Light at the end of the tunnel?

Posted on April 7, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

It had been rumored to be taking shape for more than 24 hours, and finally on Friday night came the official announcement: Mali’s ruling CNRDRE junta has signed an agreement with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to transfer power to a constitutionally legitimate leader, in exchange for an amnesty for the CNRDRE’s members and the lifting of economic sanctions against Mali. You can watch the video of the junta’s announcement here.

It appears that the new head of state will be Dioncounda Traoré, speaker of Mali’s National Assembly as well as the presidential candidate of the powerful Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali (ADEMA) , which dominated multiparty politics here from 1992 until 2002.

Bamako billboard for Dioncounda Traoré (my photo, taken 2 weeks before the coup)

Dioncounda — Malians generally refer to him by his first name, since his last is so common here — has been talked about ever since the coup, because as head of the National Assembly he would be the designated successor to the president if ever the latter could not fulfill his duties. When the coup happened on March 21, Dioncounda was out of the country, in Burkina Faso to be exact, and arrived back in Bamako late on April 7. He then appeared on the 8:00 p.m. ORTM news to discuss his new role.

Key to this transition will be naming a new prime minister, who will actually oversee the composition of a new government and try to organize national elections (constitutionally mandated within 40 days). Dioncounda’s actual role in this process, as reported by RFI, may be rather minor.

How will Malians respond? Early reactions I’ve heard and read online have expressed relief that perhaps Mali’s political nightmare may finally be ending.

But nobody is celebrating — not even, I suspect, Dioncounda Traoré, who from the beginning had been rumored to be reluctant to take the job of interim president. It’s unclear how elections can be organized in such a short period when the northern half of Mali’s territory is now occupied by rebel groups and the Malian army is in complete disarray.

Dioncounda also carries significant political baggage with him. He is a savvy insider, and as speaker of the National Assembly since 2007, he let the country’s sole legislative body become a rubber stamp for decisions made by President Amadou Toumani Touré. He is therefore associated with the same corruption, nepotism and abuse that made Touré so unpopular during his second term (2007-2012).

Moreover, even if Mali’s classe politique manages to sort out a smooth return to constitutional rule, the country’s greatest challenge remains before it: fighting the rebellion and reunifying the country.

Now all eyes turn to the nomination of the new prime minister, which must be someone around whom Malians of various ideologies and affiliations can unite. My prediction, given Mali’s current political climate and frustration with its politicians, is that whomever Dioncounda names will be either an outsider or Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a former prime minister and opposition party leader. Keita (or “IBK” as he’s known here) is one of the few major figures on Mali’s political scene today who was not co-opted by President Touré and his “consensus” approach. But IBK is also a presidential candidate (he was widely believed to have been cheated out of a spot in the second round of presidential elections in 2002), which may work against him.

A really interesting choice for P.M. would be Ahmed Mohamed ag Hamani, who served in this role from 2002 to 2004. He was President Touré’s first prime minister, which would also be a strike against him in the eyes of many, but he is also a Tuareg (well, technically un targui, which is the singular form). Appointing him to run Mali’s transition during this critical phase would send an important message to Tuareg everywhere, not to mention to non-Tuareg Malians, that the Malian state is truly committed to serving people of all ethnic groups and regions.

Whatever happens in the next few days and weeks, Mali’s transition will be difficult. Yet there is hope in Bamako that, following President Touré’s ouster, Malians will no longer allow their politicians to take advantage of them. “After what Malians have just gone through,” one Malian commented on the CNRDRE’s announcement of the transition, “Dioncounda won’t be able to cheat or steal anything unless we let him do it.”

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Brief update for Thursday, April 5

Posted on April 5, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

7:00 a.m.: I don’t have much time to write today’s post: power is going to be cut soon, and will remain cut for ten to twelve hours if the past few days are any guide. The state-owned utility companies are rationing electricity and also water in all neighborhoods (though our water has yet to be cut). So I will limit this post to a few indications of the current state of affairs in Bamako.

Yesterday, Wednesday, I traveled through downtown via taxi as well as through a couple of southeastern neighborhoods via SOTRAMA. There was still a normal amount of traffic, fares were the same as always. But people are aware that the gasoline and diesel are running out. (The state newspaper L’Essor predicts that current fuel supplies can last about ten days.) Banque Atlantique has posted signs at its ATMs saying that they are closed until further notice. Also yesterday, my daughter’s school in Torokorobougou closed mid-morning due to power and water cuts, but is set to reopen today. Bamakois are especially worried about higher food prices, and there are rumors that a kilo of rice, currently selling for 400-500 francs, is soon going to cost 1500 francs; if such an increase does occur, it will effectively make this staple food unaffordable for many households here. Even before the coup, certain staples were getting expensive because of insufficient rains last year.

Significantly, and against all expectations, there have been no demonstrations against the sanctions or against ECOWAS that I’m aware of. ORTM news has featured various “civil society” representatives (often affiliated with MP22, the SADI-backed pro-junta organization) denouncing the embargo as illegal and immoral, but there’s been no mobilization of people in the streets. Bamako is starting to see small-scale protests against the junta, however. The CNRDRE regime has also announced that it is postponing (perhaps cancelling?) the “national convention” it had scheduled for today. Perhaps not coincidentally, several political parties and civil society groups had said that they would boycott the meeting.

In the north, the rebellion has dramatically exacerbated an existing humanitarian crisis. RFI is reporting this morning that the separatist movement has stopped its advance at Douentza, a town 145 km northeast of Mopti. This means that the zone the separatists call “Azawad” is now entirely in rebel hands. The MNLA has declared a unilateral cease-fire, having essentially achieved its territorial objectives. But L’Essor also reports that four Tuareg rebels were killed in Sevaré (just outside Mopti) as they tried to infiltrate the army base there.

