The Tuaregs, a nomadic tribe in North and West Africa, dominated the
caravan trade through the Sahara Desert for thousands of years. Their
entire way of life was disrupted, however, by the imposition of borders,
natural desertification, urbanization and the rise of maritime trade.
In their quest to survive, the Tuaregs have launched several revolts in
Mali and Niger, fought as mercenaries in the Libyan civil war and used
their expertise to smuggle illicit goods, which brought them into
contact with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). It is the
development of these skills and links to AQIM that have brought the
Tuaregs to Western governments' attention.
Analysis
In late August 2011,
Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, a Tuareg rebel who led an uprising in Mali in
2007-2009 before fleeing to Libya, re-emerged in northern Mali. He
conducted an interview via satellite phone Aug. 26 with Algerian
newspaper Al Watan during which he vowed to renew the Tuareg rebellion.
Within hours of the interview, Ag Bahanga was killed in a car crash in
Mali's Kidal region -- an event that was probably not an accident.
Ag Bahanga was among an estimated 800 Tuaregs who fought as
mercenaries in the Libyan civil war and had begun returning home in late
2011 as the conflict drew to a close. The Tuaregs' native countries,
particularly Mali and Niger, had endured a number of Tuareg uprisings
over the past several decades, so they were rightfully concerned about
the arrival of hundreds of trained and equipped fighters. Ag Bahanga was
designated "enemy No. 1" by the U.S.-trained Malian counterterrorism
unit tasked with combating the Tuareg rebellion.
The returning Tuareg fighters are more than just rebels and
mercenaries, however. They have also taken up weapon, drug and hostage
smuggling in a region with which they are intimately familiar, and they
have been accused of having links to AQIM. Their knowledge of the
terrain, history of militancy and smuggling, and links to an al Qaeda
franchise group have brought the Tuaregs to the attention of Western
governments, which are concerned that the Tuaregs could become a source
of manpower for transnational terrorism.
Who Are the Tuaregs?
The Tuaregs are a pastoralist, trans-state ethnicity that originated
in North Africa. Estimated to number more than 1 million, the Tuaregs
are most populous in Mali, Niger and Algeria, though they can also be
found in Libya, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.
The Tuaregs have not always been fighters and smugglers. For more
than two millennia they dominated the caravan trade through the Sahara
Desert, surviving on an innate knowledge of the landscape's every
protective campsite and water hole from Dori, Burkina Faso, to
Tamanrasset, Algeria. Historically, they sold livestock, textiles, salt,
small weapons and gems, preserved food and, earlier, slaves and gold.
To this day the Tuaregs remain one of the few ethnicities to frequent
the Sahara, where water is scarce and temperatures can easily exceed 38
degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the past century, three trends have upended the Tuaregs' entire
way of life: the imposition of borders in North and West Africa,
urbanization and natural desertification in the region, and the
emergence of new technology and maritime trade.
For thousands of years the Tuaregs roamed the Sahara freely. Even
when the French placed West Africa under colonial rule in the late 19th
century, there was little change for the Tuaregs (though there was
sporadic fighting in the early 20th century as well as a brief rebellion
in northern Niger in 1916-1917 when France tried to impose taxes and
assert authority over the Tuaregs and their land). But when Mali and
Niger declared independence in 1960, they began claiming territory that
for thousands of years had belonged to no one -- but that was the
Tuaregs' domain in practice. With the structure of the outside world
thrust upon them for the first time, the Tuaregs launched a
guerrilla-style revolt in the mountains of northern Mali from 1961 until
the Malian army defeated them in 1964.
In the 1970s and 1980s, overgrazing and a widespread drought resulted
in the desertification of large parts of northern Mali and Niger, which
forced many Tuaregs to migrate, mostly to Algeria and Libya.
Simultaneously, urbanization was changing the landscape of the region.
Non-Tuareg farmers gradually claimed land that the Tuaregs had long
inhabited or used as trade routes, which put the Tuaregs in constant
conflict with modern society.
In Libya, some of the Tuaregs who had left their former homeland were
recruited into Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's Islamic Legion, a
special military regiment created in 1972 to help unify the region in
preparation for Gadhafi's envisioned "United States of Africa." But the
Islamic Legion was disbanded in 1987 after its defeat in Chad. With
promises of assistance from the Malian and Nigerien governments, Tuareg
fighters -- trained, armed and funded -- began to return to Mali and
Niger. Tensions quickly rose as Tuaregs clashed with non-Tuareg farmers
in Mali. As time passed and the governments' promised aid failed to
materialize, frustration among the Tuaregs boiled over.
