The declaration was announced on April 6 by Moussa ag Attaher The Spokesperson of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). The declaration was issued in French and signed by The Secretary-General of the MNLA, Bilal ag Acherif, in Gao, the largest city and served as the temporary capital.

The conflict between Bamako and Azawad is rooted in economic exploitation, a history of violent oppression, and Indigenous Saharan claims to the land, in addition, discriminatory killings targeting Tamasheq (Tuareg people) civilians on the basis of their ethnicity have been reported.

Azawad International Radio (RAI), a new public radio station broadcasting from the Mali, launched last October with the goal of providing the Tuareg community a targeted radio that provide informative, educational news and talk programmes as well as North African Amazigh music.

For more information on Azawad International Radio to sign up as a volunteer, visit www.azawad.radio.net. or their Facebook page. The station is still seeking both employees and volunteers through memberships and time. Anyone around the world will be able to listen to the station through a live streaming link available on the website.

When: Friday, April 14, 2017
Where: Royal Bosto
279 Tremont St,
Boston, MA 02116
Tickets: www.axs.com

The MSA is an initiative led by two former MNLA figures, Moussa Ag Acharatoumane and Assalat Ag Habi. While Moussa have been active public figure, Assalat on the other hand have kept a low profile and his last appearance was back in April 2012 at Gao airport when the MNLA and other groups seized control of the city.

For Azawad people,  April 6, holds a special place in their hearts, it’s the 4th anniversary of Azawad’s Declaration of Independence.

Azawad was declared an independent state by the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad MNLA in 2012 after a Tuareg rebellion drove the Malian Army from the territory.

MNLA sought to establish an independent Saharan state in northern Mali with a secular and democratic government. These developments went underreported by the mainstream media until the recent French intervention in Azawad, in which over one hundred people were killed on its first day.

You will have read about music being banned and a strict interpretation of shari’a law being implemented in the northern region, with numerous Islamist factions taking control. All true, and the fears of secular Malians who oppose these actions and terrorist activities are legitimate, but there is another story from the region that began much earlier and has been scarcely covered by mainstream media.

Other story
Besides shedding light on this story, I hope to remind people that it is entirely possible to be a victim while carrying out atrocities of your own. We tend to prefer the simpler narrative of 100% good guys vs. 100% bad guys, but the reality of most conflicts is messy and rarely black and white.The reality of most conflicts is messy and rarely black and white
There are multiple movements currently vying for power in Azawad (a territory in northern Mali), and the conflation of indigenous, secular, nationalists with the various Islamist groups – which are mainly funded by and made up of outsiders to the region – only serves to misinform the current situation and leads to misunderstanding.The only things these groups have in common is an opposition to the Malian government, but that does not mean they support or agree with one another, and understanding the distinctions between them is crucial for a clearer picture of what’s happening in Mali.

Independence
While the goal of most Islamist groups is to establish an Islamic state, Tamasheq civilians (a subgroup of the Tuareg peoples, who live in an area that stretches from the Sahara to Sudan) and most of the population of Azawad simply want to live in peace: “Azawad independence means ‘no more state interference in our lives.”  This sentiment is echoed by some of our most well-known Malian musicians and bands, such as Khaira Arby and Tinariwen.  To promote these incredible musical traditions and secularism in Azawad, we must understand the context and origins of the conflict.In January 2012, a civil war began in Mali between Bamako and the people of its northern region Azawad, represented by National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (known by its French acronym MNLA).  By April, Azawad was declared an independent state by the MNLA, which sought to establish an independent Saharan state with a secular and democratic government. These developments went underreported by the mainstream media until the recent French intervention in Azawad, in which over one hundred people were killed on its first day.

Colonialism
The most populous indigenous ethnic group of the Azawad region are the Kel Tamasheq, who are part of the larger Amazigh people living in North Africa.  The Kel Tamasheq, also called “Tuareg,” are nomadic, and live in the Sahara, divided by the colonial borders of Mali, Niger, Algeria, and other states.  Before French colonialism of the Sahara ended, a group of Tamasheq and other Saharan leaders wrote a letter to French General De Gaulle asking for a Saharan state of their own.When they found that they were to be split up between several countries and that French colonialism would simply be replaced by another form of foreign occupation, they could accept their exploitation no longer. In Mali alone there have been four major uprisings of the Kel Tamasheq since formal French colonialism ended: in 1963, 1990, 2006, and finally in 2012.Tinariwen’s Soixante Trois refers to the first uprising of Azawad, and talks about how they will continue to rebel against Malian rule. A sample of the lyrics:

’63 has gone, but will return
Those days have left their traces
They murdered the old folk and a child just born
They swooped down to the pastures and wiped out the cattle…
’63 has gone, but will return

