Islam, State and Regime in Mali
(Jeffrey Haynes, London Metropolitan University)
From Timbuktu and Bamako comes a lesson for the entire Muslim world: a secular
detachment from politics and peace with the other religions. The Muslim president
asks for the blessing of the Catholic archbishop
(http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/7054?eng=y
A week after the carnage in Paris, terrorists struck again, this time in an attack on a
hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali. There were no immediate indications that
attacks in Mali and France were directly linked, but both incidents underscore the
spread of a deadly style of attack that came to prominence in a jihadist assault on
Mumbai seven years ago. (http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-andafrica/21678907-deadly-style-suicidal-gun-assault-has-spread-across-globe-howrespond?zid=304&ah=e5690753dc78ce91909083042ad12e30)
Abstract
The west African country of Mali presents a quandary for the researcher interested in the
relationship between religion and democracy in the country and, more generally, in the
‘Muslim world.’ The first quotation above from 2004 highlights the perception of Mali as a
Muslim country ‘outlier’ – one where peace and harmony reign, tolerance and consensus are
the norm, and extremism and ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ are (virtually) unknown. The second
quotation from 2015 highlights just the opposite: the effect of religious extremism and
violence on the country, perpetrated by Islamist extremists. The quandary is: how to
understand interactions between ‘Islam’ and democracy in Mai, and what does this tell us
about the nature of the state and successive governing regimes in the country?
The general aim of the paper is to examine over time relationships involving the ‘state’,
‘regime’ and ‘Islam’ in Mali. The conclusion is that despite a quarter century of democracy
and an initial strong sense of democratic consolidation, successive regimes in Mali have
failed to build on an indigenous culture supportive of democracy and have instead presided
over creation and development of a largely hollow political framework in which democracy
has been more rhetorical than substantial. Exploiting this situation, extremist Islamists (which
I shall also refer to as ‘jihadists’) in Mali not only attacked symbols of national and
international power but have also used the decline of the capacity of the state to seek to create
and implement their own versions of Islamic law in various parts of the country. A key
component of impetus for the growing confidence of Islamist extremists has been a
dovetailing of local and transnational Islamist activities and expectations. This encouraged
not only the explosive growth of transnational Islamic extremism, following a short-lived
Islamist takeover of power in the north of Mali in 2012-13, but also reflected a reduction,
shrinkage and significant withdrawal of the state from large areas of the country.
The structure of the paper is as follows: The next section covers the relationships between
state, regime and Islam in Mali. The second section focuses on the shift from authoritarian to
democratic rule in the 1990s. The third section examines the increasing political significance
of interactive local and transnational Islamist extremism, decline (but not death) of
democracy, and the largely ineffectual state and international response. A conclusion sums up
the paper’s arguments.
1
State, regime and Islam in Mali
Mali is predominantly Muslim, a former French colony which gained independence in 1960.
Mali’s political history and development is traditionally strongly influenced by the French
tradition of laïcité - i.e. rigid separation of ‘church’ and state. Mali is constitutionally a
secular country, and there is no clearly defined or workable conception of what role ‘Islam’
‘should’ exercise in the process of state- and regime-(re)building. Following an Islamist
takeover in 2012, certain Islamist actors sought to undertake governance and welfare tasks,
with a view to building political support. In 2013, following the ousting from power of al
Qaeda-style Islamists by the Malian army, aided by French troops, and a failure of the
traditionally secular state fully to reassert its governing role, including in relation to welfare,
the country experienced a governance vacuum which shows no signs of ending. On January
20, 2013, Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, explained to government soldiers
why they, alongside French troops, were fighting rebels in Mali’s northern regions. Traoré
stated that: ‘Mali is at war because Malian women and men are not inclined to renounce
liberty, democracy, their territorial integrity, or the republican
Today, Mali lacks a viable and authoritative centre and focus of power and legitimacy, with
various secular actors, as well as those informed by several ideological interpretations of
political Islam, vying for power. Referring to Mali’s post-colonial, secular, form of
government, President Traoré was rejecting demands, from a northern Islamist group, Ansar
al-Din (‘Defenders of the Faith’) that Mali should implement Islamic law (or Sharia). In the
nine months between Spring 2012, when Ansar al-Din seized control of what had begun as a
separatist rebellion, and the winter of 2013 when a combined force of French and Malian
forces dislodged them, Ansar al-Din and its allies controlled much of northern Mali.