5 April 2012: Another ordinary day in Bamako

1:30 p.m.: I’m taking advantage of the fact that the power is still on (a minor miracle!) to update this post. I spent several hours downtown this morning and found merchants surprisingly nonchalant about the embargo. Several swore to me that the Mali/Senegal border is not in fact closed, and that imports of fuel and food continue to arrive from Senegal. This contradicts everything that’s been written about the embargo so far, however, so I don’t consider it trustworthy. Still, it’s interesting to me that people in the marketplace are so low-key about Mali’s current situation, and the ones I spoke with are not at all concerned about political violence in the days or weeks ahead.

The service stations I saw still had fuel available and there were no lines — perhaps the lines observed in the embargo’s first couple of days were due to a demand spike (hoarding by customers) rather than a supply shortage? Moreover, a friend of mine in the U.S. was able to send a Western Union transfer to Mali yesterday, which means the banks aren’t cut off.

All of which makes me wonder whether the sanctions are working as well as they’re supposed to. Give them time, I suppose….

To read a wide-ranging exchange between five scholars on current events in Mali (Isaie Dougnon of U. of Bamako, Bruce Hall of Duke, Baz Le Cocq of U. of Ghent, Greg Mann of Columbia, and me), see the transcript on the African Arguments website.

[Note, however, that one of my remarks in this conversation was edited: On the possibility of an ECOWAS military intervention in Mali, it currently reads “let’s be honest, the last thing Mali needs right now is thousands of ECOWAS soldiers with automatic weapons running loose on its territory.” The original version read “let’s be honest, the last thing Mali needs right now is thousands of Nigerians with automatic weapons running loose on its territory. Remember ECOMOG (‘Every Car or Movable Object Gone’)?” In all seriousness, it’s not that I think the Nigerians should play no role, it’s just that their track record in West African peacekeeping operations is rather mixed.]

4:30 p.m.: Reports are emerging that the sanctions may soon be lifted — but let’s take them with a grain of salt. We also heard reports last Sunday that threatened sanctions would be delayed. Also, it’s unclear what the CNRDRE junta has done to merit the lifting of the embargo, but we’re told to expect an announcement by Capt. Sanogo soon.

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Heading for the exits

Posted on April 4, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Throughout the troubling events of the last two weeks, I have clung to the belief that Mali’s political crisis will be short-lived. Then last night I got some news that underscored the gravity of the present situation: Peace Corps is pulling its volunteers out of Mali.

Consider that in 41 years of working in this country, Peace Corps has never evacuated before. Through the killer droughts and famines of the 1970s and 1980s, through the popular revolution and coup d’etat that toppled a longstanding dictator in the early 1990s, Peace Corps Volunteers have been here, quietly serving the Malian communities in which they lived.

Over the years the Mali program has often received Volunteers evacuated from other regional trouble spots such as the Central African Republic and Guinea. It has never before had to order its own staff to pack up and go. As long as the nearly 200 PCVs remained in Mali’s towns and villages, I could entertain the notion that things hadn’t gotten that bad.

Yesterday I ran into a group of young Volunteers getting ready to head home. They were sad to go, and they were worried for Mali and for the friends they’re leaving behind.

Meanwhile France has temporarily closed its high school in Bamako and has recommended (though has stopped short of ordering) its 5000 citizens in Mali to leave. Now the U.S. State Department has initiated “authorized departure” of its personnel and their dependents from Mali, and the Peace Corps program is suspending its work here.

Junta leader Capt. Amadou Sanogo makes a statement to the press on 3 April

As I contend they’ve been doing all along, Mali’s coup leaders continue to improvise. They have adopted an approach that appears to be conciliatory toward the international community — promising a return to constitutional rule and a swift handover to an elected civilian government — but that stubbornly adheres to their own obscure agenda and timetable. For all its overtures and calls for dialogue, the ruling CNRDRE junta does not appear willing to make concessions in response to outside pressure.

Now the junta is offering a “national convention” with Mali’s entire “political class” to discuss the country’s future. In a move that signals it may be more concerned with looking back than looking forward, it has also proposed putting the deposed president Amadou Toumani Touré on trial for high treason. This is significant because it effectively forestalls any attempt to return the country to its pre-coup legal framework, which would restore Touré (however symbolically or temporarily) to power.

The only encouraging sign in the CNRDRE’s behavior is that so far it has refrained from demonizing the governments and regional bodies opposing it, leaving more critical responses to some of its most radical supporters. But talk of military intervention by Mali’s neighbors grows louder by the day.

The sanctions, which appear to have taken the junta by surprise, are beginning to bite. Already throughout Bamako there are long lines at banks for cash and at service stations for fuel. Some Western diplomats here predict that the junta will not be able to withstand the embargo for even three weeks.

How much worse will things get? Do I want to stay to find out?

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Ca va chauffer

Posted on April 3, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

There’s a French phrase Ca va chauffer — “It’s going to heat up” — that’s useful for so many occasions, especially in francophone Africa. It can describe the sense of an impending competition between two evenly matched rivals, such as undefeated soccer teams or contestants (for example, on a reality cooking show in Quebec named “Ca va chauffer!”). It can describe the ambiance of a popular night spot buzzing with energy, as the music builds and revelers know the evening is reaching its climax.

In Bamako at this time of year, the phrase has a quite literal application. For a month now, temperatures here have been trending inexorably upward. Consider this weather forecast for early April:

And it will only get hotter. Even in the best of times, April and May can be most unpleasant in Bamako. To make matters worse, Mali’s hot season is also the period when the supply of electricity is lowest (due to declining water levels behind hydroelectric dams at Selingue and Manantali after months of seasonal drought), at the same time that demand peaks. Which for most city residents means blackouts and sweltering nights in stuffy concrete-block houses, deprived of ceiling fans and air conditioning.

