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Des rébellions armées à une relation apaisée entre les Touaregs et l’autorité centrale au Niger : récits des élites touarègues dans le contexte de la crise nord-malienne
Abstract
Résumé:
À la suite du conflit nord-malien débuté en 2012, les études portant sur les Touaregs se sont focalisées sur la relation conflictuelle de ces communautés avec l’autorité centrale au Mali. Les relations entretenues par les communautés touarègues avec l’autorité centrale nigérienne ont été négligées ou comparées hâtivement avec le Mali. Cette étude vise à se pencher sur les récits des élites touarègues. En étudiant les différents épisodes de tension et de conflits avec l’autorité centrale, soit les différentes “épreuves” vécues par les communautés touarègues, le présent article vise à expliciter et préciser l’appréhension du politique par les élites touarègues du Niger, et révéler certaines différences avec le cas malien. Cette étude se base sur une enquête ethnographique menée au Niger en 2017.
ABSTRACT
Following the conflict in northern Mali that began in 2012, studies on the Tuaregs focused on the conflictual relationship of these communities with the central authority in Mali. The relations between the Tuareg communities and the central authority in Niger have been neglected or hastily compared with Mali. This study aims to examine the narratives of the Tuareg elites. By studying the various episodes of tension and conflict with the central authority, namely the different “hardships” experienced by the Tuareg communities, this article aims to explain and clarify the political understanding of the Tuareg elites in Niger, and to reveal some differences from the Malian case. This study is based on an ethnographic survey conducted in Niger in 2017.
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In West Africa’s Sahel region, franchises of global jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda proliferate. So far, the dynamics of jihadist groups in the Sahel have predominantly been studied through analyses of the material and strategic dimensions of the struggle. Curiously, little attention has paid to how religiously-informed worldviews inform their expansion. Drawing on the concept of “epistemic worldviews”, this article explores how local leaders of al-Qaeda and Islamic State franchises frame their fight. It argues that transnational jihadist ideology matters; both for how different jihadist groups compete to mobilize new followers as well as for how they implement new models of jihadist governance. Contributing to ongoing debates about the transnationalization of jihad, the article shows that in the intra-jihadist contestation between the groups in Mali, global jihadist concepts are negotiated, contested, and constituted by the groups as they go along. Thereby global jihadist ideology comes to provide both a cause and an effect of contestations and conflicts between the expanding jihadist groups in the Sahel.
Valuable studies of youth in anthropology consider local concepts of what it means to be “youth” in relation to changing intergenerational relationships. However, there is still the need to convey more nuanced concepts of age as relational, dynamic, and debated, rather than categorical or consensual. In northern Niger and Mali, West Africa, droughts, settling of some nomads in towns, return of labor migrants, marginal employment, and recurrent armed conflicts have prompted different generations of Tuareg (also known as Kel Tamajaq, or “people who speak Tamajaq”)—traditionally semi-nomadic, stratified, and predominantly Muslim—to reflect on dangers and opportunities for the different generations in these upheavals. In particular, there is widespread preoccupation with what many refer to as the experience of youth. This essay analyzes enactments and reformulations of the meanings of youth and intergenerational relationships in popular play plots in Agadez, Niger, and Kidal, Mali, explores what it means to be culturally defined, among Tuareg, as “youth(s),” and examines the connections between acting and its performing specialists, many of whom are culturally defined as “youthful” in emerging new plays considered by many local audiences as “modern.” The goal is to contribute to anthropological studies of how youth and age more generally are socially constructed, as revealed through popular culture.