According to Iyad Ag Ghali, Ansar al-Dins leader, ‘secularism is disbelief’, an impossible
position to take for Muslims. Thus the political struggle in Mali is between laïcité – implying
no authoritative public role for Islam or any other faith in the country’s political system – and
an Islamic state, implying just the opposite: a country governed by Islamic law. In other
words, starting in 2013 Mali has faced a stark choice between secularism and Islamism. Yet
neither the political vision of Traoré, nor that of Ag Ghali, captured the range of Islamic
political viewpoints that exist in Mali (Thurston-37-2.pdf). This paper argues that the future
of Muslim politics in Mali will likely be more vibrant than either of these visions allows.
2
Three main concepts are used by the relevant actors in Mali to denote their relationship with
religion:
1. The Malian state and society apparently embraced the French ideal of laïcité, with a
clear separation of religion and the state; 2. Mali’s mainly Mulsim population is largely characterised by its ‘moderation’,
drawing largely on extant cultural traditions;
3. Extremist interpretations of Islam have grown in recent years; some are ‘home grown’
others are transnational in origin. While most local Muslims eschew extremist and
radical interpretations of Islam, the international media identifies the conflict as one
between secular moderation and Islamist extremism.
(The Role of Religion in
Conflict and Peacebuilding // British Academy)
Whereas governments in Mali since independence – both military- led and democraticallyelected – have been secular, civil society in the country evinces a mix of secular and religious
frameworks of understanding. Religious freedoms are constitutionally guaranteed. Most
Malians – around 90 per cent of the population – are Muslim (predominantly Sunni),
approximately nine per cent practise indigenous faiths, and about one per cent is Christian
(Coleman, 2014: 175). Until 2012, Mali was characterised by inter-faith harmony, with
Christians, Muslims and those following indigenous or traditional religions living peacefully
together, often in the same communities (Jeffrey, 2013).
Following the withdrawal of the French in 1960, independent Mali was characterised by
‘typical’ sub-Saharan African religious tolerance, with ‘extremist’ or fundamentalist’
versions of Islam finding little popular support (Haynes, 1996). On the other hand, Wahhabist
ideas had begun to circulate from the 1920s, spread by local Muslim traders returning from
the hajj to Mecca. Wahhabist reformers came into conflict both with indigenous purveyors of
Islam, known as the marabouts, and with the French colonial administrators, who
pragmatically made political allegiances with important marabouts. As in neighbouring Côte
d'Ivoire, Wahhabists in Mali gave their political support to nationalist politicians during the
period of anticolonial agitation leasing up to independence. They built their own mosques
and schools, and challenged the marabouts to religious disputation. Support for the
Wahhabiya grew steadily from 1945.
As in many other sub-Saharan African countries, the new post-colonial government in Mali
was relatively unprepared for rule. In order to help develop a viable state and ruling regime,
the government collected together both leading marabouts and Wahhabists, despite the
country’s constitutionally secular status. The aim was to create a viable regime of interaction
between the state and leading Muslims, who typically enjoyed strong popular support.
Leading Muslims ‘in political terms ... constituted an indispensable element in the support
base of the military rulers of Mali’ (Cruise O'Brien, 1986: 79). Islamic support for the ruling
regime was institutionalised in 1980 by the formation of the Association Malien pour l'Unite
et la Progres de l'Islam (AMUPI; ‘Malian Association for Unity and the Progress of Islam’).
AMUPI was created at least in part in response to a perceived threat from transnational
political Islam, then newly radicalised by the Iranian revolution and by Libya’s activist
foreign policy in West Africa (Haynes, 1993: 129-132).
Having seized power in a coup in 1968, Mali’s leader, General Moussa Traoré and the ruling
Mali People's Democratic Union government were overthrown in March, 1991, following
armed forces’ action. Traoré’s successor, Alpha Oumar Konare, was as concerned as his
3
predecessor to prolong AMUPI’s surveillance and control of radical Islamist groups.
AMUPI’s first President was Oumar Ly, a close ally of the president, who later became prime
minister. After Ly’s death, a new congress in 2001 elected Siaka Traoré as chairman. The
official aim of AMUPI was to boost unity in the country and create the right environment for
the progress of Islam, under the auspices of the ruling regime. To this end, AMUPI directed
state funds for the building of mosques and Islamic schools (madrassas) and sought to
handpick personnel to staff them and to project a ‘tolerant’ and ‘moderate’ interpretation of
Islam. AMUPI also played an overtly societal and political role in support of the ruling
regime, calling for peace and conciliation during labour strikes – of which there were many –
in several of Mali’s cities in the 1990s. In short, the role of AMUPI was an Islamic parallel to
Mali’s sole legal political party, the Union Démocratique du Peuple Malien (UDPM;
‘Democratic Union of the Malian People’). AMUPI was an important component of the
regime’s power and authority as it enabled the state to extend its authority, often via
patronage, to the level of community Islam.
