Tag Archives: Captain Amadou Sanogo

Clinging to power

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

The Economist

EVERY morning a bus caked in dust pulls into Bamako bringing the latest rumours of war. Looking dazed and dehydrated after 24 hours on the road, Mohammad Maiga explains how Tuareg separatists and Islamist militants have turned his native Gao, northern Mali’s most populous town, into a ghost town. “Everyone is leaving,” says Mr Maiga. “There’s no food, no supplies.” Blackouts last all day. Banks and offices have been pillaged by rampant rebels.

Mr Maiga says he saw a truck of National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) rebels abduct three young women on the street in front of his house the day before he fled. “They had no choice,” he explains. “The rebels had weapons.” His claim is impossible to verify but it is one of many alleged instances of murder, robbery and rape laid at the rebels’ door. The UN has called for international action to halt the worsening crisis. Aid agencies reckon that over 200,000 people have been displaced though no one knows the exact numbers.

The clearest winners so far from Mali’s chaos are a trio of jihadist groups—Ansar Eddine, a Salafist outfit that emerged from the secular MNLA’s slipstream; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb; and another terror group called the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa. The black flag of militant Islam has been spotted over all northern Mali’s big towns and residents say public awareness campaigns about the dictates of sharialaw are underway. Yet far from berating the Islamists for imposing a strict and alien form of Islam, some inhabitants actually offer guarded praise. Ansar Eddine, in particular, they say, is attempting to rein in the MNLA’s rapacious fighters. Continue reading →

Food stocks low, fuel hard to find: Mali’s misfortunes worsen as al-Qaeda arrives

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

The Times

Mali’s two-week-old junta rejected international calls to relinquish power yesterday as sanctions intended to force the new regime to step down began to bite and Islamists cemented their grip in the country’s turbulent north.

In his first comments since the embargo was imposed, the coup leader, Captain Amadou Sanogo, warned that the ousted president, Amadou Toumani Toure, could be charged with “high treason and financial wrongdoing”. He announced that a meeting to discuss Mali’s future would take place tomorrow.

Amid fears that Islamic extremists were taking advantage of the political upheaval, three of al-Qaeda’s leaders were said to have headed to the ancient trading city of Timbuktu, where Sharia was being imposed and women were being told to wear veils. Continue reading →

Fall of Timbuktu to rebels prompts fears for historic treasures

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

The Times

Rebels in Mali completed their capture of the biggest population centres in the north of the country yesterday by taking the historic trading town of Timbuktu.

Its capitulation, eight days after a coup by junior officers in the capital, Bamako, which overthrew the democratically elected Government, marks the latest gain in a three-day advance by the Tuareg rebels. The junta said that it was seeking to negotiate a peace deal with the rebels and sent representatives to discuss a ceasefire.

The Tuareg forces, thought to be about 1,000, have exploited the uncertainty caused by the overthrow of the Government of President Amadou Toumani Touré, which has left the army with no clear chain of command. Continue reading →

Un-Welcoming the Presidents: The Mali Junta Digs In

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

TIME.com

A contingent of regional leaders turns its plane away as the Mali Junta appears to solidify, learning how to spin and propagandize. But trouble looms

They pumped their fists in the air. “Shame on Africa,” they cried. And then the protesters swarmed across the runway at Bamako international, trampling over the red carpet laid out for visiting dignitaries. With a jet carrying presidents from five West Africa countries inbound, it was an eloquent statement of what many in Mali’s military junta think about international condemnation of their coup — even if the soldiers in charge didn’t explicitly order up the demonstration.

“I am touched that the people are joining the army — not to support an army that will stay in power, but to support an army which saved the country,” coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo said even as he appealed to the crowd to let “our African brothers” in. The tone hardly dampened suspicions that Sanogo & Co. were not taking the their international guests seriously enough. The jet carrying the presidents of Ivory Coast, Liberia, Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger banked soon after entering Malian airspace and returned to Abidjan without touching down. The feeling, an aide to Ivorian president Alassane Ouattara told the Associated Press, is mutual.

(MORE: Mali’s Coup Leader: Interview with an Improbable Strongman)

The West African leaders — who were visiting under the auspices of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional trade bloc — were expected to try hammering out a deal with Sanogo for a return to constitutional rule in Mali, which was rocked by an army mutiny last week. Instead they issued an ultimatum Thursday evening that they would close all borders with the landlocked country within 72 hours, cutting of supplies of gasoline and strangling the impoverished country financially, unless the junta restored Mali’s constitution. Continue reading →

Mali à l’aise

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

The Economist

Mali’s coup leaders tighten their hold but inspire little confidence

IF ANYONE knows what is happening in Mali, it should be Captain Amadou Sanogo. Sliding forward on the shiny beige sofa into which he has sunk, he insists that things are moving “as I want. Moving as I prepared…allowing me to engage, to start with my processes.” Yet the 40-year-old officer with a sandpaper rasp seems to be putting a brave face on what looks, in fact, like an accidental coup that was almost invited by the government it toppled.

Captain Sanogo is the leader of the putsch that deposed Amadou Toumani Touré, a two-term president, on March 22nd. In the cantonment town of Kati, in the hills north of Bamako, new furniture is going into freshly whitewashed buildings, and visitors jostle to meet members of the ponderously named National Committee for the Recovery of Democracy and Restoration of the State.