Starting with an ethnographic case –a Tuareg poetry contest in a festival in Northern Niger– this paper discusses the relationship between public and religious spheres, and between gender and disputed norms of speech, before the Tuareg rebellion of 2007-2009. The exclusion of women from a poetry competition aroused different reactions on behalf of the interested women. The younger she-poets, famous authors during the rebellion of the 1990s, were marginalized in light of the political content of their production. Only a senior poetess, T., who derived legitimacy from her birthright, supported in this by some of the audience and some poets, allowed herself to sabotage the competition by intervening on frequent occasions, stealing the microphone to recite her tišiway (poems). This article presents a “critical poem” that is recited by T. during the competition. The paper focuses briefly on the semantic field of laughter in Tuareg society, and examples of female satirical productions contextualize T.'s poem within a literary Tuareg genre, the abayak (literally “critical satire” or invective). In 2006, women were admitted to the competition after negotiations with tourists. Then A., a woman, won first prize. Two of A.’s praise poems (temmal) are compared with T.’s veiled but abrasive critique.
Pragmatic Sociology : A User’s Guide
During the last thirty years, the researchers working within the orientation known as “pragmatic sociology” have produced a considerable amount of empirical investigations relating to all areas of social life. In accordance with the theoretical and methodological assumptions they intended to defend, they have developed significantly new ways to conduct their inquiries, to collect data, to explore their fields, to think through the cases and controversies they used as entry points to explore the social order and its always problematic reproduction. The aim of this paper is to characterize by highlighting ten points the pragmatic style in sociology and to specify what are its methodological requisites and practical implications in the conduct of research.
At the time when the conflict Malian seems to find a solution (June 2013), this article reconsiders alliances, competitions and ruptures between and within the various movements at the origin of the crisis. Inherent in their internal dynamics, the divisions partly explain why they recently failed on the political, military and religious levels. The author recalls the establishment of the Islamists in North Mali and examines their dissensions. He then analyses the claims and the divisions in the Tuareg movements, which radicalized since the preceding rebellions, as some decided Azawad be independent and while others (Anser ed-Dine) decided to set up an Islamic Tuareg state through armed conflict and to apply sharia. Lastly, he wonders why the Tuareg from Niger did not take up arms while the Malian and Nigeria Tuareg rebels show great similarities
Jihadist groups have found a ‘safe haven’ in northern Mali. They have managed this by operating strategically to establish themselves and to develop relationships with local communities, but characteristics of the environment have also facilitated their development and survival. In northern Mali, the political landscape is fragmented, and replete with competition between the central authority and various groups of local elites, who are themselves divided. I conceptualise this fluid environment as a context that incentivises ‘political nomadism’. Using the Tuareg communities as an entry point, I explore the complex dynamics between local and national political actors and jihadist groups in northern Mali. I argue that the jihadist ‘safe haven’ in northern Mali is highly relational and has been facilitated by the form of political nomadism practiced in the region since the 1990s. The article is based on eight months of fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2017 in Mali and Niger.
Why was the mediation process in Mali accompanied by the fragmentation of armed movements, which had in principle embarked on the path of reconciliation? In this article, I turn the central proposition of economic theories of civil war – that mediation is exploited by its actors – on its head. It is not the egoistic rationality of belligerents that causes negotiations to collapse. Rather, the measures established by mediation endogenously create the conditions for the perpetuation of armed conflict. The mediators’ belief that economic resources are crucial to bringing about peace resulted in the establishment of a mechanism that imposed a system for remunerating those who had engaged in violence, past or present. Mediation thus constitutes a site for converting military capital into political and/or economic capital. This individual compensation encouraged armed groups to no longer act collectively and created a system that invited actors to use violence as a way of accessing the state and international sector remuneration. These mechanisms ultimately reinforced and even institutionalized relations of domination, thereby contributing to worsening the crisis at the origin of the conflict.
The Sahel is regularly conceived as a space where the interaction between climate and conflict can be observed. With a high-dependence on rain-fed agriculture and livestock, climate variability leaves pastoralists and smallholders particularly vulnerable. Moreover, the region remains fragile, embodied by factors such as weak capacity of the state, inter-group inequality and a history of violent conflict; as well as a decade of regional French-led military operations. As such, it is an important case study for the question of whose security is threatened by global warming. Discussions about climate security in the Sahel are not happening in a vacuum, but during a crisis-ridden moment. This article seeks to reframe the debate by grasping all these things at once: wrestling with the historical legacies of environmental interventionism, the politics of pragmatic crisis management, and the uncertainties of a climate-change future yet to be born. It develops an argument about the need to engage with a politics of the future via the politics of knowledge production.