The symbiotic relationship between political power and religious authority in Mali was by no
means unique in sub-Saharan Africa. Following independence from colonial rule, in many
sub-Saharan African countries where Islam is a substantial societal presence, governments
typically sought to build close partnerships with leading Muslims to develop and embed state
and regime power and authority. In the same way that many mainline Christian churches, for
example, in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Denmark sought to provide an
intermediary position between state and society, national Muslim organisations in subSaharan Africa also sought to fill the roles of intermediary and interlocutor between state and
the Muslim citizenry (the umma). As a result, senior Muslim figures close to the state had a
dual role: to channel the state’s orders and wishes downwards, while officially passing social
concerns the other way. NMOs are not only found in Sub-Saharan African states where there
are majorities of Muslims – such as, Mali Niger, and Guinea – but are also present in others,
including Tanzania, Malawi, Côte d'Ivoire and Uganda, where Muslims are in the minority.
In these latter states, the state, through its alliance with a NMO seeks to achieve control of
Muslims, often regarded, especially since the rise of transnational Islamist radicalism
following Iran’s revolution, a potentially subversive group. NMOs, then, function primarily
as control and surveillance bodies, as ‘a means of protection against the ... development of a
militant Islam, uncontrolled and subversive’ (Triaud, 1982: 38). In addition, during the 1980s
and 1990s, several African governments actively sought funds from rich Middle Eastern
Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia. In sum, many sub-Saharan African governments, in
partnership with senior Muslim figures focused corporately in their NMO, sought to create
hegemonic rule by exploiting the latter’s religious and moral prestige, cultural leadership, and
ideological persuasiveness.
In this context, Islamic reformers are closely linked to modernising secular power holders,
are part of the elite, and target Islamic traditionalists, radicals and extremists. Formally and
ostensibly they seek a return to what they believe are the original principles of Islam, as
related by God to the Prophet Muhammad, as interpreted in Wahhabi doctrines. That is,
treating the Sharia as an ideological reference point, ‘Islamic reformers’ seek to use it as a
blueprint for reorganising society ostensibly to solve extant social, moral, economic and
political dislocations.
Muslim reformers, despite their predilection for the revival of a ‘pure’ (or purist) version of
Islam, nevertheless found it expedient to borrow from the West’s organisational models,
including the formation of top-down bureaucracies and management systems (Cruise O'Brien
4
1986: 78). By the use of such ‘modern’ methods, they sought to collect and collate useful
political information through networks of appointees and confer upon their state’s Muslims
the feeling that they have a national body working for their interests. Members of the Muslim
national organisations receive salaries from the state, have the ear of governments and are
important in the maintenance of political order. For their part, they strive to build widespread
political allegiance to the state and the ruling regime in a way which is far more complete and
systematic than that achieved by mainstream Christian religious bodies in modern European
states. Even though Muslim leaders (ulama) may sometimes lead popular protests when
religious concerns are at issue, they must play a shrewd and skilful game to appear to be all
things to all people: oppositionist enough to lead discontented Muslims when necessary and
quiescent enough to maintain their relationship with state rulers.
Half a century ago, during decolonisation, Muslim members of the new nationalist-led
governments in Africa were keen to try to counter what they saw as alien Western (Christian)
ideas and to make Islam the dominant religious and societal force, with themselves in
positions of power and authority, underpinned by closeness to state power. Consequently,
leading Muslims led NMOs whose official goal was Islamic ‘renewal’ and ‘reform’
movements, including Wahhabist groups, aimed to give a new focus and direction to Islam in
post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa by defining and expressing new modalities of both social
organisation and education in the service of the state, including reforming and controlling the
ubiquitous Sufi brotherhoods (Coulon, 1983: 153). Fifty years ago, post-colonial reformers
looked to Saudi Arabia or Egypt for inspiration. Radical and reformist movements –
including, Wahhabist and Muslim Brotherhood-inspired entities, which derived inspiration
from the works of, inter alia, Jamal Ad Din Al Afghani (1838-1897), Muhammad Abduh
(1849-1905), and Rashid Ridha (1865-1935) – actively spread their ideas to sub-Saharan
Africa (Kane, 1990: 7-8). This development helped to progress ideological and faith-based
connections between the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa. It also involved renovation of
Arabic as a religious language, of Islamic education more generally, and development of
modern Islamic scientific knowledge and technology in order not to be dependent on the
West. In addition, there was the presentation of Salafist ideas from the Arab world, 1
especially following the ideas of an Egyptian intellectual movement led by Muhammad Abdu
(died 1955), which promulgated a programme pursuing a return to the ‘fundamentals’ of
Islam, as expressed and manifested during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, nearly 14
centuries ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, schools, with curricula based on such idea(l)s, were
founded by members of the Salafiyya in Guinea, Chad and Senegal (Coulon, 1983: 153-4),
before spreading to Mali, Niger and other west African countries.
