The case for Azawad

Abstract

Since Mali achieved independence from France, the marginalised Tuareg population of Mali has sought independence and the right to form their own nation, ‘Azawad’. These efforts have continuously been frustrated by the Tuaregs' neighbours, due to competing nationalist pride and interests in the mineral resources believed to lie under the northern Malian soil. Thus far, the Tuaregs of northern Mali have been largely neglected and denied both inclusive and effective governance by the various Malian governments from the southern Malian capital of Bamako. When negotiations have failed, Tuareg attempts to seize their own independence through violence have been brutally crushed by the Malian government. The Malian government will neither advance the interests of the Tuaregs nor allow them the freedom to pursue their own path in the world. The advent of the ‘Arab Spring’ in Libya provided another opportunity for the Tuaregs to pursue their dreams of an independent Azawad. Tuareg fighters returning from Libya carried with them both considerable combat experience and stockpiles of arms that they used to temporarily free their homeland. Unfortunately, the Tuaregs' whirlwind conquest of northern Mali was undone by the emergence of a new transnational threat in the Sahel. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) supplanted the previously victorious Tuaregs and attempted to turn Azawad into a Taliban-esque caliphate. French intervention defeated AQIM, but set the stage for a continuation of the cycle of violence and instability borne from the unwillingness of the international community to support the Tuaregs' legitimate right to self-determination.