This chapter compares performances at two cultural festivals in Agadez, a town in northern Niger, in terms of the types of power conveyed and their broader significance as cultural resources. Specifically, the focus is on two festival events that share a common concern with relationships between youths and older adults but are otherwise quite different. One celebration marks the end of Ramadan fasting, which attracts children seeking the blessing of the Sultan, a traditional leader, in his palace courtyard, where there are praises and expressions of homage. The other celebration honors young people’s completion of job apprenticeships, sponsored by USAID, an American aid agency, in a stadium near a technical school, where there are oral art performances, prayers, and speeches. Both events feature praise, but also critical commentaries and debates addressing strained relations between the generations in Agadez, where many face challenges from the influxes of refugees, returned labor migrants, youth unemployment, political violence, and neoliberal restructuring. How are local performers’ traditional powers to persuade and control reputation and policy marshaled and re-directed in each festival? The data, based on this anthropologist’s field research in Niger, suggest diverse ways cultural performances re-invent already-existing structures to revitalize creativity.KeywordsPerformancePowerAgencyAfricaNigerFestival
Since the mid-2000s, illicit trafficking in the Sahel, in particular drug trafficking, has regularly been analyzed through a security lens. This article, which is based on field research in Mali and Niger between 2016 and 2017, takes a critical approach in order to explain the issues associated with the “data” and “narratives” collected on drug trafficking. It highlights what they reveal or suggest in the context of a changing regional political economy. Having mainly interviewed Tuareg elites, the author presents their perceptions and moral economies around drug trafficking. Through the narratives of these elites, he analyzes more specifically their concerns about the revision of marital ties, the advent of new notabilities, the loss of control over “youth,” and the weakening of certain statutory realities.
Much of the attention paid to jihadist groups in the greater Sahel region have focused on the Tuareg movements. More recently, however, members of the Fulani ethnic group have become much more significant in the larger jihadist movement in the region. The Fulani-dominated Katiba Macina and Ansarul Islam have conducted major attacks and created a significant level of civilian displacement. Many of the Fulani operations to date clearly are a continuation of their earlier conflicts both with regional governments and other ethnic groups. The increased identification of the Fulani in the jihadist movement also provides a further example of how preexisting group grievances can be operationalized by leaders of violent groups into an ideological movement.
Until the beginning of 2020, the Sahel was something of an exception with respect to international rivalry between jihadists. This came to an end when violent clashes involving supporters of Al-Qaeda and those affiliated with the Islamic State were recorded in central Mali. The violent escalation that has taken place between Katiba Macina and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara in the inner Niger Delta should be framed as a battle between a dominant power whose position has begun to be contested, and a rising challenger trying to exploit the situation. More specifically, the rise of Islamic State appears directly connected to the material and symbolic crisis of the system of governance established by Katiba Macina in the area under its control. As the result of a process that cuts across various developments in the recent history of Mali, the conflict between the two jihadist movements threatens to unlock a new and more violent phase in Mali’s longstanding crisis.
The chapter explores how the entanglements between immorality, informality, and illegality contribute to the governance of the trans-Saharan migration. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in 2015 and 2016, the chapter focuses on the case of Niger, which is deemed as a major cross-road of migration flows toward North Africa and Europe. By doing so, it addresses a significant research gap, given the numerous reports addressing migration routes from, but not to, North Africa. The first part of the chapter accounts for the rise of the informal practices of cross-Saharan smuggling in Niger and situates them vis-à-vis the social norms, political struggles, and legal frameworks prevailing locally. It discusses how foreign, and namely European, agencies are currently promoting an increasing illegalization of trans-Saharan human mobility, while showing less concern for other traffics, such as that of drugs. The chapter then argues that the connivance of Nigerien authorities foils this emerging legal dispositif. The organization and protection rackets of migratory flows nourish the patronage networks upon which Nigerien regime relies; furthermore, it increases the safety of migratory patterns, albeit illegal. From this perspective, the chapter explores the contradictions and opportunities resulting from the intersection of different informal networks of power at different levels and responding to different normative orders.