Post-colonial governments in sub-Sharan Africa were anxious to find common cause with
Islamic reformers for two main reasons: the first was the obvious one of governments always
wishing to control any potential force of dissent or opposition; the second was that Islamic
revival was deemed by many postcolonial, nationalist, sub-Saharan African leaders 40 or 50
years ago as little more than an Arab plot to control black African Muslims. Europeans were
decolonising; Arabs, it was thought, sought to step into the vacuum for hegemonic purpose.
In other words, Sub-Saharan African governments were determined to ensure that the Arabic
roots of Muslim renewal were not utilised by Arab states as a means to gain undue influence
with local reforming groups. Yet, while many post-colonial African governments were
naturally suspicious of their Muslim citizens’ ties with foreign governments, they were also
1
The Salafi movement or Salafist movement is an ultra-conservative reform movement within Sunni Islam that
references the doctrine known as Salafism.
5
happy to use NMOs in attempts to regularise cultural and religious contacts with the Arab
world, not least to try to attract rich Arab countries’ development capital. Consequently, it
was common after decolonisation for sub-Saharan African governments to included
significant Muslims in their diplomatic missions or to be named as ambassador to Muslim
countries outside of Africa.
In conclusion, what this suggests is that governments in sub-Saharan Africa with significant
Muslim populations, like Mali, were ambivalent about the societal and political position and
role of ‘Islam’ in their countries. On the one hand, the value of Islam as social cement was
understood and welcomed, including in Mali, where historical trading and faith-based ties
between local Muslims and those in the Middle East and north Africa predate creation of
modern state boundaries. On the other hand, such links could theoretically be an impediment
to postcolonial rulers’ ability to control all of their citizens. For example, the Libyan
Sanusiyya has widespread links with Muslims in West Africa, including in Mali. This helped
to facilitate Qaddafi’s ultimately futile expansionist dreams in West Africa from the 1970s.
For a time in Chad, followers of Sanusiyya, a state traditionally dominated by southern Sara
Christians, appeared to have more in common with their co-religionists over the country’s
northern border with Libya, than with ‘Christian’ state leaders. Yet eventually from the mid1980s Qaddafi’s expansionist foreign policies served to unite Chad's competing factions
against his expansionist goals (albeit temporarily) (Kelley 1987).
The overall relationship between state, regime and Islam in postcolonial Mali was one of
mutually supportive, inter-elite interactions. Despite being constitutionally secular, ruling
regimes from the time of independence adopted the policy of involving leading Muslims in
their ruling framework in order to try to gain the support of local communities who typically
valued the leadership of local Muslim ‘big men’ rather than their secular rulers.
From dictatorship to democracy in Mali
For three decades following independence, the political model sketched above, involving a
symbiotic relationship between secular single-party rulers and religious allies gathered in
AMUPI, was successful in projecting a regime characterised by apparent consensus and
shared sense of direction. In 1991, Mali’s leader, General Moussa Traoré, who had seized
power more than two decades earlier, was overthrow by another military figure, Lieutenant
Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré, who headed a wider armed forces revolt. Perhaps
surprisingly, Lieutenant Colonel Touré did not avail himself of the opportunity to create a
new dictatorship, headed by himself. Instead, he presided over the holding of national
parliamentary and presidential elections, without personally running for office. A university
professor, Alpha Oumar Konaré, was elected as president in 1992 and again 1997.
Constitutionally, he was allowed only to serve two terms and he dutifully removed himself
from the presidency after his second term as the constitution stipulated.