Hundreds of Tuaregs were arrested in Niger in the spring of 1990 and
were accused of attacking Nigerien government buildings. A full-scale
revolt erupted months later when Tuareg rebels in Mali attacked a police
station near the Nigerien border that reportedly was holding Tuaregs
from Niger. Violence between the Tuaregs and the Malian and Nigerien
governments engulfed both countries and lasted until French- and
U.S.-mediated talks brought about peace agreements in Mali in 1992 and
in Niger in 1995. The agreements called for the decentralization of
government and more even distribution of benefits. The agreements also
promised to integrate former Tuareg rebels into the countries'
respective national armies.
Though the governments had promised aid to the Tuaregs, they tended
instead to dedicate their limited resources to developing their
respective southern regions, where the majority of their populations
live. Impoverished and underdeveloped, the Tuaregs' traditional
territories became potential havens for Islamist militants to operate,
and links began to form between the Tuaregs and AQIM. It was at this
time in the mid-to-late 1990s that France and the United States launched
anti-terrorism initiatives to train the Tuaregs to combat Islamist
militants, including al Qaeda. The results of this training, and of the
time spent with the Libyan military, were evident in 2007, when two
Tuareg groups -- the Mali-based Alliance for Democratic Change, co-led
by Ag Bahanga and Iyad Ag Ghali, and the Niger-based Niger Movement for
Justice, led by Aghaly Ag Alambo -- separately but simultaneously
rebelled against the Malian and Nigerien governments. The uprising was
more sophisticated than any by the Tuaregs that had come before, and the
peace that was achieved in 2009 would prove to be fragile.
On Jan. 16, Tuareg rebels began a series of assaults on multiple
military targets in northeastern Mali. A spokesman for the rebels said
the uprising was in response to the collapse of negotiations with the
Malian government. The attacks are ongoing and have continued for more
than two weeks, leaving at least 47 dead and causing thousands to flee
the attacked cities. The attacks are similar in targeting, including the
order in which the cities are attacked, to the 2007 revolt, but they
have covered a much wider area, stretching from the Kidal region to
Lere, just southwest of Timbuktu.
The Terrorism Threat
The third trend that disturbed the Tuaregs' way of life was the
development of new technologies that increased the use of maritime
trade. For thousands of years the Tuaregs had been the vehicle for trade
in North and West Africa. Today, the vast majority of world trade is
seaborne. This significantly reduced the value of the Tuaregs' trade
routes, which eventually led them to resort to moving illicit goods such
as drugs, weapons and hostages. According to open-source reports since
2008, one of the Tuaregs' main partners in this illicit trade network
has been AQIM.
In 2009, a Tuareg man from Mauritania, Omar Sid Ahmed Ould Hamma, was
apprehended in connection with at least two kidnappings later claimed
by AQIM. During his interrogation, Hamma insisted that he was not a
member of AQIM but that he had transferred the hostages to the group for
money. Additionally, the chamber of commerce president in Kidal region
has expressed concern that young Tuaregs may regard kidnapping
Westerners and handing them over to AQIM as a lucrative business.
It is important to note that the Tuaregs' interaction with AQIM is
likely based more on economic interests, not ideological similarities.
This is evidenced by the role of Tuareg mercenaries in the Libyan civil
war. An unnamed security source told AFP that some 800 Tuaregs fought
alongside Gadhafi's forces in that conflict, but they reportedly stopped
fighting before the Gadhafi regime fell when it became clear that the
payments would soon stop.
In less than a century the entire way of life of the Tuaregs has been
indelibly altered. The strategies that they have taken to adjust to
this new reality -- smuggling illicit goods, trading with an al Qaeda
franchise group, fighting regional governments to secure patronage and
working as guns for hire -- have captured the attention of Western
security agencies. With the Libyan conflict over, there has been an
influx in Niger and Mali of trained fighters who know the terrain, have
smuggling expertise and have connections to AQIM. The West will be
closely watching the purported links between the Tuaregs and AQIM.
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