As part of the collective work “Inconvenient Realities: Parastates, between Statehood and Frozen Conflict,” this article discusses today’s status of Azawad, a relatively remote parastate occupying the territories of northern Mali, currently entrapped in a low intensity conflict involving non-state actors, local security forces, and external interveners. By retracing the history and the development of Azawad, the article identifies the different and partly contrasting socio-economic and ethnic elements at the basis of Azawadian parastatehood, and it charts the dialectical process of co-construction, which have shaped and inextricably linked together the Azawad and the Malian state. Moreover, it underlines the complex and evolving relations existing between “nationalist” Tuareg rebels and jihadist groups, with the aim to problematize the classical distinction between secessionist and terrorist parastates. By showing the connections between parastatehood, hybrid governance, patronage politics, and statelessness characterizing the situation in the Azawad, the article claims that the current condition of stalled conflict represents a temporary and unstable arrangement, which is paving the way for further parastatehood projects to arise.
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article analyse la construction historique des tensions politiques dans la région de Mopti en insistant sur les dynamiques conflictuelles qui s’articulent autour de la hiérarchie entre groupes statutaires peuls et les transformations de l’économie politique du monde rural. La formation de groupes armés à vocation religieuse, aux contours flous, a notamment permis d’inverser les rapports de forces avec certaines élites locales, désormais moins capables d’imposer leur autorité. Par ailleurs, l’article montre le blocage de la représentation démocratique inapte à apaiser les tensions. Les élites peules issues des groupes statutaires dominants ont su se redéployer dans la nouvelle arène électorale depuis la mise en place du processus de démocratisation initié dans les années 1990 et ainsi prendre contrôle des postes électifs, souvent au détriment des catégories subalternes. Enfin, l’article montre que le rôle de l’État dans la région est largement perçu de manière négative.
RÉSUMÉ
Particulièrement ciblés par les opérations franco-maliennes depuis 2013, les groupes djihadistes qui opèrent dans le cadre du conflit malien ont su faire preuve de résilience. Cet article discute de leur ancrage social, des liens qu’ils ont tissés avec différentes communautés et de leur influence au niveau local. Se définissant sur les territoires qu’ils contrôlent comme des arbitres et des pourvoyeurs de sécurité et biens que l’État malien défaillant ou absent ne peut produire, les groupes djihadistes s’imposent comme des acteurs de la gouvernance locale. S’ils continuent à utiliser une violence de coercition pour contraindre les populations locales, ils instrumentalisent avant tout les tensions inter-et intra-communautaires pour diffuser des modèles alternatifs de gouvernance. Ce faisant, ces groupes contribuent à accentuer la crise de légitimité dont souffre l’État malien sur des pans entiers de son territoire.
RÉSUMÉ
L’intervention internationale au Mali est conduite sur la base d’un cadre conceptuel douteux et d’une grille d’analyse peu rigoureuse, soit la thèse de la menace terroriste. Un dispositif militaire impressionnant a ainsi été mobilisé pour contrer cette menace. Nous soutenons que l’importance et la centralité accordées aux efforts contre-terroristes sapent les efforts de résolution des conflits maliens. Face aux critiques concernant le contre-terrorisme, la réponse a été de redoubler d’efforts, via la création d’une force conjointe du G5 Sahel et une présence militaire étrangère en croissance au Sahel-Sahara. Le Mali se retrouve ainsi au centre des débats sur l’avenir du maintien de la paix et des interventions militaires internationales. Au final, le résultat est une posture de guerre perpétuelle qui est perçue comme nécessaire pour concevoir tout espoir de paix et de réconciliation.