Influenced by the third wave of democracy then sweeping across sub-Saharan Africa, Mali’s
multiparty elections in 1992 led not only to Konaré’s election as president but also to a new
ruling coalition of opposition parties, the Alliance pour la Démocratie au Mali (ADEMA;
‘The Alliance for Democracy in Mali’). ADEMA won both a majority of seats in parliament,
while its candidate, Konaré, won the presidency, in a relatively free and fair electoral
process. The context of the elections was not only a global and regional wave of
democratisation: it was also linked to several years of deepening authoritarian rule and the
impact of several serious famines. These helped to stimulate a period of significant
6
turbulence followed by negotiations, dominated by protests led by civil society actors,
including students, labour unions, human rights organisations. The collective demand,
expressed from early 1991, was an end to repression, torture and corruption (Smith, 2001: 7374). In March, protesters demonstrated outside key state buildings demanding the resignation
of the president, Moussa Traoré. The military armed forces responded by opening fire on the
protesters, killing hundreds of people. Traoré declared a state of emergency. Soon, however,
another military coup removed him from power. A coalition of opposition forces refused to
accept a new military government and announced plans for a national conference to schedule
elections and organize the writing of a new constitution. Mali thereby became one of 10
Francophone countries in which citizens demanded and achieved a national democracy
conference in the early 1990s. The national conference was widely seen as a crucial
component of Mali’s democratisation, underlining the importance of a proper process of
constitutionalism (Haynes, 2004). Mali’s national democracy conference included
representatives from opposition groups, trade unions, other local organisations, and the
transitional government. As Wing (2008) notes, such inclusiveness and participation in the
process of constitutionalism was crucial in determining the legitimacy and durability of
Mali’s subsequent democratic transition.
Democratisation via a popular national conference was the mechanism which started a
prolonged period of democracy in Mali, economically one of the poorest countries in the
world. During the first decade of the 2000s, the country enjoyed high democracy ratings
which drew on an indigenous culture characterised by mutual support of various ethnic
groups, involving power-sharing, tolerance, and trust. Afrobarometer findings underlined the
perception of Mali as an unusual example of an economically poor African nation whose
traditions of consensus, moderation and tolerance nevertheless enabled ethnically diverse
people to live together in a mutually supportive fashion. Findings of the 2001 Afrobarometer
poll in Mali were summed up by Bratton, Coulibaly and Machado (2002: 208) as follows:
‘the Malian conception of democracy is largely communitarian. It centers on a set of political
values such as “equality and justice”, “mutual respect”, “unity” and “working together”,
which describe an idealized version of political community derived from the country’s past’.
The next Afrobarometer survey, carried out in 2005, reinforced these findings.2 Nearly a third
of respondents (28%) defined democracy in the following terms: equality/justice,
peace/unity/power sharing or working together. In addition, a further quarter of respondents
characterised democracy in terms of civil liberties and personal freedoms
(http://afrobarometer.org/). In short, during the 2000s, for many Malians, a sense of the
importance of social justice was for many a basic aspect of democracy, while many stated
that they actively took part in community level organisations’ activities. A decade later, in
2016, Afrobarometer reported that 75% of Malians prefer democracy to any other political
system, 92% prefer a united country, and 87% ‘believe persons implicated in human rights
violations should be banned from holding elected positions’
(http://www.afrobarometer.org/countries/mali-0). In sum, the Malian preference for
democracy was clear, expressed in various ways and informing the opinions of citizens from
the country’s plentiful ethnic groups.
During the period of democratisation and democratic consolidation from the early 1990s,
Mali experienced per capita economic growth (measured in 2000 US$), averaging almost
four percent per year (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/mali/gdp-per-capita). Like many
other African countries at the time, Mali adhered to structural adjustment reforms which led
2
The survey question probing the meaning of democracy was not asked in the next survey, carried out in 2008.
7
to a consistent flow of external loans and aid, although the country’s international debt level
remained high, despite some debt-relief (Soares, 2005). Despite the injection of foreign Mali
continued to have a lowly position in the UNDP human development index: 160 out of 169
countries (UNDP, 2010). Mali’s poor human development was reflected in a very low adult
literacy rate, which in 2006 was a little over a quarter (26.2%), compared to, for example,
nearly two-thirds in Ghana (65.8%) and nearly nine in ten in South Africa (89%)
(http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx). In addition, Mali’s poor infrastructure, a
majority rural population (80% live in the countryside), widespread poverty, low levels of
women’s empowerment, and large distances separating many communities from each other
and from population centres, collectively emphasised remaining problems in seeking citizens’
empowerment ‘even’ during a period of democracy. In addition the country
contemporaneously undertook decentralisation reforms with a view to making local decisionmaking a key component of a wider democratic framework. Put another way, decentralisation
was supposed to bring government closer to the people and help develop and consolidate
‘good governance’ (Seely, 2001: 517). Observers reported however that little concrete came
of this initiative (Hetland, 2008).