Exploitation
Mali and Niger, who have weathered the strongest resistance from the Kel Tamasheq, have continually exploited Tamasheq lands – mostly for gold, oil and uranium, which are usually sold to France – and underdeveloped their northern regions.  Documentary filmmaker Akli Sh’kka has recorded the experiences of some of the Tamasheq people in his short film Imshuradj, a Tamasheq word meaning “people without a country.”
In his admittedly leading questions, he refers to the massacres which killed hundreds of people in Azawad, the poisoning of wells and the killing of animals, the last two of which are lethal in the desert.  Confirmation that the Malian government is capable of committing the atrocities reported by these Tamasheq civilians can be found in its willingness to bomb civilian populations, even refugee camps, as they did during the MNLA’s fight for Azawadien independence.  Actions like these reveal a wanton disregard for human life – Azawadien life – on the part of the Malian state.  In addition, discriminatory killings targeting Tamasheq civilians on the basis of their ethnicity have been reported.

White versus black?
One of the misconceptions of the Azawadien conflict is the idea that it is rooted in the racism of‘white Tuaregs’ vs. ‘black Africans’: that the Kel Tamasheq simply cannot bear to be ruled by Black, southern Malians. However, a significant number of Kel Tamasheq are dark-skinned people who would nearly universally be considered Black (to my knowledge, most Kel Tamasheqs are dark-skinned), and as far as I’m aware the lighter-skinned ones do not see themselves as white, so this racial analysis sounds uncomfortable like the common tendency to interpret any friction between people as “tribal” conflicts.
The conflict between Bamako and Azawad is rooted in economic exploitation, a history of violent oppression, and Indigenous Saharan claims to the land, rather than in the purported white supremacy of an indigenous African people. The Tamasheq, like other Imazighen, are neither Arab nor European.  Furthermore, Azawad was never intended to be an ethnic state only for the Kel Tamasheq, but inclusive of all other ethnic and linguistic groups residing in the region.

Soldier-musicians
The decades-long struggle of the Kel Tamasheq in Azawad has been most popularly represented by the ‘desert-blues’ band Tinariwen, winner of the 2012 World Music Grammy for their albumTassili.  The band was formed in the 1980s with a group of five young Tamasheq living in exile in southern Algeria, soldier-musicians who were involved in the 1990-94 Tamasheq uprising against both Mali and Niger.
They were trained in military camps in Libya with the promise from Gaddafi that he would help them create an autonomous Saharan state of their own, though in actuality Gaddafi only sought to exploit the dispossessed Kel Tamasheq to further his own imperialistic ambitions.  Tinariwen, which has always supported Saharan self-determination and independence, rose to global prominence after meeting the French band Lo’Jo in 1998 and began touring Europe soon after.
Yet this international fame has not separated the members of Tinariwen from the struggle for freedom in their homeland of Azawad. Their Amazigh nationalism and desire for independence was as strong as ever when I got the chance to have a chat with the band members – between their cigarettes and atay –  during a recent tour.
The song Tenere Taqqim Tossam is about the love of the desert. Here are some lyrics which come from Tinariwen’s site in official English translation:
The desert is mine
Tenere, my homeland,
We come to you when the sun goes down
Leaving a trail of blood across the sky
Which the black night wipes out
One of the members of Tinariwen was even kidnapped by one of the Islamist groups rising to power in Azawad, one of the groups some of those unfamiliar with Mali mistakenly equate with the Kel Tamasheq and MNLA.

Western foreign policy
The takeover of the new state of Azawad by Islamist factions such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was not without external involvement with an interest in fostering terrorism, corruption, and drug trafficking in the region (see “How Washington helped forter the Islamist uprising in Mali”).  In particular, The role of Algeria and Western foreign policy in particular have proven key to the Islamist takeover, as has the Qatarian backing of Islamist groups.
All of these external interventions are underpinned by specific economic or political motives.  France, the former colonizer, is defending one of its sources of phosphate, oil, and uranium, of which neighbouring Niger is one of the greatest suppliers, and the success of an Azawadien state is feared because it is believed it would incite the Kel Tamasheq in Niger to rise up, too, as they have in the past.
Meanwhile, Algeria and the surrounding countries with Tamasheq populations seek to quell the rise of Amazigh power and prevent separatist revolutions within their own borders.