Les frontières africaines sont souvent décrites comme des cicatrices de la violence des impérialismes étrangers en Afrique. Ce lieu commun fait encore aujourd'hui partie des catégories qui fondent nos regards sur le continent. Mais ce discours, en cherchant à dénoncer l'arbitraire colonial, réduit les configurations territoriales africaines à de simples conséquences de la domination européenne et fait des populations africaines les spectateurs passifs de leur propre histoire. Aux antipodes de ce cliché, cet ouvrage propose une histoire longue de la constitution des frontières d'un État — le Niger — englobant dans un même regard un siècle d'histoire régionale et soixante ans de domination coloniale. Cette approche permet de mettre au jour la place des enjeux locaux et régionaux dans cette histoire de frontières et de territoires, et de révéler qu'au sein de ceux-ci la colonisation n'est qu'un moment parmi d'autres. Cet ouvrage raconte une histoire paradoxale, celle d'une poignée de militaires coloniaux qui, au début du xxe siècle, instituent dans les plus grandes difficultés un gouvernement précaire qui s'appuie très largement sur les organisations politiques et territoriales locales, contribuant ainsi à les vider de leur sens et à amoindrir leur importance. Cette appropriation coloniale des frontières a été si forte qu'elle a fini par faire oublier aux colonisateurs, tout comme aux sociétés concernées elles-mêmes, que leur origine était le plus souvent locale et avait été négociée avec les populations et les autorités politiques. Ces frontières furent marquées par les dynamiques historiques internes du Soudan central au xixe siècle, et notamment les répercussions du jihad d'Ousman dan Fodio. Pourtant, l'histoire de leur tracé a contribué à construire le grand récit d'Européens maîtres du jeu imposant sans considération le partage du monde.
The French policy in the Sahel: a military obsession
This article analyses France’s security policy in the Western part of the Sahel and Sahara, from Tchad to Mauritania. It shows that it lies on three principles: an overestimated importance of Islam in the production of revolts that are qualified of jihadists; a very military vision of gigantic interconnected spaces; an assimilation of the war on terrorism to war on poverty and illegal emigration.
À propos de la crise malienne, on lit souvent des analyses géopolitiques ou géostratégiques qui se focalisent sur les appellations des principales forces armées ou sur les noms de quelques individus emblématiques. Ces noms sont généralement associés, au moins implicitement, au camp du « bien » ou au camp du « mal », selon les points de vue. Cet article propose une autre approche, au plus près des réalités quotidiennes vécues par les populations qui évoluent dans la région de Ménaka. Certaines des forces armées et des personnalités connues se retrouvent ici, mais avec le souci de les restituer dans leurs environnements sociaux, dans des histoires locales anciennes et aux côtés d’autres groupes dont on entend moins parler. Il s’agit de comprendre les dessous des rapports de violence qui s’amplifient depuis 2012. On découvre alors que les logiques de concurrence, de protection ou encore de représailles, si courantes dans la vie « ordinaire », se retrouvent exacerbées, du fait aussi de l’intervention de forces armées extérieures.
This article addresses the conflictual and competitive dynamics between Tuareg political elites, more specifically between the Ifoghas and the Imghad, during the last Malian conflict which initially started in 2012. Using familial and kinship narratives, Tuareg elites from the Ifoghas and Imghad communities look to attempt to justify their positioning and to delegitimize their competitors to dominate the Kidal region political arena. The article explains how the Ifoghas’ traditional chieftancy and their close relatives mobilise a kinship narrative depending on the circumstances to keep and assert their power in the region of Kidal. It then focuses on the political autonomisation process of some Imghad in the Kidal region who frame a transversal kinship narrative to the whole northern Mali and impose themselves progressively in the Kidal political arena. These narratives were collected in Mali between 2016 and 2017. They refer mainly to the different armed conflicts between these two communities since the 1990s and to the electoral competitions between them in the Kidal region.