There’s another, more sinister connotation of Ca va chauffer, when it’s used to express the sense of a looming confrontation between powerful forces on the political scene, along the lines of “what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.” Ca va chauffer means that things are about to get ugly.

Unfortunately for Bamakois, these latter two meanings are now converging. The stage is set for a high-stakes political conflict at the height of the hot season.

Despite vaguely promising on Sunday to return Mali to its pre-coup constitution and to civilian rule, the CNRDRE junta seems to be digging in its heels. Within hours of making his supposedly conciliatory remarks, Captain Amadou Sanogo, the junta leader, stated that the CNRDRE remains in power and will play a guiding role in Mali’s transition. The fact that the Malian army is in total disarray, and that three of Mali’s eight regions have fallen to a motley coalition of Islamist and Tuareg rebels since the coup, has not phased the junta’s determination — even though its primary justification for ousting President Amadou Toumani Touré last month was the need for a firm military response to the rebellion.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), after threatening for days, finally acted on Monday afternoon, initiating, with immediate effect, a wide range of economic, financial and diplomatic sanctions against Mali. This means among other things that Mali’s borders have been sealed, and that Malian banks will no longer be able to draw cash from the BCEAO, the West African central bank. Which means in turn that fuel and cash, among other things, are about to become scarce commodities.

The ECOWAS embargo strategy, it appears, is designed to turn up the heat on the junta by making life extremely uncomfortable for Malians. Soldiers, police and civil servants will stop following orders once their salaries are no longer paid. More broadly, ordinary citizens will feel the squeeze when they cannot get gasoline for their motorcycles or diesel for their trucks. When the state-owned power utility cannot get the 16 tanker trucks of fuel it needs to run its generators every day, rolling blackouts will get longer and more frequent. Already they’re lasting up to 10 hours in various parts of Bamako. Tailors won’t be able to sew, welders won’t be able to weld, only the lucky few with generators will be able to watch television (and where will they get fuel?). Food prices will skyrocket. It isn’t hard to imagine that within a few days, Bamako’s population will be out in the streets expressing their discontent with the regime in power.

(People I knew here were generally indifferent to ECOWAS prior to the coup, but now they are becoming critical. The irony that the group’s designated mediator in the Mali crisis is Blaise Compaoré, who himself came to power in 1987 through a coup leading to the death of one of the region’s most revered leaders, Thomas Sankara, is lost on no one. For an array of critical Malian perspectives on ECOWAS and its sanctions, see this selection of responses from various political figures and this interview with activist Aminata Dramane Traoré.)

What’s the way out? There’s no easy answer. The main return-to-constitutional-rule scenario envisages President Touré being restored to office, then resigning and handing over power to his designated successor, National Assembly speaker Dioncounda Traoré. But the same constitution would then call for elections to be organized within six weeks. With the country effectively cut in two by the rebellion, holding elections will be impossible. A longer-term transition plan will be needed, one not supervised by the junta.

France has urged its citizens in Mali to leave, while also making clear that French troops will not be deployed to Mali. It’s unclear how much longer American citizens will be able to remain.

Ca va chauffer. We can only hope that the rains will come early this year.

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A tale of two African cities: Bamako and Brazzaville

Posted on April 2, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Post-coup situation update, Monday, April 2: Bamako continues to operate under a veneer of normality, with most businesses and schools open, and both private and state broadcasters airing their regular music and cultural programs. Nobody is fooled by appearances, however: taxi drivers say they aren’t getting much business because a lot of people are choosing to stay home, and business owners in the city center say customers are avoiding the downtown area, which is the usual scene of demonstrations. Our son’s daycare, from which we received our first indication of trouble brewing on March 21 (its early closure was announced several minutes ahead of the US Embassy’s SMS alert notification), which was open for half-days last week, decided to close last Friday “until the situation calms down.” Then we got a call from them this morning saying they are open again.

The rebellion in the north continues to gather momentum, having taken all three major northern cities (Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu) in three days. It was announced on Friday that Colonel Ag Gamou, a top Tuareg officer in the Malian army and leader of the defense of Gao, had defected to the rebels. The Malian government has sent envoys to beg the rebels for a ceasefire, though it’s not clear what incentive the rebels have to negotiate at this point. Meanwhile thousands of Bamakois met in a football stadium on Saturday for a massive prayer for peace, led by various Muslim and Christian dignitaries.

Late Saturday and early Sunday, reports emerged that the ruling CNRDRE junta was about to give in to the regional threat of sanctions, after its emissaries met in Burkina Faso with President Blaise Compaoré. Many Bamakois to whom I spoke on Sunday were optimistic that and end was in sight to Mali’s political crisis, and that a return to constitutional order could facilitate international assistance to fight the rebels. Captain Amadou Sanogo, leader of the junta, announced on Malian television a “return to constitutional order” and a rehabilitation of the state institutions suspended since the coup; following this declaration, heads of state of the West African body ECOWAS, meeting in Dakar, have reportedly decided to delay the implementation of sanctions.

Several uncertainties remain, however. Captain Sanogo did not specify the timetable of this transition; while ECOWAS wants it to occur within a matter of days, the CNRDRE clearly wants to take its time in handing power back to civilians. Moreover, Sanogo’s declaration described the transition as occurring through a process of consulting with a broad spectrum of Mali’s political class (the famously undefined “forces vives” of the country), which would be at odds with the constitution he has supposedly put back in place. Most crucially, Sanogo has not addressed the question of who will preside over any transition. It seems likely that he is just playing for time, hoping to forestall potentially crushing international sanctions while continuing to run the show in Bamako for as long as possible.

