Reuters
By Bate Felix
BAMAKO (Reuters) – Mali’s desert Tuaregs proclaimed independence for what they call the state of Azawad on Friday, a secession bid immediately rejected by the African Union, neighbouring Algeria and the former colonial power France.
The nomadic people has nurtured the dream of a Saharan homeland since Mali’s independence in 1960 and has come closer than ever to attaining it by seizing key northern towns this week while the capital Bamako was distracted by a coup.
Neighbours fear the creation of a new state could encourage separatists elsewhere, while the presence within the rebellion of Islamists with ties to al Qaeda has sparked wider fears of the emergence of a new rogue state threatening global security.
“The Executive Committee of the MNLA calls on the entire international community to immediately recognise, in a spirit of justice and peace, the independent state of Azawad,” Billal Ag Acherif, secretary-general of the Tuareg-led MNLA rebel group MNLA said on its www.mnlamov.net home page.
The statement listed decades of Tuareg grievances over their treatment by governments dominated by black southerners in the distant capital Bamako. It said the group recognised all borders with neighbouring states and pledged to create a democratic state based on the principles of the United Nations charter.
It was datelined in the town of Gao, which along with the ancient trading post of Timbuktu and other northern towns fell to rebels in a matter of 72 hours this week as soldiers in Mali’s army either defected to the rebellion or fled.
Reuters Television pictures from Gao taken hours before the overnight website declaration showed jubilant MNLA soldiers celebrating in the local governor’s residence in Gao, decked with an MNLA flag and re-christened “The Palace of Azawad”.
The territory claimed as Azawad roughly corresponds to the three northern regions of Mali which together make up a zone larger than France. The term is thought to have linguistic links to the dried up Azawagh tributary of the giant Niger river which snakes through West Africa from Guinea to Nigeria.
The 54-state African Union rejected the independence call as “null and of no value whatsoever”, urging the rest of the world to shun the secession bid. Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said his country could never accept a break-up of its neighbour.
France also rejected the declaration and Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said it was now up to Mali’s neighbours to see whether negotiations were possible with the MNLA – a move that could target an autonomy deal short of full independence.
“What we want from ECOWAS is for them to work out a real long-term solution for Mali,” Longuet told reporters in Paris of the 15-member West African regional bloc.
WHO’S IN CONTROL?
Initial reactions in Bamako were of dismay.
“This is really a bad joke,” Toure Alassane, a 42-year-old native of Timbuktu said at gathering of about 200 northerners protesting against the move in the capital Bamako.
“It will never work. You don’t just declare independence when people don’t have food to eat and nothing is functioning in the north,” he said. Widespread food shortages caused by last year’s rain failure have been aggravated by the insecurity.
In the northern town of Kidal, one resident said control was not in the hands of the MNLA but of the Ansar Dine Islamist group which seeks to impose sharia law across Mali.
“Nothing goes without their say,” the resident said.
The advance capitalised on confusion in Bamako after a March 22 coup by mid-ranking officers whose main goal had been to beef up efforts to quash the rebellion.
In a sign of growing foreign concern, Britain said it was temporarily closing its embassy and pulling embassy staff from the country, “given the unstable and unpredictable situation in Mali and the continuing lack of constitutional rule”.
Mali’s worried neighbours see the handover of power back to civilians as a precondition for moves to help stabilise the country and have imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions aimed at forcing junta leader Captain Amadou Sanogo to step down.
On Thursday a team of mediators expressed hope Sanogo would soon announce steps that would allow them to drop the sanctions on Africa’s third largest gold miner, which include the closure of borders and the suspension of its account at the regional central bank. There was no immediate response from the junta.
ECOWAS military planners are preparing the mandate for a force of up to 3,000 soldiers which could be deployed in Mali with the dual aim of securing the return to constitutional order and halting any further rebel advance.
France’s Longuet put MNLA’s fighting strength at a maximum 3,000 forces and estimated that was 10 times the combined head count of Ansar Dine. He reaffirmed that France could provide an ECOWAS force with logistical help including transport.
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