Mali’s unprepossessing economic and developmental characteristics made its post-1991
democratic development all the more remarkable. Although the issue of making government
more accessible and accountable remained an unresolved problem, the ability of people for
the most part to live together despite their differing ethnicities was a key aspect of Mali’s
democratic progress. Add to this that Mali is 90% Muslim and it is clear that the country
confounds many of the conventional assumptions about the great difficulties of democratising
a country of multiple ethnicities and culturally Muslim. While, as we shall see below, the
country experienced periodic Tuareg uprisings in the decade after independence, this was an
exception to a wider picture of ethnic diversity which did not act to divide Mali’s citizens.
Dickovick (2008: 1132) comments: in Mali ‘as in Benin and Ghana, ethnicity took a back
seat to parties and movements constructed on a national basis, although, with
democratization, some local and regional parties inevitably did emerge’.
It can be argued that in Mali development and strengthening of a tolerant culture are linked to
ethnic variety. The main ethnic groups in Mali are: Mande (50%, including: Bambara,
Malinke, and Soninke), Fulani (or Peul, 17%), Voltaic (12%), Songhai (6%), Tuareg and
Maurs/Moors (10%) and others (5%). With the exceptions of the Tuareg and the Maurs,
Mali’s population comprises sub-Saharan ethnic groups, with many shared and similar
historic, cultural, and religious traditions. Historically, the Niger river expedited supportive
interethnic relations by facilitating trade between different parts of the country. In addition,
each ethnic group was traditionally tied to a specific occupation, working closely with each
other, although often precise ethnic occupational distinctions were blurred. Traditionally,
however, Barbara, Malinke, Soninke, and Songhai were farmers, the Fulani, Tuareg and
Maurs were herders, while another small ethnic ethnic group, the Bozo, made a living as
fishers.
Politically, inter-ethnic cooperation and quasi-national awareness was effected by multiethnic empires and religious tolerance. The arrival of French rule in the 1890s and the
development of nationalist consensus of the desirability of the end of French rule six decades
later, also helped to develop inter-ethnic cooperation. Yet, while these developments aided
the ability of most ethnic groups in Mali to live and work together, the Tuaregs were an
outlier: they traditionally opposed central government, from which they often feel excluded.
8
Half a decade after the departure of the French, such was the apparent success of post-1991
democratisation that in 2004, Mali was said to be a
living contradiction of the skeptics. Islam has been present there for almost a
thousand years; 82 percent of its inhabitants are Muslim. They belong to the Sunni
tradition, with a contingent that follows Wahhabi rigorism. They are extremely poor,
with an average annual per capita income of 230 [US] dollars, and poverty and
freedom almost never go together. They belong to various tribes, which in many
African countries is the root of incurable conflicts. And yet, democracy flourishes
there. The country is Mali, between the Niger river and the Sahara desert.
At this time, among the 47 countries in the world with a majority Muslim population,
Freedom House classified only two – Mali and neighbouring Senegal – as fully ‘free’. The
designation of ‘fully free’ also covered another key dimension: religious freedom, often
denied to religious minorities in Muslim-Majority countries (Fox, 2016). The Italian section
of ‘Aid to the Church in Need’, which publishes every year a report on religious liberty in the
world, has never noted any abuses in Mali. there. They wrote: ‘there are no legal obstacles to
conversion from one religion to another, and missionaries may work freely; the Muslim
majority is tolerant toward the other confessions’. According to the then president of Mali,
Amadou Toumani Touré: ‘What we have here is an Islam that is very ancient, tolerant and
enlightened. We see nothing in our religion that would prevent us from being democratic’.
Trofimov (2016) concurred, stating that, ‘[u]nlike in much of the Muslim world, democracy
is seen here as an outgrowth of hallowed local traditions, not an alien innovation’.
Decline of democracy, transnational Islamist extremism, and inadequate state response
Mali’s democratisation began in the early 1990s and the country experienced subsequent
democratic consolidation. Yet, at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, Mali was
in turmoil, suffering a significantly erosion of the democratic gains of the previous two
decades. In 2015, Freedom House reported that Mali had lost its previous ‘fully free’
designation and was now ‘partly free’. There were two main causes for the shrinking and
undermining of democracy. First, there was a new wave of serious ethnic discontent,
primarily centred on another Tuareg uprising, the fourth since independence. Second, Mali
experienced the effects of transnational Islamist extremism which seriously affected the
country’s stability and security. Islamist militants claiming allegiance to the ideas of al Qaeda
sought to pursue their goal of a borderless Islamic state and the forcible expulsion or
conversion of Christians and other non-Muslims (Minteh and Perry, 2013). We noted above
that Iran’s 1979 revolution was an indication of a new religious component to international
conflict which affected several west African countries, including Mali. In addition, at this
time Qadhaffi’s ‘radical’ government in Libya sought to export revolution and, like the
government of Iran, was keen to use anti-Western Islamic justification for such policies.