Alors que Daech et Al-Qaïda se sont violemment affrontés au Moyen-Orient, leurs « filiales » sahéliennes ont eu tendance à s’éviter. Depuis 2017, elles ont même entamé un rapprochement et coopèrent occasionnellement. La chute de Daech en zone syro-irakienne aura des répercussions au Sahel. S’il n’est pas dit que l’État islamique au Grand Sahara (EIGS) et le Groupe de soutien à l’islam et aux musulmans (GSIM) fusionnent, il est en revanche assuré que le djihadisme perdurera dans la zone.
RÉSUMÉ
Les relations entretenues entre certaines communautés touarègues et l’État malien sont conflictuelles, et ce, dès l’obtention de l’indépendance du Mali. Les rébellions touarègues et les répressions successives commises par les représentants de l’État ont accentué les ressentiments de part et d’autre et nourri des mémoires alimentant les potentialités de conflit. Cet article souhaite se pencher sur les enjeux de mémoires qui sont une dimension clé pour comprendre les dynamiques conflictuelles entre les communautés touarègues et l’État malien. Dans cet article, l’emphase sera mise sur les représentations des élites politiques touarègues. Les mémoires et représentations des élites politiques touarègues participent à définir “l’assemblage politique touareg” que nous conceptualisons dans le présent article. Le matériel empirique a été majoritairement collecté lors d’un terrain de recherche au Mali, réalisé de novembre 2016 à février 2017. Il se compose principalement d’entrevues semi-dirigées et de discussions avec des élites politiques touarègues.
Cet article vise à montrer que les approches politiques choisies par les États du Niger et du Mali pour intégrer les communautés locales dans le projet d’État-nation ont produit des trajectoires différenciées, lesquelles permettent d’expliquer en partie les situations contrastées observées aujourd’hui dans les deux pays. En institutionnalisant la chefferie traditionnelle, devenue partie intégrante de l’État, le Niger a mieux intégré les communautés locales que ne l’a fait le Mali, où l’administration territoriale a tenu un rôle dominant au niveau local. Dans les deux pays, les processus de décentralisation mis en œuvre dans un contexte post-conflit ont servi de catalyseur pour arbitrer les luttes de positionnement dans les arènes locales, tout en favorisant l’émergence de nouvelles relations avec l’État.
This chapter provides a contextualized overview of Tuareg separatism and the violence that has accompanied it in Mali. The chapter sketches key episodes and developments in the conflict between the Malian state and Tuareg separatist nationalists and outlines Tuareg political goals and internal dynamics. The chapter examines the impact on Tuareg separatism of the presence of international Jihadi-Salafist movements in the region and the resulting intrusion of the so-called War on Terror (Overseas Contingency Operations) during the past decade.
Our paper investigates the political trajectories of armed actors in Mali since 2012, using recent theoretical advances on alliance formation and collapse in civil wars. Our paper establishes an analytically productive distinction between levels of wartime cleavages and factors shaping groups’ trajectories. Strategic alliances, we argue, emerge from anticipated benefits on the national political scene as well as in the local political economy. The two sets of considerations do not necessarily converge. This dual logic is studied through the cases of two armed groups, both siding with the government after originally aligning with jihadi and separatist coalitions respectively.