Analysis: Differing responses to political tension

Over the past decade, while my work as an anthropologist has taken me to several communities in Africa, I’ve conducted most of my fieldwork in just two: Bamako, Mali and Brazzaville, Congo. These cities have certain key characteristics in common. Both are located on major waterways, not coincidentally at or near the point where a railway from the coast meets a river’s navigable section (the Niger River for Bamako, and the Congo River for Brazzaville). Both grew into cities after first becoming the administrative center for French colonizers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And both are by far the largest cities in their respective countries, the places that tend to set the example culturally and socially for the rest of the society, for better or worse. My book Migrants and Strangers in an African City, published last month, examines the flow of people from the western Sahel to Brazzaville, based on fieldwork in Mali and Congo between 2002 and 2010.

There are many dissimilarities between the Malian and Congolese capitals, however. Brazzaville was the scene of repeated and bloody civil wars throughout the 1990s, as politicians mobilized ethnic militias to support their bids for power. Civilians bore the brunt of the fighting, not merely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because militias deliberately targeted them in their campaigns of violence. Residential neighborhoods were shelled with artillery, roadblocks were put up throughout town to identify members of rival ethnic groups, and “ethnic cleansing” became the order of the day. Tens of thousands of Brazzavillois died, and hundreds of thousands fled the city.

More than a decade later, Brazzaville remains a scarred, divided town. The militias did not go away; they merely buried their weapons and melted into the rest of the population. Last month’s explosion at an army munitions dump, which was responsible for at least 282 deaths, was a sign of how the conflict lives on for city residents. People are fearful of another outbreak of fighting, and they know the potential for massive civilian casualties remains high. At the first sign of danger, Brazzavillois start heading for the exits — fleeing into the countryside, or across the Congo River to neighboring Kinshasa.

While tension is high both in Brazzaville and Bamako, the feel in the latter city is quite different than what I’ve sensed in Brazzaville. Bamako has been remarkably peaceful for most of its existence. Even while the recent coup was underway and gunfire could be heard all over town, the Bamakois around me seemed almost nonchalant. They took a few days off work, but continued to gather in small groups (grins) to socialize, drink tea and make conversation. I don’t know anyone who left town fearing violence.

The reason for this nonchalance is simple: people in southern Mali tend to expect that their leaders will settle their differences through dialogue. This doesn’t mean the dialogue will necessarily be conducted fairly, democratically, or transparently, but at least it will make any recourse to violence unnecessary. Ordinary people here normally do not have to bear the burden of their leaders’ violent quarrels. (The north and the “Tuareg question” is another matter entirely, and beyond my area of competence to analyze here.)

Congolese people do not share that expectation. Time and again, members of Congo’s “classe politique” have proven themselves willing and able to sacrifice the lives of ordinary citizens in their pursuit of power.

I’m not sure how the political situation in Mali and in Bamako will play out in the days and weeks to come. But I do share Bamakois’ general sense of confidence that whatever happens here, bloodshed on a large scale remains unlikely. Political leaders will continue to settle their differences among themselves. Mali is not Congo, nor is it Cote d’Ivoire.

What Bamakois are most worried about right now, in my view, is economic sanctions. While sanctions would ostensibly target the junta, this is where ordinary citizens will have to pay the price of their leaders’ actions.  People here know full well that Mali will be brought to its knees, economically speaking, if the borders are closed and vital imports of gasoline, diesel, and many food staples (e.g. sugar, powdered milk) cannot enter the country. They know that life will get hard if banks cannot continue to draw money from the BCEAO (the central bank of West Africa’s eight countries using the CFA franc). Whatever their feelings toward the CNRDRE — and they are growing more negative by the day — nobody here supports the imposition of sanctions.

On Friday night, four of my local friends came over for dinner. We talked about the rebellion and the coup, and they had one thing to ask of me: “Tell your people in America not to put sanctions on us!” I promised to pass the request on. Where the coup is concerned, most of us here believe the best course of action is to let Bamako’s political class sort out their differences on their own, without further destabilizing this society by applying collective punishment. Sanctions might only make the junta dig in its heels deeper and could even rally popular support — currently waning — to the coup leaders.

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Brief update for Friday, March 30

Posted on March 30, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

I’m due to resume teaching this afternoon after a two-week hiatus, and I cannot get back to my teaching and research responsibilities while keeping up with events in anything approaching real time on this blog. Even assuming that classes remain in session, however, I will try to continue posting here at least a couple of times per week.

In the meantime, readers will forgive me, I hope, for linking to an article that says a few kind words about this blog. Julius Cavendish of Time Magazine has just published a piece discussing yesterday’s events in Bamako (demonstrations and the cancellation of a visit by ECOWAS presidents). I only knew about it because Julius called me up yesterday afternoon to ask my opinion on a few things, and he quotes me in a couple of passages.

For analysis that doesn’t feature my name, you can find a description of yesterday’s events in Bamako on the BBC, and a much more thorough run-down in the French paper Le Monde. The same paper also has a brief post about Mahmoud Dicko of Mali’s Haut Conseil Islamique.

A growing number of reports accuse Oumar Mariko’s SADI party of launching a campaign of intimidation against anti-junta activists. SADI is not one of Mali’s bigger parties, but unlike the other parties that have come out in favor of the coup since March 22, SADI actually has deputies in the National Assembly (or did, before the junta dissolved it). On Thursday a meeting of coup opponents was assaulted by thugs allegedly belonging to SADI. I’m also hearing that Radio Kayira, a pro-SADI station in Bamako, has been broadcasting propaganda in support of the coup and has even aired a list of “enemies” — a sign of more violence to come.

Increasing Mali’s isolation, the government of Cote d’Ivoire has closed its border with Mali, which will interrupt a significant amount of imports (including strategically important goods like fuel and food) coming into this country. I am hearing reports that the government of Burkina Faso has already done the same.

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The devil they don’t know

Posted on March 28, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Post-coup situation update, Wednesday, March 28: At 10:00 p.m. Tuesday night an army lawyer appeared on ORTM TV and announced that Mali now has a new constitution, composed of 70 articles, which he proceeded to read one by one. This appears to be a bid to give the putsch a cover of legality, though the origins of this new document are unknown.

