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In this guest post from Andrew Lebovich, the recent events in Mali are dissected from the military coup to the future of the ‘newly liberated nation of Azawad’. Instability in the region is rife and Andrew posits that without a rapid response, the situation is liable to degenerate rapidly.
by Andrew Lebovich
Less than two weeks after a group of Malian junior officers led a coup against the government of president Amadou Toumani Touré, Mali’s war in the north has fallen apart. In a three-day period that ended Monday, Tuareg rebels had seized the three major northern towns of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu, victories unparalleled in the past.
On Thursday, a spokesman for the Malian Tuareg rebel group the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (known by its French acronym the MNLA) said that the group’s fighters had arrived “at the frontier of the Azawad” – a mostly scrub and desert territory the size of France that comprises a diverse ethnic population – and declared a halt to military operations. Later the same day, the group declared the unilateral independence of the region. In a dizzying flourish of events, the war that Tuareg rebels had fought since January 17, the fourth in a series of rebellions that began in 1963, appeared at first blush to be over. Instead, the real fight over the Azawad may have just begun.