This article assesses the concepts of militarism and militarization in relation to contemporary security interventions in the Sahel, a region increasingly understood through the prisms of violence, cross-border illicit flows, and limited statehood. This region is subject to security interventions that include French military action, EU-funded projects to prevent drug trafficking, and both bilateral and multilateral efforts against irregular migration. To many observers, it is experiencing an ongoing militarization. We argue that while the inextricable concepts of militarism and militarization go some way towards explaining interventions’ occasional use of military violence, they are limited in their grasp of the non-martial and symbolic violence in security practices. We instead propose a focus on assemblages of (in)security to show the heterogeneous mix of global and local actors, and often contradictory rationalities and practices that shape the logics of symbolic and martial violence in the region. Throughout, the article draws on the authors’ fieldwork in Mauritania, Senegal, and Niger, and includes two case studies on efforts against the Sahel’s ‘crime–terror nexus’ and to control irregular migration through the region. The article’s contribution is to better situate debates about militarism and militarization in relation to (in)security and to provide a more granular understanding of the Sahel’s security politics.
This article examines the effects of UN peacekeeping and international counterterrorism operations upon the possibilities of peace in Mali. Following the January 2013 French operation Serval, the international intervention was divided between two military missions: UN peacekeeping in Mali and French-led counterterrorism. The article explores what it means to distinguish between peacekeeping and counterterrorism for international conflict management and Malian conflict resolution dynamics. It is argued that the binaries of war and peace, and of intervention and sovereignty, are no longer opposites, but blurred into an emerging ‘new normal’ of permanent military intervention. The construction of a regional counterterrorism governance or militarisation is shown to circumvent the fundamental questions about Malian peace, state sovereignty, and nationhood. The article points to how the international ‘division of labour’ between peacekeeping and counterterrorism defines the possibilities of peace in Mali in relation to the perceived necessities of the ‘global war on terror’.
This article analyses the precarious alliances concluded between insurgent groups in the context of the conflict in Northern Mali that began in 2012. Building on the literature on civil wars and social movements, it develops a mechanism-based approach that intends to shed light on the processes of alliance formation and disintegration that are taking place at the meso- and micro-levels of analysis. It shows that the solidity and durability of alliances in a civil war context strongly depend on the interplay of three intra-organizational and inter-organizational mechanisms (brokerage, competition and shifting alliance), which contribute to the shaping of complex local power games. While ideological compatibility facilitates alignment and organizational collaboration, alliances are first and foremost cemented or fissured through the changing short- and mid-term personal interests of a variety of actors, who try to adapt to a volatile context.
On 9 February 2007, the military post of Iferouane, a Northern locality of Niger, was attacked by a handful of armed men riding five pick-ups.1 Three soldiers of the Forces armées Nigériennes (FAN) were killed and some military material was stolen. Although of unusual gravity, the attack could have been considered as another isolated act of ‘residual banditry’, as Niger’s authorities used to label any pseudo-criminal act perpetrated in the North by suspected ex-rebels since the low-intensity insurrection that opposed Tuareg armed groups and governmental forces officially came to an end in the mid-1990s.
La "question touarègue", ses traitements successifs et ses reformulations jusqu'aux années 1990
Résumé
Le 11 janvier 2013, le président François Hollande justifiait une intervention militaire française au Mali sur la possibilité de l'effondrement de l'État malien face à une rébellion armée dans le Nord du pays. La guerre était ainsi autorisée et expliquée par l'incapacité de l'État malien à répondre à la menace. Ces explications et analyses centrées sur les enjeux sécuritaires cachent plus qu'elles ne révèlent, notamment les objectifs ontologiques de la guerre et ses enjeux identitaires. Afin de les révéler, cet article articule l'interaction entre le déploiement de la violence internationale et la construction d'un État et d'un imaginaire politique maliens. Nous concluons que la paix au Mali en 2013 a été recherchée par la militarisation de la gouvernance démocratique, avec pour effet de consolider le modèle de gouvernance d'avant-guerre. Contrairement aux analyses axées sur la sécurité, cet article démontre que les frontières et les limites du conflit malien ne sont pas seulement territoriales, mais identitaires et idéologiques.