The regional West African body ECOWAS has decided to send a delegation to Bamako this week to convince the junta leaders to give up power. In a move to show that it’s serious, ECOWAS also placed a West African peacekeeping force on stand-by.

Two days after an anti-coup rally was held in Bamako (drawing about 1000 people), it was the turn of the coup supporters to hold a demonstration. Bamako’s pro-CNRDRE demonstration drew thousands — but it is important to recognize that the event was advertised, quite cleverly, as both a “Support the CNRDRE” AND a “Support our troops” rally. Placards at today’s demonstration bore slogans such as “Welcome CNRDRE, Bye Bye ATT,” “Down with France!” (France being the perennial bête noire of the Bamako street), and even “Down with the international community!” (in response to the unanimous condemnation of the coup from abroad). A similar rally was also held in the city of Segou.

Downtown Bamako, Wednesday March 28 (photo from Malilink)

Deposed head of state Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT) granted a phone interview with Radio France International, his first contact with the media since the coup a week ago. He notably insisted neither on being recognized as Mali’s president nor on being reinstated in office, and seemed to imply he would be willing to make a “graceful exit” in the interest of national unity.

Analysis: What makes a leader legitimate?

In my conversations with people in Bamako over the past week, I’ve been surprised to discover local interpretations of political legitimacy very much at odds with the interpretation I carry with me from the United States. Being democratically elected, it appears, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for someone to be seen as a legitimate head of state, at least in the eyes of many Bamakois.

While few people are happy about the coup, nearly every Malian with whom I’ve discussed the coup has expressed relief that Amadou Toumani Touré is no longer in power. From the perspective of many of them, the deposed president’s actions in recent months and years effectively disqualified him from being able to continue running the country. When they speak of these actions, they cite a broad range of supposed failings, from corruption and nepotism, to his apparent unwillingness to fight against MNLA rebels, to various aspects of his character (“A ka kuma ka caa” — He talks too much — is one common complaint). They blame him for all the ills of their society, from an ineffective military to a dysfunctional school system to the high price of staple foods.

These Malians have no more patience for ATT, and don’t want him back in office. The fact that he was due to step down in a little over two months doesn’t seem to matter. The fundamental problem is legitimacy: to their mind, he no longer has any, even though he won generally fair elections in 2002 and again in 2007, and is recognized by Mali’s constitution and by the international community as Mali’s rightful head of state.

Capt. Amadou Sanogo

Meanwhile, the power wielded by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, leader of last week’s putsch, is not automatically perceived here as illegitimate, even though he seized it at gunpoint. A surprising number of Malians appear willing to give Sanogo and his CNRDRE junta the benefit of the doubt, assume his intentions are just, and see how he performs as their new president. This is true precisely because Sanogo is not tainted with any association with politics or political parties (he claimed in one of his first interviews that he has never voted in his life, saying “If you give me the choice between three candidates I don’t trust, I prefer not to vote”). Yes, some Malians see him as a power-hungry figure with dubious motives, but others see him as a true patriot taking a principled stand.

If many Malians presume that their high-level elected and appointed officials are corrupt liars, by contrast, they are also likely to presume that those with no experience in the political system are genuine and truthful. (Last week, Sanogo described himself as “honest, sincere, and I know what I want.”) In this they may have something in common with American voters’ perennial infatuation with “outsider candidates,” even if those outsiders usually lose.

When a duly elected president can have no legitimacy in the eyes of a large number of his citizens, and many of these same citizens can approve of a 39-year-old army captain with no political experience taking the reins of power through force of arms, we Westerners have to recognize that we are dealing with a very different construction of political legitimacy than those we’re accustomed to. Given the choice between ATT, a known political quantity invested with every form of legal authority at home and abroad, yet today popularly discredited and “disavowed,” and Captain Sanogo, whom nobody had heard of until last week and who hasn’t yet had much chance to ruin his name, a good many of them [no, I don’t actually know how many] appear ready to embrace the latter.

In short, in an intriguing inversion of the expected logic, they’re willing to trust the devil they don’t know over the devil they know.

For eight long years the United States was ruled by a president many Americans couldn’t stand, who came to office having lost the popular vote, and who displayed a tragic readiness to violate the law in both domestic and foreign policy (remember illegal wiretaps of U.S. citizens, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” covert torture centers, the Valerie Plame leak, and the preemptive use of force?). Yet whatever we thought of his administration’s policies and his actions, we usually didn’t consider his presidency illegitimate, because it was backed up by our government’s core institutions. My compatriots, many of whom were highly critical of the way he ruled, seldom questioned his right to rule.

Here in Bamako, by contrast, even the backing of every institution of the state may not be enough to confer legitimacy on a head of state who, rightly or wrongly, is perceived as having violated the public trust and failed in his duties as a leader. A lot of the people I’ve been talking with see political legitimacy as contingent on actions rather than an institutional mandate. Whatever Mali’s constitution may say, these citizens want a failed leader out — even if it means replacing him with an unknown with no legal basis for ruling, at an extremely dangerous moment in their nation’s history.

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Mali’s coup leaders: Making it up as they go along

Posted on March 27, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

Post-coup situation update, Tuesday, March 27: For many Bamakois, today was the first day back at work since last week’s coup, following yesterday’s holiday commemorating the 1991 ouster of dictator Moussa Traoré. Civil servants had a strong incentive to get to the office on time: the ruling junta had decreed that any government employee who did not turn up for work by 7:30 this morning would be sacked and replaced. Unfortunately, many of those who did turn up found it impossible to work, since their offices had been cleaned out by looters following the coup. Staff members in two different ministries told me their computers and office equipment had been stolen, office safes emptied of cash, and even coffee break supplies taken.