Recently, what has been occurring related to Islamist extremism in Mali is less to do with the
foreign policies of these two ‘radical’ or ‘revolutionary’ states, Iran and Libya, than with a
transnational movement of Islamist extremist ideology, involving both al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and various ‘home grown’ extremist Islamist entities, including
Ansar al-Din. The collective impact of such entities has resulted in what might be called a
‘clash of civilisations’ between, on the one hand, Mali’s indigenous tolerant and moderate
Islam and, on the other, these extremist Islamist interpretations.
9
In March 2012, Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Touré, was removed from power in a
military coup linked to his inadequate handling of a serious Tuareg uprising. What was new
and unexpected about this Tuareg uprising was their coalition with extremist Islamists,
including Ansar al-Din, which saw the country’s three main northern cities – Kidal, Gao and
Timbuktu – occupied by insurgents. Three months later, the Tuareg/Islamist coalition
imploded, with the former ousted by the latter. Simultaneously, much of north Mali came
under the control of a joint force of several jihadist groups, including: AQIM, Ansar al-Din
and the Mouvement pour l'unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l'Ouest (MUJAO; ‘Movement for
Oneness and Jihad in West Africa’). Seeking to spread their control, in January 2013 the
jihadists captured the town of Konna in central Mali. By now, the ‘international community’
was alerted to the destabilising events and the French government sent troops to thwart the
Islamists’ advance in an operation identified as ‘Operation Serval’. The jihadists melted
away without putting up a serious fight and commenced guerrilla operations against the
Malian army and the French troops. A United Nations peacekeeping mission was deployed
(the ‘Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali; MINUSMA), a relatively
transparent election took place, a peace deal to end the crisis in the north was negotiated, and
billions of US dollars were pledged in development aid.
The return to democracy did not however herald a return to political normality or a return to
the path of democratisation consolidation. Instead, for the last three years, the country has
experienced deepening uncertainty, violence and instability. The primary task for the
government and its international allies was to increase security and successfully combat
violent attacks from both Tuareg separatists, demanding greater autonomy from Bamako, and
extremist Islamist entities, both ‘home grown’ and transnational.
In July 2014, the government and six armed groups signed a ceasefire agreement and
a roadmap for further talks. Two more round of talks took place in September and
November, with little resolution except to continue the effort. The degree of
autonomy sought by the Tuareg rebel groups remains a thorny and chronically
divisive issue. Talks are scheduled to resume in early 2015. Meanwhile, the cease-fire
remained fragile, with Tuareg groups and Islamist militants clashing with Malian,
French, and UN troops. Governance in the North remained tenuous.
(https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/mali)
In 2015, a new Islamist extremist group emerged in Mali’s previously stable central and
southern regions. This group, the Macina (or Massina) Liberation Front (MLF) is part of
Ansar al-Din and also connected to AQIM. According to a Human Rights Watch Report
(2015), the MLF numbers about 100 fighters, previously associated with self-defence units
from the Fulani community and also works with MUJAO, which recruits from Mali’s Maurs,
Fulani and Songhai communities. MLM/MUJAO is also accused of attacks in Mali’s central
and northern regions. The MLF/MUJAO attacked ‘military posts and executed mayors and
councilmen. Its new area of operation is largely inhabited by the Peul ethnic group (also
known as the Fulani), which makes up about 15 percent of Mali’s population’ (Duffka,
2016). It appears that the personnel of the MLF largely comprises Peul/Fulani. Earlier, such
people were traditionally categorised as ‘tolerant’ and ‘moderate’ willing and able to live in
harmony with members of other ethnic groups. What might lead them to take up arms?
