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Mali: Something To Be Avoided


Valin

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March 30, 2020:

Parliamentary elections, delayed nearly two years, were finally carried out. This was the first of two rounds. There will be a second round of elections in April. Participation was low, mainly because of fears of violence from Islamic terrorists or from disease (coronavirus). Despite all that most eligible voters could vote. Most of the 19 million people in Mali don’t have to deal with the Islamic or tribal terrorism found mainly in thinly populated central and northern Mali. Everyone knows about this problem and how it has spread from the north to central Mali in the last five years. The main reason for the spread of this violence is corruption. It has been a problem ever since Mali became independent after the French left in 1960. It is a problem common throughout Africa and many other parts of the world.

The foreign aid donors have been putting more and more pressure on the notoriously corrupt Mali politicians to back off on plundering the foreign aid. When faced with this pressure a favorite ploy of corrupt African politicians is to blame foreigners for all the problems the local politicians have caused. The corruption is perpetuated because senior politicians share the looted aid with their followers. To make matters worse the most corrupt politicians try to avoid criticism by blaming foreign interference by peacekeepers (who are mostly African) and the special French counter-terrorism force (which is entirely French) for somehow causing all that is wrong with Mali. There are 12,000 peacekeepers up north and 5,000 French troops operate throughout the region against Islamic terrorists. The peacekeepers and French troops are welcome up north and that is one of many differences between northern and southern Mali.

The thinly populated northern two-thirds of the country has a population of less than three million, which is about 16 percent of the population. The north was very poor in the best of times, and several years of Islamic terrorist violence there halted tourism (a major source of income, especially in the three major cities up there) and the movement of many goods.

There are also ethnic and tribal differences to contend with. The Tuareg majority in the far north are more Arab than African and the peace deal with them was stalled for over a year because the black majority in the south did not want to even consider granting as much autonomy as the Tuaregs demanded. The two groups have always been at odds but were only united in the same country by the colonial French in the 19th century. Like most African countries, dividing the nation is not an acceptable option and the colonial borders are considered sacrosanct. The current mess began when France took swift action in January 2013 by leading a military operation to clear Islamic terrorists out of northern Mali. Aided by Chad and a growing number of other African peacekeeping contingents, this effort continues and is somewhat open ended. The French acted because in 2012 Tuareg tribal rebels (with the help of al Qaeda affiliated Islamic terrorists) in northern Mali chased out government forces and declared a separate Tuareg state. The Mali army mutinied (because of lack of support from the corrupt government) down south and took control of the capital. The army soon backed off when neighboring nations threatened to intervene. The elected government was soon back in charge and more corrupt than ever.

Lots of corruption often produces rebels and in Moslem majority nations that often means Islamic terrorist groups........................(Snip)

 

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Corruption A word I see very often, alongside Incompetence.

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