Otherwise, business in Bamako was fairly typical for a Tuesday: shops were open, traffic downtown was heavy and people were out shopping. I did speak to a merchant who knew of a nearby business that had been looted, but I saw no evidence of looting personally. What stood out to me during my errands around the city today was the banks: they were crowded, many closed before noon, and there was often no cash to be had from automatic teller machines. Some banks are limiting withdrawals to head off a cash shortage. While this could simply be an effect of nervous depositors needing extra money after several days without access to it, a rumor is circulating that the BCEAO — the central bank for Mali and the other seven countries in West Africa’s CFA Franc zone — has closed its doors in Bamako and stopped supplying money to Malian banks.

If the central bank rumor is confirmed — and one Malian paper says it is true — such measures would fit with a growing international effort to isolate Mali’s ruling junta economically. The U.S. suspended all non-humanitarian assistance to Mali on Monday, to the tune of $70 million, and the African Development Bank and the World Bank had already suspended aid.

Malian newspapers are back on newsstands and online for the first time since the coup began last Wednesday. Some papers have come out in favor of the coup, (e.g. Inter de Bamako, Mali Demain) while others are critical (e.g. L’Indépendent, L’Indicateur Renouveau, Le Canard déchainé). The state newspaper L’Essor, meanwhile, has run an article describing the events of the coup without editorializing about them.

The French government announced yesterday that it had made contact with deposed President Amadou Toumani Touré by telephone, and reported him to be safe and in good condition, but his location remains unknown.

Analysis: The makeshift junta

Last Friday, as the dust was still settling from Mali’s March 22 coup, my friend and colleague, historian Gregory Mann wrote some insightful first thoughts on the putsch and its stakes. “The coup was not intended to secure democracy, but to prevent it,” he concluded. “If the people were to go to the polls [for regularly scheduled elections] in April and elect a new president, whoever won would be seen as legitimate, both at home and abroad. If there was going to be a coup, it had to be now.”

Koulouba, Bamako, March 2012 (AP photo)

Mann’s analysis raises a question I’ve pondered since we got our first glimpse of Mali’s coup plotters on Malian state television, early in the morning of March 22: What are these guys after? While I cannot take the putschists’ justifications of their actions at face value, I also cannot say what their motivations are. Did these junior army officers set out deliberately to derail Mali’s democratic process and seize power for themselves? I doubt it. More likely, they simply filled a void that opened up before them, without either adequately preparing for or fully considering the consequences of their actions. Here’s why I think this is the case.

From the coup’s earliest hours and continuing to the present, its leaders have been terribly disorganized. Consider the chronology of events: after they took over state TV and radio facilities around 3 p.m. on Wednesday the 21st, it took more than 12 hours before they broadcast a statement to the Malian people explaining who they were and what they wanted.

That statement, when it was finally read by Lt. Amadou Konaté, mentioned Touré’s “incompetent and disavowed regime” and proposed a government of national unity formed in consultation with the nation’s “forces vives” (a vague phrase meaning the leading segments of a population). It promised to hand over power to a democratically elected president “as soon as national unity and territorially integrity will be reestablished.” Konaté’s statement was followed by a communiqué read by Captain Amadou Sanogo, speaking with a hoarse voice, that included the requisite appeals for calm and condemnations of looting. Both announcements were full of generalities but short on specifics.

Later that day, the first televised interview with army Captain Amadou Sanogo, the apparent leader of the junta, was visibly off-the-cuff. When the Africable journalist asked what motivated him to take power, he said:

Army Captain Amadou Sanogo (photo: AP)

“First of all, I salute these non-commissioned officers and troops around me. The initiative came from them. Following unsatisfied requests and demands, their meeting with the defense minister went awry, they took up arms and munitions to defend themselves. Dialogue no longer being possible, they had to make the sound of arms heard. When a soldier wants to be heard through the sound of arms, nobody can imagine the impact. I said to myself, with a few colleagues, why not profit from the situation and not let these men act on their own, because enough is enough. That’s what led us to this coup.”

The way Sanogo went on to justify the coup was inconsistent and wide-ranging. His initial responses to questions about his troops’ demands indicated that their primary concerns centered around living conditions, pay, and education and job opportunities for their children. When prompted about insecurity in northern Mali, however, he claimed that this issue “occupied 70 percent of their preoccupations.” (During a later interview, Sanogo again had to be reminded about the rebellion after listing the factors that led to the coup.)

In the early days of his coup, Sanogo claimed he wanted more resources to fight MNLA rebels than the government of President Touré was willing to provide. Just days after the coup, however, he invited the MNLA to the negotiating table, seemingly following the same strategy as the man he ousted. “Everything is negotiable, except the territorial integrity and the unity of our country,” Sanogo said during his televised address on Monday. But the MNLA has repeatedly stated that its insistence on independence for the swath of northern Mali it calls “Azawad” is non-negotiable.

 Captain Sanogo in his first appearance on Malian TV, March 22, 2012

Next, in considering whether this coup was planned or unplanned, I want to return to the question of Captain Sanogo’s wardrobe. In his first television appearance (see photo at right), he is shown wearing ordinary camouflage fatigues — the green-and-brown “woodland” pattern — with only a badge of rank visible. Woodland camouflage is often associated with Mali’s elite parachute regiment, of which Sanogo has never been a member. In all his subsequent appearances, he wears different fatigues (either desert pattern or olive green), more typical of rank-and-file troops, but always with a US Marines pin on his chest, often with a dozofini garment under his shirt and a stick in hand. These last three items seem to be “power objects” which have become key to his public image. If they mean that much to him, why would he not have these objects on his person when making his first address to the nation? If he had come to work that morning intending to mount a coup, why wouldn’t he have worn his dozofini, the Mande answer to body armor?

