In the preface, Bertrand Badie stressed that the crisis is not only in Mali but regional. The scales are very important. The Malian problem dates back to the period of independence, it is also a political failure. National crisis, regional crisis, Continental Badie crisis even as the African Union has not the means to respond to such challenges. In addition, the war in Mali is linked to the "Arab Spring" of the effects of the fall of Gaddafi in Libya on the situation in the country. As emphasized in the preface, military intervention alone is misleading: it does not solve the political and social issues. The French operation is led by the former colonial power, external power whatever one thinks; it is also somewhere a failed multilateralism safety. Reduce the opponent to criminal terrorist (while faced movements have an obvious social roots, for some) does not help. Can a military victory therefore lead to a political outcome? Military intervention feeds warrior societies, strengthens the supervision of a dependent society, compounds the "praetorianism".
Michel Galy meanwhile recalls in the introduction that the war begins in January 2012, a year before the French intervention. The conflict, as has been said, beyond the local issue, it is almost global, with its ramifications. The Tuareg have been marginalized by the colonial division, and since independence. On the Tuareg problem is superimposed radicalization of Islam since the 2000s, to Wahhabism, particularly in Mali. For Michel Galy, France is partly responsible for the disintegration of the situation, including by supporting rigged elections, building on the Tuaregs who quickly allied with the jihadists, repeating the discourse of the "war against terrorism" GW Bush. For him, the crisis scenario is that of a "state of war" undecided.
The geographer Grégory Giraud said that the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s have fueled tensions over access to natural resources are scarce. It was at that time that Gaddafi Tuareg recruits and develops illicit activities in the Sahel-Saharan zone. Gao is one of hubs of that traffic, which sustains northern Mali. The Tuaregs involved in trafficking of arms, drugs, while mining resources are beginning to be exploited by foreign interests. Regional rivalry between Morocco, Algeria and Libya are old, and the second has become a major player after the fall of Gaddafi. Since 1990, all successive Tuareg rebellions were manipulated by external actors. Algerian security and weapon a Tuareg movement in 1990. In the 2000s, this landscape is shaken by the arrival of large-scale drug trafficking and the arrival of the GSPC, AQIM future. The kidnapping of 32 European tourists by El Para, in 2003, which discloses the GSPC, was probably orchestrated by the Algerian DRS to benefit from US support during the "Global War on Terror." The Tuareg rebellion in 2006 around the Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC), with Iyad Ag Ghali, long linked dates Algerian services, would probably come for the same reasons. A split of the ADC in 2007, it is supported by Gaddafi's Libya. The GSPC became AQIM in 2007, multiplies the kidnappings of Europeans and most heavily settled in northern Mali from 2009. This is because France supports the Mauritanian regime AQIM, linked to the DRS continues its policy of attacks and kidnappings of French. In 2011, with the defeat of Gaddafi, the Tuareg in northern Mali income based MNLA, while Iyad Ag Ghali, radicalized after a stay in Saudi Arabia, creates Ansar Eddine. The MNLA, Ansar Dine and AQIM are breaking northern Mali in April 2012, the MNLA proclaimed in the wake of independence of Azawad. But Ansar Eddine quickly gained the upper, with the support of Algiers, which also involves AQIM. MUJAO, AQIM outgrowth born in December 2011, aims to expand the social base of the movement, via the trafficker part. The French intervention in January 2013 led to a recomposition of the landscape. A split divides Ansar Eddine, with the birth of the Islamic Movement of Azawad, the Tuareg join partly French, Malian armed militias by the Presidency dissolve. This explains why the initial progress was rapid. A "big game" also takes place in the region. The United States is present via the Pan-Sahel Initiative, in 2002, followed by TSCTI in 2005. They maintain small bases for specific interventions, lily pads, especially with Algeria and Morocco. For France, the strategic interests take precedence over economic interests: we must protect especially the Niger uranium mines, operated by Areva, which ensure energy independence. In addition, since 2009, the United States are less present and "delegate" largely to France, not without rivalry. It is also noted that Qatar, through private donors, is present, like Saudi Arabia.