The junta appears to be making up policy as it goes. It speaks of building a stronger army capable of serving the wider Sahel region, and has issued a 69-article constitution that empowers a council of 26 soldiers and 15 civilians to rule for a transition period of undefined length. Although protesters took to Bamako’s streets demanding a return to democracy, and various public figures connected to the upturned political system have denounced the coup, counter-demonstrations have voiced enthusiastic support. There seems to be enough disillusionment with Mr Touré’s government for many Malians to withhold judgment on the junta. Graft, increased perceptions of corruption and allegations of government involvement in smuggling drugs and arms mean that few are sad to see the back of Mr Touré, who had already foiled two earlier coup plots in 2010. Continue reading →

Mali’s Coup Leader: Interview with an Improbable Strongman

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

TIME.com

Captain Amadou Sanogo does not sound or look like the man in charge. But he is now the only show in town in a country beset by multiple crises

Under a sickle moon a large man with dreadlocks, a sparkling purple cloak and white moccasins climbed the stairs of the house that has become Mali’s new nerve-center. He was a marabout — a West Africa holy man — summoned by the 40-year-old army captain everyone in Kati is now calling le President. The new power in Mali is Amadou Sanogo, a career soldier whose improbable coup d’etat has upturned one of Africa’s strongest democracies. On Monday night he sought strength from the spirit world. He needs whatever help he can get.

It is a week since Sanogo led a mutiny at the garrison in Kati — a sleepy commune of cinder-block bungalows just north of the capital — that intensified into a coup. Swiftly condemned by the international community for daring to upset a rare — if perhaps superficial — African success story, Sanogo and his junta, the self-importantly named Comite national pour le redressement de la democratie et la restauration de l’ Etat (CNRDRE for short), must work out quickly how to cope with a sudden halt in economic and military assistance at a time when Tuareg rebels wage a devastating blitzkrieg in the north, protesters march and public figures bewail democracy’s death.

At the two-story house in Kati, formerly the camp commandant’s headquarters, Sanogo meets with a flurry of diplomats, soldiers and power-brokers, who wait on a first-floor verandah lined with ornamental plants. He smiles bashfully as he shakes the Algerian ambassador’s hand, as though he’s still growing into the role he’s plucked for himself. There’s a hint of the young Vladimir Putin, trying to project a persona that’s bigger than he is, and it’s easy to see why his American mentors (he attended multiple training programs in the U.S.) never marked him out as future leadership material as, apparently, is the case. Continue reading →

Leader of military junta aims to restore Mali’s army

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

The Times

The leader of the military junta that seized power in Mali last week has told The Times that his priority is restoring the nation’s army, reeling after a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of Tuareg rebels, and turn it into a force for stability across West Africa’s Sahel region.

In an interview at his headquarters in the cantonment town of Kati, Captain Amadou Sanogo said that if he can “get a better life for my soldiers, I get a well-prepared army, I get a proficient army ready to serve my country, to serve the Sahel region”, he would consider his leadership a sucess.

However, as he was speaking about 1,000 protesters took to the streets of Bamako, the capital, chanting “Down with Sanogo” and demanding the restoration of democracy. Mali had been due to hold elections next month. Continue reading →

As the U.S. and al-Qaeda Watch Mali’s Phony Peace, Tension Mounts in Timbuktu

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

TIME.com

Several interested parties await the outcome as a once-healthy democracy descends into conflict between military mutineers and their president

Pick-ups packed with soldiers zoomed toward the maize-colored building that houses the State broadcaster as rumors flew of more civil strife in Mali. There was a counter-coup. No, there wasn’t a counter-coup. The leader of the mutiny was dead. No, Capt. Amadou Sanogo would appear in a broadcast momentarily.

As soldiers looted petrol stations, hijacked cars and went joyriding, I had my own run-in with trouble. A rangy-looking man with knotted stubble snatched a tattered banknote from my hand as I bought a soda. “There are no police,” the thief snarled, angrily, as we came close to blows. “You, I’m going to kill you,” he shouted. It was one of countless incidents underscoring the security vacuum in Mali, until three days ago one of Africa’s best functioning democracies.

Some of that anxiety receded over the course of Saturday, with shops re-opening for business, and a semblance of normality in Bamako’s grand marche, where hairdressers’ were packed, shopkeepers traded good-natured insults with each other and TIME saw one fashion-conscious diva batting her false eyelashes in the air as a beautician applied henna to her hands. Continue reading →

West’s ally in volatile region is rocked by soldier’s revolt

Posted by Julius Cavendish on

The Times

Within 24 hours Mali’s stable democracy has reached the brink of civil war, reports Julius Cavendish in Bamako

Mali was on the brink of civil war last night after mutinous soldiers led by a cadre of young officers seized the capital, Bamako, but failed to corner President Touré, who regrouped outside the city with a crack unit of paratroopers.

The renegade soldiers, angered by the Government’s failure to arm them to fight Tuareg rebels, stormed the presidential palace overnight, arresting senior members of the Cabinet.

Some troops fuelled by alcohol then went on a rampage, looting the palace, which bestrides limestone cliffs overlooking the centre of Bamako, and carting off flat-screen televisions, computer monitors and photocopiers. Continue reading →