Outsiders
With the justification of preventing terrorism and Islamism radicalism in the Sahara, and with the added motivation of the Algerian hostage crisis, France has deployed nearly 2,500 troops in the region with hundreds more arriving from ECOWAS.  Is the goal to stem the spread of shari’a law and Islamic theocracy or crush the dreams of a secular, democratic state of Azawad, and kill thousands in the process?  Perhaps both.
The MNLA and Azawadien civilians do not want to live under AQIM or under an Islamic law enforced by brutality, but what this intervention really means for the Kel Tamasheq is that – once again – they will be killed en masse for the economic and political goals of outsiders.  Their desire for self-determination, linguistic rights, and the freedom to practice their culture will not come to fruition, not now.  The French invasion, fully supported by neighboring West African states, serves to strengthen the ties between the colonizer and the colonized.

European map
An independent Azawad has dangerous implications.  Azawad challenges the colonial borders drawn by Europeans at the Conference of Berlin during the Scramble for Africa and provides the first such significant challenge since the independence of South Sudan.  Recognizing Azawad would have dire implications for the discriminatory Arab nationalist regimes of North Africa, whose Indigenous Amazigh populations have a close connection with their Kel Tamasheq sisters and brothers.
The AU and ECOWAS have backed Mali in the conflict — the AU formally refused to recognize Azawad after their declaration of independence — and fully cooperated with the French invasion.  Thus Mali and other African states are not yet ready to break ties with their “former” colonial powers, nor to defy the European map of the continent.

Resources
For the Malian state as well as France, economic exploitation has continually been shown to take precedence over the value of human life with respect to the residents of Azawad.  The adoption of European capitalist structures in “post-colonial” Mali allowed a particular elite of those in power to conceptualize the Azawad region as a resource, allowing the state to distance itself from the very humanity of Azawadiens.
Livelihoods and ecological integrity in Azawad thus become secondary to the capital accumulation resulting from resource extraction and sale.  The human cost of the current attacks on Azawad from France, Mali, and ECOWAS are, in comparison, considered unimportant.

Not simple
There is a positive role that the Malian state and citizens can play for Azawad, by advocating for regional autonomy or even independence and speaking out against the war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Malian state against Azawadiens.  Regardless of the territorial status of Azawad, for any reconciliation to occur the legitimate grievances of the Kel Tamasheq need to be recognized and addressed by Mali.  Secularism, peace, and stability will only come to the region by addressing the very real exploitation and discrimination experienced by the Tamasheq and other Azawadien citizens.
As I wrote at the start of this article, we prefer the simpler narratives, but reality is rarely black and white.

Source: thisisafrica

https://www.facebook.com/418272571696499/videos/457646467759109/

Twenty-eight months after France’s military intervention in Mali in January 2013 to end the Islamist extremist insurgency and Mali’s “crisis”, a much-trumpeted peace signing ceremony was scheduled to be held in the capital, Bamako, on 15 May 2015. The intended signatories were the Mali government, a number of government-backed militia and the Coordination for the Movements of Azawad (CMA). The CMA comprised some half-dozen groups, including the two main Tuareg rebel groups, the Mouvement National pour la libération de l’Azawad (MNLA) and the Haut Conseil pour l’Unité de l’Azawad (HCUA), who took up arms in January 2012 for the independence of “Azawad”, as Tuareg call northern Mali.
The ceremony was an embarrassment to those who had been promoting it. Only Mali’s foreign minister, Abdoulaye Diop, three representatives of pro-Bamako militias (who had previously been part of the Islamist insurgency that took over northern Mali during 2012) and two minor members of the CMA signed the Algiers-drafted agreement. The MNLA and HCUA refused to sign.
Pierre Boilley, the French African historian and internationally recognised authority on Mali, described the peace deal as not worth the paper it was written on. I had earlier described it as a farce.Both descriptions fall short of the mark. The peace deal is much worse than that because conflict and instability in Mali, as this peace deal will cause, tend to have consequences, especially in terms of the spread of extremist militancy, for the wider Sahelian and North African regions.

Fallout from NATO’s Libya attack
The crisis that engulfed Mali in 2012 was a direct consequence of NATO’s imprudent invasion of Libya. In late 2011, Tuareg fighters returning from Libya joined up with remnants of the 2008-2010 Tuareg rebellion in Mali to form the MNLA. In January 2012, they took up arms and quickly put the ill-led and ill-equipped Malian army to flight. In April, they declared Azawad an independent state.
Algeria, always fearful that a successful Tuareg rebellion in the Sahel would trigger unrest in Algeria, succeeded in undermining the MNLA rebellion by instigating an “Islamist insurgency” in northern Mali, comprising three Islamist groups; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar al-Dine and Mouvement pour l’Unicité et le Jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (MUJAO) – over which its secret service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), had extensive control. The MNLA was quickly sidelined as the Islamists took control of Azawad. Their threat to southern Mali and Bamako was saved by France’s military intervention.
The 15 May 2015 peace ceremony was almost two years in the making, starting from the Ouagadougou Accord of June 2013. Signed by the Mali government and the MNLA and HCUA, the accord agreed a ceasefire, a presidential election (on 28 July) and the start of peace talks within 60 days of the election.
The subsequent peace process is a classic example of how not to resolve conflicts and achieve even a short-term, let alone lasting peace.
That was never the intention of either the Mali government or Algeria, which had offered its services, or, as some might say, pushed itself on Mali and the international community, as the intermediary.
From the moment Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK) was elected president, the Mali government’s political strategy towards the rebels and the peace process reflected the dangerous, popular mood of Bamako’s streets and the political and military leadership’s desire for military revenge for the rebels’ humiliation of the Malian army.

