Migration from Africa: No wonder they still try
Posted: May 29, 2014 Filed under: Mali, The Sahel | Tags: Agadez, Algeria, asylum, asylum seekers, Burkina Faso, EU, Europe, Gao, human trafficking, informal networks, Italy, Lampedusa, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, narcoticx, Niger, smuggling, Tamanrasset, trafficking, Tripoli Leave a commentWhy so many Africans still risk their lives to reach Europe
“GET free or die trying,” runs a graffito in English on the wall of a migrants’ detention centre on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya’s capital. The author was one of the countless migrants to pass through the fetid, overcrowded facility, his fate unknown.
Some of the people herded into more than 20 such centres across Libya were intercepted by Libyan naval vessels as they attempted the perilous journey across the Mediterranean. Others were arrested before reaching the sea by Libyan militias that have held sway since the revolution that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Read the rest of this entry »
African migrants going to Europe: Taking their chances
Posted: May 15, 2014 Filed under: Mali, The Sahel | Tags: Agadez, Algeria, drugs, EU, Europe, Gao, illegal migrants, insecurity, Lampedusa, Mali, migrants, Niger, Sahara, Sahel, Tamanrasset, trafficking Leave a commentA new report looks into the ever more busy migration routes from Africa to Europe
FOLLOWING the recent sweep of revolutions in North Africa, the corpses of migrants have washed up with increasing regularity on the region’s shores. This month alone 58 perished, with another 54 missing, following shipwrecks off the coasts of Libya and Greece. Weakened states are less able to police borders, allowing thousands to reach the European mainland. In April, Italian vessels rescued over 4,000 migrants in two days, prompting beleaguered authorities to declare a humanitarian emergency. By some estimates, more than 600,000 people from Africa and the Middle East are currently waiting on north Africa’s shores to embark for a better life.
An unholy alliance
Posted: June 2, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: al-Qaeda, Ansar Eddine, AQIM, Azawad, Gao, Iyad Ag Ghali, Mali, MNLA, Timbuktu Leave a commentTuareg rebels and al-Qaeda unite to create a fierce new state in the north
GUNFIRE pierced the night quiet. For weeks, inhabitants of the ancient desert towns of Gao and Timbuktu had feared that rival Tuareg rebels would clash. Between January and March they had together waged a devastatingly effective campaign against Mali’s army, sending its last troops packing in early April and proclaiming an independent state called Azawad. But the rivalry then flared, and lawlessness and factionalism have been rife since. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Al-Qaeda Beefing Up Its Presence in Mali?
Posted: May 18, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Eddine, AQIM, Gao, Iyad, Mali, MNLA, mujahideen, MUJWA, Timbuktu 3 CommentsAli Cissé, 30, a shopkeeper, couldn’t contain his curiosity when a new wave of gunmen rolled into town. Outside the governor’s compound in downtown Gao — a dusty administrative center of adobe architecture and open skies — he saw a fleet of armored vehicles with foreign fighters standing guard. “I saw [militants] from Niger, Pakistan, Algeria, Mauritania [and] Tunisia,” Cissé tells TIME by phone from northern Mali. “I identified them by their accents because they like approaching people… to try to win their [sympathy].” Whatever their provenance, the fighters had one thing in common: they rode with Ansar Eddine, a group at times almost indistinguishable from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the regional terror franchise. Read the rest of this entry »
Mali’s Fog of War: Refugees Tell of Terror, Hunger and Rape
Posted: April 30, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: Ansar Eddine, AQIM, fog of war, Gao, human rights, Mali, MNLA, MUJWA, rape, sharia, Timbuktu, Tuareg, war crimes Leave a commentIt took Ibrahim Touré three weeks to escape from Timbuktu after rebels seized the desert town, but, in his heart, he hasn’t really left. The 26-year-old shopkeeper studies the floor as he talks, cradling a welter of scabs and fresh scar tissue on his right elbow. Sometimes he stops to rub his head with an uncertain hand — the unforgiving sun, maybe, or a reaction to the horrors he has seen and suffered. If what he says is true, then the fog of war in northern Mali — where Tuareg separatists, Islamic militants, Arab militias and a hodgepodge of terrorist groups are vying for control following a spectacularly successful military campaign — is concealing a grisly spate of human-rights abuses, humanitarian suffering and war crimes. Read the rest of this entry »
Clinging to power
Posted: April 17, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: Ansar Eddine, AQIM, Bamako, Captain Amadou Sanogo, CNRDRE, Gao, human rights, Mali, military coup, MNLA, MUJWA, rape, Tuareg, UN Leave a commentEVERY 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. Read the rest of this entry »
Escape from Timbuktu: Foreigners Flee as Mali’s Rebels Declare Independence
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: Africa, al-Qaeda, Ansar Eddine, AQIM, coup, Gao, Iyad Ag Ghali, Mali, Mauritania, MNLA, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, MUJWA, Omar Hamaha, rebels, Timbuktu, Tuareg Leave a comment
A handout picture released by Azawad National Liberation Movement (MLNA) on April 2, 2012 and taken in February 2012 reportedly shows MNLA fighters gathering in an undisclosed location in Mali. AFP / GETTY IMAGES
Caked in dust and bristling with weaponry, the Tuareg rebels smiled at Neil Whitehead and Diane English. “It’s okay, we’re here for your protection,” one of the veiled warriors grinned at the nervous couple. Caught up in the middle of a war after Tuareg separatists advanced hundreds of miles in a matter of hours, the hotel-owners had tried twice already to leave their adopted home of Timbuktu. At first, retreating army columns had blocked their way. Then, when the road eventually cleared, English and Whitehead ran straight into a firefight. “There were guns going off all around us and tracer going past the cab windows, and we thought, ‘This isn’t good’,” English says, with a flash of understatement. Read the rest of this entry »
Fall of Timbuktu to rebels prompts fears for historic treasures
Posted: April 2, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Amadou Toumani Toure, Bamako, Captain Amadou Sanogo, Gao, Kidal, Mali, military coup, MNLA, Timbuktu, Tuareg, UNESCO Leave a commentRebels 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. Read the rest of this entry »
The Fearsome Tuareg Uprising in Mali: Less Monolithic than Meets the Eye
Posted: March 31, 2012 Filed under: Mali | Tags: al-Qaeda, Ansar Eddine, AQIM, Bamako, Gao, Iyad Ag Ghali, Kidal, Mali, MNLA, Tuareg Leave a comment
Tuareg rebels stand near a truck in Mali on March 19, 2012. DPA / LANDOV
The allegedly al-Qaeda-linked faction of the Tuareg rebellion in troubled Mali seems more of an opportunistic break than a real extension of the terror group
Somewhere close to the Algerian border a delegation of Tuareg notables hurried through the desert for a summit. It was mid-March and there was dissension among them. One of their own, a renegade desert warrior called Iyad ag Ghali, had just thrown the Tuaregs’ meticulously plotted rebellion against the Malian government into jeopardy. In proclamations appearing on YouTube, ag Ghali’s spokesman had done everything that the committee behind the two-month-old uprising by Tuareg rebels wanted to avoid. “It is our obligation to fight for the application of Shar’ia in Mali,” the spokesman said. The poisonous phrase, seized eagerly by a Malian government smarting from military defeat, undid months of careful political messaging. Now everyone would think the Tuareg were in bed with al-Qaeda. Read the rest of this entry »
julius cavendish 