According to Duffka (2016), the MLF is able to exploit two factors: endemic local poverty
and ‘longstanding grievances with the government’, including harsh treatment from the
armed forces in the context of the fight against jihadists. There were also reports of the longterm failure of the government to protect local people from bandits, who use the easy
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availability of AK-47s and other weapons to steal cattle and other goods from the
Peul/Fulani. The jihadists, for their part, made a real effort to deal with the bandits and many
local people were aware of this and were grateful to them. In addition, ‘Villagers also
described frequent abuses by the security forces and predatory behavior marring nearly every
contact with government — demands for bribes for acquiring ID cards, vaccinating animals,
passing checkpoints. Meanwhile, “there are few schools or clinics in our villages”, one
resident said. Other people told me that the government failed to ensure justice in cases of
intercommunal violence — tit-for-tat disputes over land or water — or security force abuses’
(Duffka, 2016). In short, many Malians lack even basic security and are beset by existential
problems, including serious and prolonged banditry. Jihadists of the MLF and others are
sometimes perceived to provide a better alternative regime to that offered by a distant and
apparently indifferent state (Boutellis, 2015).
On the other hand, terrorism in Mali continues to be a threat to the stability of the country and
the region. A 12 November 2015 report on the United Nations’ ‘Integrated Strategy for the
Sahel’ stated that: ‘terrorist groups have intensified asymmetric attacks in the north and have
even moved southwards with attacks in the centre, including in the capital, Bamako, at the
border with Burkina Faso and Mauritania, and in the south at the border region with Côte
d’Ivoire” (12 November 2015 UN report on the UN Integrated Strategy for the Sahel, quoted
in Gberie, 2016: 33). On 20 November, a few days after the UN report was published, two
gunmen carried out an attack on the Radisson hotel in Bamako. One hundred and seventy
hostages were taken and 22 killed. Two jihadist groups—al-Murabitoun (part of AQIM) and
the Macina Liberation Front – claimed responsibility for the attack. Al-Murabitoun is mostly
made up of Tuaregs and Maurs from northern Mali, while also including transnational
extremists from Algeria, Tunisia and elsewhere.
In conclusion, increased reach of Islamist extremist groups
in central and southern Mali has heightened the sense of alienation among some
communities regarding a political process that includes only the government and
armed groups from the north. The appearance of protection threats in places like the
town of Mopti, which hosted many people internally displaced by the conflict, are
contributing to communal tensions, the formation of self-defence militias and a
perception of disenfranchisement given the limited peace dividends so far (Security
Council Report, 2016).
Conclusion
A quarter of a century after Mali’s democratisation and subsequent democratic consolidation,
the country appears to be at a dangerous crossroads. On the one hand, despite all odds, a
democratic regime – albeit weakened now compared to a few years ago – survives, drawing
on widespread popular conceptions that democracy is the best political system available. On
the other hand, the combined impact of separate but ideologically commensurate extremist
Islamist groups, both ‘home grown’ and transnational, serves to emphasise the problems of
not only establishing a democratic regime but also of deepening and extending it so that
people feel that they have a real stake and interest in its continuity. In the short term, countrywide Islamist extremist rule at gunpoint seems unlikely, as does the eradication of such
groups which, as noted above, now interact in some cases with ethnic opposition from
11
among, for example, the Tuareg and the Fulani. On the other hand, the lack of ultimate
political success of the jihadists is unlikely to imply the end of Islam as a reformist political
force in Mali.
We began this paper with a statement about the inherited constitutional position of religion in
Mali. The French notion of laïcité has governed the state’s relationship with religion since
independence, that is nearly six decades. After independence, successive ruling regimes, both
military-led and democratically-elected, emphasised and protected what they saw as the
desirability and inevitability of laicism in Mali. Yet, while recently extremist Islamist groups
have taken centre stage and gained much publicity, it is not the case that ‘ordinary’, nonextremist Muslims in Mali are necessarily content with the status quo where faith is denied a
public voice and role (Haynes, 2011). Instead, over the years the public role of Islam in Mali
has diversified and expanded. This was set in train by democratisation in the early 1990s, and
the subsequent decades which saw both multi-party elections and political liberalisation.
While the principle and practice of laïcité ensures that few if any open Islamists are able to
achieve elected office, post-1991 liberalisation has led to greater expression of diverse
Muslim identities. Mali’s relatively open media and civil society are two channels by which
Muslim activists hope to shape values, influence politics, and contest the meaning of Islam. If
and when Mali
emerges from conflict and is able to redevelop, rethink and reimagine its
political and social realities, then popular pressure for relaxation of laïcité may become
unstoppable, leading in turn to a new political system where power can be competed for by
various political expressions of Islam. Whatever happens it seems implausible that the
country could return to the status quo ante of strict secularism. An ironic impact of the entry
of extremist Islam into the political debate in the country is to highlight the array of political
expressions of Islam, and subsequent governments may be compelled to acknowledge the
increasingly powerful influences Muslim activists and movements of various persuasions
now exercise in Mali’s society and politics.
12
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