Demonising the Tuaregs
Aided and abetted by a number of academics and journalists, apologists for the Bamako regime, IBK’s government demonised the Tuareg rebels as “terrorists”, “traffickers” and “criminals”. Such demonisation intensified when the MNLA and HCUA refused to accept the Algiers-drafted peace deal, presented to them on 27 February 2015, for making no concession to the autonomy or federalism that they had been requesting since the Algiers talks started in July 2014.
Nor has Algeria been motivated by the goal of lasting peace. Rather, its main interests have been two-fold. One is to prevent a peace deal that would give Tuareg any form of self-government and political rights. Algeria fears that would trigger unrest and secessionist tendencies amongst its own Tuareg population.
Azawad Tuareg do not trust Algeria. They know the DRS promoted the Islamist insurgency that derailed their rebellion in 2012. Several are now accusing the DRS of using threats, promises and monetary payments to infiltrate the MNLA and cajole it into signing the peace deal. Algeria’s plans for Mali are about preserving the status quo rather than any new progressive political system. Moroccan media, not surprisingly, have even accused Algeria of pushing Mali into all-out civil war.
Algeria’s second interest is hydrocarbons. In July 2014, when it was decided that peace talks would be held in Algiers, Sonatrach, the Algerian national oil company, contacted the Malian authorities to ensure its licence in northern Mali was still valid and to indicate it would begin exploratory drilling once a peace agreement was signed.
Three months later, in what is believed to have been a secret deal with Algeria, Mali rescinded 10 foreign oil exploration concessions and production-sharing agreements in the Taoudéni and Gao basins in northern Mali and the Nara basin in the west on the grounds that they had not been taken up (because of the insecurity). It is suspected they were to be offered to Sonatrach following the delivery of a peace deal satisfactory to IBK’s government.
Moreover, the Algiers-based peace talks, extending over eight months, were a kind of “peace by diktat”. Algiers kept the various parties apart, with the Tuareg rebels never having more than a few minutes of direct dialogue with their adversaries. The result was a peace deal into which they had had virtually no input.

West ignores plight of Tuareg
The international community, from the UN to EU member states, has remained remarkably ill-informed on both the Tuareg situation and Algeria’s regional interests, being obsessed with a US-promoted notion of “security” and their own geopolitical interests.
While Mali’s prime minister couldn’t sign the Algiers-drafted accord fast enough on 1 March, the CMA asked for a postponement while it sought the advice of its own people. With some 3,000 local CMA delegates voicing their opposition to the draft agreement, CMA spokesman Bilal ag Acherif said it did not take into account “the essential elements of the legitimate aspirations of 
the people of Azawad” and that the CMA was therefore “requesting a meeting with the mediators and international partners” to discuss the process further.
While the Mali government immediately rejected this request, the international community believed that the MNLA and HCUA would succumb to its unseemly pressure, its threats of sanctions and the inducements of Algeria’s DRS. But the rebels held out, with those members of the international community who did turn up for the Bamako farce looking a little foolish.
The result of the peace deal is that the Mali government and army can now return to war, as it has wanted to do these last two years, and probably once again be humiliated; the drug-traffickers can get back to the business they never really stopped; the former “terrorists” of MUJAO, now a government militia serving as proxy for the Mali army, can continue to wreak havoc; Algeria’s foreign policy of destabilising its neighbours can ratchet up another success; France will be able to legitimise its continued post-colonial military presence in the region; local Tuareg feuding will probably intensify; international aid agencies will cry crocodile tears and wring their hands in despair, while the UN will continue in its semi-detached role of not quite knowing what it is meant to be doing in the area to start with.
The losers, of course, will be the civilian populations – the women, children, old and infirm – of all ethnic groups in the region who have already suffered terribly.
Since 15 May, 10 days before this was written, there have been at least 12 outbreaks of fighting in northern and central Mali. Unless stopped very soon, this renewed fighting has the potential to trigger wider regional Tuareg unrest and exacerbate the already chaotic situation in Libya and the tensions in other neighbouring states.

Source: www.middleeasteye.net