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou precisely returns to the "big game" of the Western powers. For him, the intervention of France symbolizes a remilitarization of trade between the West and the South. This great game of the XXI century is characterized by the inability of post-colonial states to build stable and sovereign states; the emergence of non-state armed groups with a transnational project; and increasing competition in Africa between the West and the emergence powers (China, etc.). According to him, the French intervention in January 2013 provides for the use of force in settling disputes. However, can we say that it is the reproduction of Orientalist discourse of the nineteenth century? It makes more sense when he explained that the Tuareg problem is also combined with the unresolved legacy of the Algerian civil war. The GSPC starts to settle in northern Mali in 2003 and not leave anymore. Hostage taking of In Amenas, held in Algeria, shows the affiliation between GIA AQMI-GSPC-up MUJAO and Ansar al-Sharia, the latter dissent appeared in January 2012. The war in Libya also led to an influx of weapons and fighters (serving Gaddafi Tuareg). The Mali crisis of early 2012, with President Amadou Toumani Toure on the left, the growing focus control Islamist radicals groups for a decade in northern Mali, the flow of arms and fighters, and the secessionist desires Federated Tuaregs. The Malian government is unable to cope, but it should be noted that France has been no more in good standing of the mandate of the UN Security Council. For the author, this "great game" of Western powers has the effect of hindering the construction of the postcolonial state.
For Michel Gay, the Serval operation is the result of several factors. The intervention of January 2013 nothing hasty: special forces operating on the ground since August of 2012, the support is not only air as requested by the Malian president. The French, who have rapidly progressed, received the support of the Chadians and the Tuareg of the MNLA. The operation justifies keeping bases in Africa and also conducts a territorial conquest. In doing so, for Michel Galy, the President returned to Holland Françafrique he had tried to put aside. Mali, under the chairmanship Keïta (reversed in 1968), had escaped the system before being touted as a model after the overthrow of dictator Traoré (1991) and the Presidencies of Alpha Oumar Konaré and Amadou Toumani Touré. In reality, the economic misery, corruption, malfunctions of the military, the resurgence of rebellions in the north account for the state's collapse in 2012. The challenge for France is geopolitical: to preserve an area of influence in Africa, even if it means supporting regimes without legitimacy.
Jean-Louis Sagot Duvauroux recalls that the Tuareg revolts were repeated since 1960. President Toure had managed to calm things down, but the defeat of Gaddafi upsets the equilibrium and leads his overthrow by some army officers led by Captain Sanogo in Bamako in a coup led almost on a whim. Yet Malian society holds despite a failed state: yuruguyurugu in Bambara means the corruption, whose given state is the result. Yet the company undergoes "intellectual failure" due to the military regime, despite the advent of a cybergénération Malians. The French intervention in January 2013 saved the Mali of imminent danger; However, even if France, as a former colonial power, has distanced, Malians see a very dim view of this western part sought to impose, at all levels.
The Malian army, too, is a reflection of social inequality, power games and corruption of Mali. Eros Sana shows that integrating the Malian army is not enough to avoid poverty. Living conditions are hellish for Malian military. In January 2012, several dozen prisoners are executed by the MNLA and Ansar Eddine in Aguelhok. For a force estimated 7 to 14 000 troops, President Touré appointed between 2002 and 2012, 45 generals. Between them and the impoverished troop captains in their forties who manage the reality of field operations. Despite considerable funds invested in 1998 by France and the United States then, choosing to reinforce the army rather than the development programs, the Malian military has not improved. The Tuaregs, integrated in several waves after each solved rebellion, demanding grades that correspond to their experience, which is not without cause resentment in the army, plus the fear of betrayal. The 33th regiment of paratroopers, the famous "red berets", is the revealing of the tensions. This is the dictator Moussa Traoré, overthrowing President Keïta in 1968, which creates the red berets to monitor its allies of the coup. Touré, former red beret and Chief of the Presidential Guard Traoré, continued to promote this true praetorian guard. In March 2012, Captain Sanogo, a green beret, overthrew President Traore: trained in the United States, it has the support of much of the population of Bamako. The red berets, however, refused to go along and try a coup, a month later, which fails, leading to their dissolution. With the French intervention, the red berets were resurrected, but reinstatement was again provoked clashes in the Malian army ... and one wonders what will be her future, she could not win northern Mali and that committed after the French intervention, atrocities against civilians.