A final piece of evidence that suggests the spontaneous origins of this coup is the name the ruling junta chose for itself: Le Comité National pour le Redressement de la Démocratie et la Restauration de l’Etat (National Committee for Recovering Democracy and Restoring the State). Regardless of whether it signals the true motivations of the putschists, this has to be the worst name for any governing body in living memory — awkward to say and uninspiring to hear. ORTM journalists and even Captain Sanogo himself continually struggle on air to get its exact wording straight, and have frequently misstated its abbreviation. Early abbreviations tended toward “CNRDR,” as though the final état were absent, but in the last few days “CNRDRE” has been used more commonly (though still not exclusively) in state media. If you were going to plan out a coup, wouldn’t you at least come up with a name for your junta that you could remember?

All in all, I get the impression Captain Sanogo and his colleagues are in over their heads trying to run this country, address the mounting rebellion in the north, and somehow prepare a transition back to constitutional rule (if that is indeed their intention). They are improvising. Irrespective of Sanogo’s motives — he clearly feels that he did the right thing by taking power — the first days of this junta have inspired no confidence that he and his associates are up to the task they have set for themselves. Perhaps quite soon another void will open up, and other actors on Mali’s political stage will try to fill it. Let us hope they do so not only with the right motives, but with the means and skills to realize their aims.

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Good riddance, ATT?

Posted on March 25, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

[Post-coup situation update for Sunday evening, March 25: Life in Bamako continues to normalize. Fuel stations are open, and new imports of gasoline and diesel have been authorized across Mali’s otherwise sealed borders. I have heard no reports of gunfire or looting in Bamako since late Friday or early Saturday. Weddings have been taking place throughout Bamako today (Sundays being the most popular day for weddings here), and the honking of car horns accompanying newlyweds from their ceremonies can be heard throughout town. Electricity remains reliable. Private and state radio and television have resumed their usual broadcast schedule, except that the secondary state television channel TM2 is still off the air. ORTM’s 9 p.m. news shows Capt. Sanogo — still wearing his dozofini and carrying a stick — meeting with members of Mali’s “classe politique,” including Ibrahim Boubcar Keita who has condemned the coup, and Oumar Mariko who welcomed it. The dusk-to-dawn curfew remains in effect but is not strictly enforced. The US Embassy now authorizes its personnel to leave their homes for “short trips for essential shopping during daylight hours.”]

Analysis: Why Mali’s president really fell from power, and why Malians won’t fight to reinstate him

The emerging “standard narrative” of the March 22 coup d’état iAmadou Toumani Touré, ousted Malian presidentn Mali, which until this month was considered one of West Africa’s model democracies, centers on the rebellion in Mali’s north. Smarting from the recent loss of their Amachach base to (mostly Tuareg) MNLA rebels, Malian troops demanded answers from their commanders and civilian leadership on Wednesday, March 21. When these answers proved unsatisfactory, the troops launched a mutiny that soon morphed into a full-blown putsch, toppling the country’s democratically elected president, Amadou Toumani Touré (known as “ATT”), who was due to step down this June after 10 years in office.

Yet the MNLA rebellion, launched only two months prior, was just the latest of several grave threats to Touré’s government, and in the final analysis it may not even have been the most significant in his overthrow. Coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo claimed that he and his soldiers were motivated by a desire for reform — “not of the army, of the state.” He cited structural problems: widespread corruption and nepotism in government, a dysfunctional public education system, and chronic unemployment. “You’ll agree with me,” he told his interviewer, “that the state was not working at any level.”

Capt. Amadou Sanogo (by Habibou Kouyate, AFP/Getty images)

The coup leaders acted because they sensed the state’s incapacity to deal with a broad spectrum of issues, and realized there was a void they could fill. Military setbacks at rebel hands provided the spark that ignited long-simmering discontent based on mounting perceptions of a broken government that was no longer protecting the Malian people’s welfare.

When Malians take stock of the last decade, Touré receives much of the blame for this state of affairs. To critics, his “rule by consensus” approach actually meant the co-optation of opposition, the muzzling of dissent, the tolerance of corruption, and the triumph of expediency over political principle. ATT’s desire to head off political conflict made him willing to compromise on anything in the name of preserving la paix sociale (social harmony), ultimately undermining his effectiveness as a leader. By the time of his ouster last week, he had long since lost the confidence not only of the military but of many of his former supporters.

And ATT’s governing style weakened more than his people’s faith in him; it weakened their faith in their country’s republican institutions. The rule of law was undercut by the president’s reluctance to crack down on corruption, creating a culture of impunity in which powerful individuals had free reign to loot public resources and expropriate property — especially land in and around Bamako — from anyone weaker. Since opposing voices within Mali’s political class had been either silenced or bought off through ATT’s “consensus” approach, the regular checks and balances of constitutional rule had been effectively short-circuited.

A powerful essay, an example of what the French would call un cri de coeur (“a cry from the heart”), appeared today on the Jeune Afrique website echoing many of these critiques and encapsulating what ordinary Malians see as the failings of their country’s democracy over the last ten years. (You can read my English translation of this essay here, or read the original French version here.) Author Moussa Konaté wrote:

Malians’ misfortune was to have replaced a military regime [that of Moussa Traoré, toppled in 1991] with a mafia for which personal interest came before public interest. Elections were mere parodies, for those supposedly competing for popular votes were making secret deals to put in power whoever could best defend their interests. The play was so well acted that the world praised “Malian democracy.”

Corruption spread unchecked to every institution of the republic, including the armed forces. Mali’s junior officers and rank-and-file troops — i.e., those who mounted the coup — distrusted their senior officers and defense ministry officials, whom they accused of selling out their cause for private gain. “Is it surprising,” asks Konaté, “in a country where the state belongs to a mafia, that the army should be beset by corruption, theft and nepotism? If the rebels racked up victories, it’s because they were facing an army where officer grades [galons] were selling like hotcakes.”

