihayshi, a RCC member and 30 army officers, to topple him in 1975, led Mr. Qadhafi to further tighten his grip on power. In the periodic purges that have followed, several hundred people were allegedly killed, in the wake of an unsuccessful army revolt, in 1980, in Tobruk. It is, not surprisingly, one of the flashpoints of the on-going uprising.
Acutely aware of the danger that the armed forces could pose to his survival, the Libyan leader has systematically undermined the power of the conventional army. He has promoted the Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC), an ultra-loyal well equipped force of around 3,000 men, drawn mainly from the Qadhadfa tribal groups surrounding Surt, the leader's hometown. Also called the Jamahiriya Guard, the RGC, formed mainly in the 1980s, was tied to the powerful Revolutionary Committees, another contraption of the regime embedded in work places and communities. The Revolutionary Committee buildings, a prominent regime symbol, were fiercely targeted during the current uprising in Benghazi, before protesters established their control over the city by February 20. Troops sent in to quell the revolt also turned around to join the dissidents. They are now taking the lead in military preparations to counter Mr. Qadhafi's loyalists, as they head towards Tripoli, the leader's stronghold.
In its future confrontations with the regime, the opposition is likely to encounter the Khamis brigade — a highly potent force, which has been assigned the Pretorian guard role in the defence of the regime. It could also encounter legions of mercenaries drawn out of Africa, that Mr. Qadhafi has cultivated for long to fulfill his utopian pan-Arab dreams.
Mr. Qadhafi's emergence as a target of hate-filled vendetta can also be attributed to the offensive doctrine of physical liquidation that his regime has adopted toward its opponents abroad. Some among the Libyan expatriates, who are mostly educated but left the country in droves in the early 1980s, have been lethally targeted for their anti-regime activism abroad. The regime's agents have assassinated many of them, especially those who moved to Western Europe, where they began to raise opposition groups. Given their animosity towards the regime, the expatriates are playing a significant role in fuelling the revolt. Apart from the youth, they have been making active use of the internet to help create the critical mass required for the success of the uprising.
In his aggressive campaign to deepen the “revolution,” Mr. Qadhafi has further alienated the Libyan clergy, now an important element in the revolt. His contention that his “ Green Book,” a self-acclaimed philosophical guide to chart Libya's future, is compatible with Islam and his nationalisation of properties belonging to Islamic endowments had already driven a wedge. The clergy has now formalised its break with the regime. In a statement, the newly formed Network of Free Ulema, which includes 50 prominent Libyan clerics and scholars, on February 22, condemned the use of State-violence against the protesters.
As the momentum gathers against the regime, the participation by ever-larger numbers of tribes has begun to make a critical difference to the regime's survival. In the city of Az-Zintan, 150 kilometres west of Tripoli, the powerful Warfala tribe has turned against Mr. Qadhafi. The Az-Zintan tribe, on its part, is trying to facilitate the entry of youth into Tripoli to challenge the regime. Significantly, around one-third of Tripoli's residents belong to the Tarhun tribe, which is disassociating itself from the government. Cracks are also appearing in the Qadhadfa tribe.
In the end, Mr. Qadhafi is staring at defeat, not necessarily on account of his stated ideals of Arab unity and economic equity, but because of his methods, which have revolved around authoritarianism, a personality cult and the use of brute force. As many among the Egyptian youth have recently shown, soaring idealism has a better chance of realisation when it is premised, not on force, but on principles of transparency, grassroots organisation and a political culture, which readily allows dissent and animated debate.

Another sham in Myanmar

Myanmar's recently elected parliament has convened at Naypyidaw, but it would be unwise to expect first-hand accounts of the session in the media. In the “discipline-flourishing democracy” of the junta, journalists were not allowed to cover the opening day's proceedings. There can be no visitors to this parliament, and anyone other than a legislator caught entering the building faces a one-year prison term and fine. The shadow of the junta is everywhere. The new bicameral parliament has 664 members, of which nearly 500 belong to the Union Solidarity and Development Party, a proxy for the military regime that goes by the name of State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Separately, 25 per cent of the seats in both houses go to serving military officers. Together, the junta controls, more or less, 82 per cent of the parliamentary seats. The opposition, represented by the National Democratic Force, a splinter group of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, has a mere 16 seats. (The NLD boycotted the elections.) Parties representing Myanmar's ethnic nationalities form another small clutch of opposition voices. But the military's brute majority ensures that the reins are firmly in its hands. Any opposition proposal seeking reforms in governance, in the Constitution, or in the political system, is certain to meet a swift end. In any case, the rules governing proceedings give opposition members little room to freely ask questions, or introduce legislation. The elections, held in November 2010, were a sham exercise in democracy; the convening of the parliament is an extension of this trickery.
The legislators are to elect a President who will head the new government that will replace the SPDC. It is certain that he will be a trusted representative of the junta. Will Senior General Than Shwe put up his own name or is it going to be another general slightly lower in the hierarchy? The military will also be well represented in the cabinet. There should be no doubt now that Ms Suu Kyi took the right step in boycotting the election. Her participation in the junta's “road map to democracy” could have only given it legitimacy. On her release from long years of house arrest, an event timed by the junta to immediately follow the election, the Nobel Laureate spoke about dialogue with the military towards national reconciliation and putting in place a genuine democracy in Myanmar. The regime has not responded to the offer. Ms Suu Kyi's shining achievement has been to demonstrate through thick and thin that she remains immensely popular with the people of her country — and therefore cannot be written out of Myanmar's political equation.

Mubarak supporters set to storm Tahrir Square

In a nuanced response to the opposition's call for his immediate exit, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has agreed to quit in September this year, but on his own terms which include steering an orderly political transition.
Reinforcing his decision announced late on Tuesday over state television, and letting his detractors within Egypt and abroad know that, apparently, he too commanded significant street power and was not finished yet, Mr. Mubarak had tens of thousands of supporters, on foot, and in cars swarming the banks of the Nile. They had grouped, shouting slogans and holding banners aloft, within a short distance of the Tahrir Square, where several thousands seeking Mr. Mubarak's immediate departure converged yet again on Wednesday.
By mid-afternoon, the pro-Mubarak crowds noisily headed in the direction of the Tahrir Square, where a tense standoff had begun. By late afternoon some of the demonstrators clashed with the opposition, which charged the regime with unleashing “gangs of thugs” on them with the motive of disrupting peaceful protests. Many in the opposition claimed they had seized police identification cards from some of the pro-Mubarak supporters.
By evening, it became evident that the two opposing camps were battling for the control of the Tahrir Square, the icon of the anti-Mubarak uprising. A couple of empty green military trucks, horizontally positioned across the road, on the edge of the square, emerged as the frontline of these clashes.