Apres les elections de 1999, le Niger croyait etre entre dans une periode de stabilite politique. Mais la mauvaise gestion des anciens rebelles apres les accords de paix qui avaient mis fin au precedent conflit et les fragilites de la democratie nigerienne ont conduit a une nouvelle rebellion touaregue. Le mouvement d’aujourd’hui s’appuie sur la frustration des anciens combattants et sur les faiblesses de l’armee pour controler le nord du pays. Alors que de nouveaux enjeux economiques et ecologiques apparaissent, la crispation autoritaire du president Tandja ainsi que l’instrumentalisation des acteurs etrangers par les deux parties au conflit accentuent les risques d’embrasement.
En presentant un ensemble de recherches « pragmatiques » ou « praxeologiques » qui ont eu cours en France depuis les annees 1980, et en les augmentant de quelques idees heritees du pragmatisme nord-americain, l’auteur s’interroge sur leur pertinence pour une sociologie des mobilisations collectives. L’article s’ordonne autour de quatre points.
Tuaregs live in the Sahel and the southern Sahara. Until the beginning of this century, these people were spread out in different tribes each forming an independent political group. Despite the national borders of Algeria, Mali, Libya and Niger, which separate them today, they share a common language descended from Berber. In Gens de parole, Dominique Casajus undertakes an ethnological study of a people who inspired a whole mythology in the imagination of French colonists and historians. The author particularly focuses on their oral tradition and language, to which they give great importance. Their favorite uses of language are elegiac and war poetry. Casajus, aware of the subjective aspect of ethnology, offers the most objective analysis and observation possible on Tuaregs. [see extract: http://books.google.fr/books?id=S8KdAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr#v=onepage&q&f=false]
This book deals with political changes and internal debates about political changes within Tamasheq (Tuareg) society in Mali from the late 1940s to the present. These debates focus on political structures introduced to Tamasheq society from outside and their impact on and incorporation into local concepts of politics. The book discusses the relationship between the Malian State and Tuareg society, which has been characterized by three violent uprisings against the Malian State: between 1963 and 1964, between 1990 and 1996, and between 2006 and 2009. Social and political tensions are highlighted which haunt all of the Sahel today: the heritage of slavery, local and European concepts of race and the racialization of social and political relations, and the presence of competing nationalist forces in a postcolonial State. [ASC Leiden abstract].
Beaucoup de rebelles touareg au Mali tiennent un discours nationaliste en revendiquant une zone autonome dans le nord du pays ou meme un Etat-nation qui regrouperait toute la « nation touaregue » (temust) de la sous-region. Ce discours s'oppose a la scission du mouvement rebelle en plusieurs groupements politico-militaires independants se combattant parfois militairement. On peut demontrer que les differences entre les mouvements rebelles ne refletent pas uniquement des divergences d'orientations politiques actuelles, mais renvoient aussi a des relations d'hostilite ou d'alliance entre des tribus ou des confederations de tribus. Ces relations ne remontent cependant pas tres loin ; elles ont pris leur forme actuelle au debut du siecle, lors de la penetration coloniale. C'est dans le contexte de la conquete que quelques tribus ont perdu de l'influence, que d'autres ont pu profiter de la situation du bouleversement en elargissant leur zone d'influence, pendant que d'autres encore ont simplement ete creees par l'administration coloniale dans le cadre de sa politique de diviser pour regner.
A. Bourgeot. Transsaharan Trade, the Sanusiya, and the Twareg Revolts of 1916-17. The Sanusi influence has been a contributive factor of the Twareg revolts rather than their primary cause, which is to be sought in the traditional rivalries between Twareg groups for the control of the transsaharan trade and for political supremacy on the desert and its fringes. Since the inception of French colonial domination an opposition obtained between those leaders (Musa Ag Amastan, Lowai) who co-operated with the colonizers and those (Attisi Ag Amellal, Firhun. . .) who opposed them. The latter allied themselves with the Sanusiya against French imperialism in the wider context of the contemporary competition between imperialist strategies. Thus the Twareg rebellions cannot be considered as merely Sanusi-inspired or Sanusi-manipulated.