“The Tuareg rebellion was only a sign of the depths to which Mali has fallen,” Konaté concludes. “The state of the Malian army is just that of Malian society. Consensus, which had been an asset in Mali — where ethnic groups got along fraternally — became a liability once it was hijacked by the politicians.”

Such was ATT’s unpopularity when the coup occurred that few Malians have risen up or spoken up to defend him or the institutions the coup overturned. The issue now, for most Malians, is not whether he should be reinstated, but how best to legitimize his departure, most likely through his resignation (once his whereabouts are known). Given the lack of public outcry here against the putsch, it is hard to believe that crowds would mobilize in Bamako to demand ATT’s return; on the contrary, at a time when Malians perceive unprecedented threats to their nation, his reputation for ineffectiveness could mobilize crowds to oppose any such move.

None of this means the coup or its leaders are especially popular, or that Malians don’t want a speedy return to constitutional rule. Most do want meaningful rule of law and truly representative democracy. (Recall that even the coup leaders named their junta the National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the State, if nothing else acknowledging Malians’ demand for democratic government.) What the Malians I’ve spoken with do not want is a return to the complacent, ineffectual approach that has characterized Malian national politics in recent years, one they feel was democratic in name only. If recent statements from Paris are any indication, the French government may not insist on ATT’s reinstatement, even as it presses the coup leaders to reinstate constitutional rule.

I have written elsewhere of the “tyranny of improvisation” and the inherent risks of addressing political crises through extra-constitutional measures: in West Africa, those who take power by force vowing to organize democratic elections have a poor track record of delivering on their promises. Moreover, Mali’s March 22 coup continues a terrible precedent, reinforcing the notion that in desperate times, individuals can use the power of the gun to press the state’s “reset button,” dissolving the institutions of government rather than working through them to effect needed changes. Such an improvisational course is always dangerous, since leaders who lack effective institutional oversight are prone to every type of undemocratic and abusive behavior.

The question Malians have struggled with in 2012 is whether it can be more dangerous to adhere to a constitutional course of action when state institutions are compromised and have lost the trust of the people they are meant to govern.

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Amadou Sanogo: Power is his middle name

Posted on March 24, 2012 by brucewhitehouse

As events have unfolded since Mali’s coup d’état on Thursday, much has come to light concerning the coup’s apparent leader, Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, President of the Comité Nationale pour le Redressement de la Démocratie et la Restauration de l’Etat (CNRDR, or National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of the State). As described in the previous post, he received military training in the United States, from the Defense Language Institute and the U.S. Army. He has also said that he received training from the U.S. Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. A USMC pin is clearly visible above his right breast pocket in the image below, from his interview with Africable TV on Thursday, the first day after the coup.

He wears standard-issue camouflage fatigues and the green beret worn by soldiers in all regular units of the Malian army. You can also see a white t-shirt beneath his uniform.

On Friday, the second day after the coup, however, Captain Sanogo began to adopt some new elements into his wardrobe. In the image below, he wears the same uniform, beret, pin and white t-shirt, but there’s something else visible as well, brown in color, between his t-shirt and his fatigues.

What is this new garment? My suspicion — one shared by many Malian viewers — is that it’s a dyed cotton shirt known as dozofini, which literally means “hunter’s cloth.” As Florida State University anthropologist Joseph Hellweg illustrates in his absorbing ethnography Hunting the Ethical State, hunters in West Africa are renowned not only for their prowess at killing game, but also at controlling mystical forces of the bush. Those initiated as hunters are believed to possess special powers, such as the ability to become invisible or to transform themselves into animals; their smocks contain amulets that can supposedly render them impervious to bullets or blades. In donning this garment, Captain Sanogo is sending a message to Malians that he is powerful and can withstand attempts to kill him. Interestingly, he was first shown wearing the dozofini on Friday evening, after rumors circulated that he had been shot dead in a counter-coup, and the CNRDR felt compelled to broadcast statements that he was alive and well. In every subsequent television appearance, Sanogo can be seen with a dozofini under his uniform.

And there’s more. Eight minutes and 33 seconds into Friday night’s ORTM news broadcast, while Sanogo is alleging that ill-intentioned individuals somehow acquired military uniforms and looted parts of Bamako on Thursday in a bid to tarnish the CNRDR’s image, the frame descends seemingly accidentally to Captain Sanogo’s lap, before moving back up to his face nine seconds later.

On the left side of the image above we can see some kind of wooden stick, called a bèrè in Bamanan. It reappears in every subsequent shot of Sanogo during the newscast, for example while he is addressing civil service directors on Friday (below).

Even during a meeting with visiting dignitaries on Saturday, his bèrè is visible leaning against the shelves next to him.

Some viewers here speculate that this is no mere stick; it is a kind of power object, a haya, from which he derives strength and protection. A haya can come in many forms including wood or iron. For instance, as art historian Patrick McNaughton describes in his book The Mande Blacksmiths, a nègè haya is a solid metal amulet that “can protect its wearer from being pierced by any weapon composed wholly or partially of iron.” It may be that Sanogo’s stick is meant, like his dozofini shirt, to convey that he carries special powers. (What appears to be a leather amulet is also visible on his left wrist in the above photo.)

Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) always carried a stick in public, which was rumored to have supernatural powers

Now, all this speculation about the haya could be misplaced. It could simply be that Sanogo likes the flair of his bèrè. Maybe he is imitating the style of pre-colonial kings in this region, who often carried such sticks, or of post-colonial strongmen like the late Mobutu Sese Seko, whose carved walking stick became part of his public image. But I suspect that Sanogo is consciously displaying these items in front of the cameras as props to boost his authority, and to dissuade potential enemies from trying to harm him — just like Mobutu did. Whatever skills he may have acquired from his military training in the United States, it’s obvious that Captain Sanogo remains adept in the subtleties of his native Mande culture. Let’s remember that Sanogo’s middle name — customarily, for Malians, the name of his father — is Haya.

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