Hélène-Claudot Hawad then returns to the "Tuareg issue." It lasts for 130 years and is among others the result of the Tuareg resistance to French colonization. It is only once the danger was that the Tuareg began to "fascinate". Divided today in five states, the Tuareg during this long period shaped their identity. The names of these people, the question of their number are also sometimes manipulated by states to deny the reality of their existence. When the Tuareg warriors resist the French penetration, in the Ahaggar in 1902, in Agadez in 1906, they were decimated. Kawsen will introduce him, a new strategy, that of the guerrillas. Within a decade, he forges a tool that allows him to resume Agadez in December 1916. Driven by the French army, aided by the British, he was finally hanged in 1919. The repression in Tuareg country is the measure of the fear generated by the insurgency. The colonial project in the Sahara Tuareg class based on a racial hierarchy, with the aim of removing them from the influence of Islam and settle them. The new frontiers of independence also asphyxiate the Tuareg lifestyle. The Tuareg are opposed by Algeria, followed by Niger. Economic migrants, sailing from one country to another in search of a job (ishumar) will result in some Gaddafi training camps from 1980. The 1990 rebellion in Mali and Niger does not address the issue, especially as paramilitary militias commit abuses against the Tuareg populations after the signing of peace agreements. The conflation between terrorists and Tuaregs quickly established after 2001 by the Americans. As the battle Tuareg movements is little media coverage, there is great concern, however, the rise of AQIM and its investment in northern Mali. Divided in 2012, when the offensive in northern Mali, quickly marginalized by the Jihadists, the Tuareg rally the French in January 2013, although the Malian militia atrocities recommence again. And Niger, the situation is not much better. The issue of Sahel-Saharan issue is not local but global, through the redistribution of influence zones between international powers and the arrival of new players, with the backdrop coveted access to mineral resources .
As François Gèze shows, the Algerian regime plays a unique role in this global challenge. The soldiers who seized power in Algeria in 1992, including those of the political police, the DRS, widely manipulate Islamist groups in the civil war, particularly in 1996. To regain international legitimacy largely initiated by the carnage civil war, general Larbi Belkeir Mohammed Médiène and Smail Lamari will fuel the GSPC, born in 1998, and will become less than ten years later AQIM. Hence the introduction of jihadism and terrorism in the Sahel-Saharan zone, which so far had been spared. El Para, who kidnapped European tourists in 2003, is probably an agent of the DRS. Algerians are also seeking to counter the influence of the Tuareg rebels of Libya of Gaddafi. In 2008, Mohammed Médiène, now alone, remobilised AQIM networks (since 2007) to justify the terrorist threat in the Sahel before Stuttgart US Africom. Abductions and killings of Westerners are increasing, but it is not said that the DRS has had control of all operations. The katibas of Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar probably also operate on their behalf. Later successively appear the MUJAO and Ansar Eddine, the first being a well AQIM outgrowth for François Gèze, while the second, Iyad Ag Ghali via, is linked to the Algerians. In this context, it is legitimate to question the taking of hostages In Amenas, led by Belmokhtar, who would have served to restore the emblem of Algeria in the fight against terrorism with the Americans. But the French intervention, by undermining some groups and sometimes decapitating heads -as Abu Zeïd- Algeria has deprived of some of its instruments.
Benoît Miribel explains, finally, how the economic crisis, drought and political fragility causing a humanitarian crisis in the Sahel. Food insecurity has worsened. In Mali, affecting more than 4 million people in 2012, or one in four. In addition to the many refugees, the population has also suffered a lot of fighting and occupation in northern Mali. The abuses in the form of settling were commonplace, not to mention the recruitment of child soldiers on both sides.
The book has an appreciable advantage, that to deal with a current issue, always difficult cases in a multi-dimensional perspective (local / national issues, regional issues, international issues). The purpose clearly shows the degradation of the Malian situation for a decade, the historical legacy, especially since independence, the maneuvers of actors in the shadows (Algeria in particular). It also raises an interesting question, that the relevance of the only military intervention, which one must ask if it can ultimately be welcomed: it prevented jihadi groups to seize Bamako, and yet it alone it can not solve anything. Yet the book sometimes takes the form of a prosecution case against the policy of France. There is no denying that François Hollande, who wanted to stand out from the Françafrique, has returned to just over "realpolitik". From there to want to see the mark of a rampant neo-colonialism is perhaps going a bit far, especially as Mali does not count much in the economic relations of France or in its international relations . France does not visibly advance either as a mere residual US, which also still know poorly the region. However, one can not deny that there has been a redistribution of spheres of influence between powers in the region, because new players have appeared and each is trying to position: the conclusion of the article of Helen Claudot-Hawad seems more interesting. What wonders, too, it is ultimately the question of whether France has the means of such power politics, and if it is in his interest to do so, which is not really addressed in the book. Nevertheless, it is essential to put Serval in the history and geography of the country, the region and more global issues.
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