I wish and hope that the Sahara war will be won, that the Islamists are eradicated in the region (Mali and Algeria in particular), and Mali’s territorial integrity restored. This victory is the necessary but far from sufficient condition for a future reconstruction of the Malian state and society. This war will be long and its outcome uncertain. Reconstruction of the Malian army is entirely feasible. Modibo’s Mali had succeeded in building a competent army that was devoted to the nation, sufficient to deter aggressors like the Islamists of AQIM today. This army was systematically destroyed by Moussa Traoré’s dictatorship and his successors did not reconstruct it. But since the Malian people are quite aware that their country has the obligation to be armed, reconstruction of its army would benefit from favorable public opinion. The obstacle is financial. To recruit and equip thousands of soldiers is not currently within the means of the country, and neither will other African states or the UN agree to compensate for this lack of means. Not much can be expected from the countries of the ECOWAS. The Praetorian Guards in most of these countries are an army in name only. Certainly, Nigeria has numerous, well-equipped forces, but unfortunately not very disciplined, to say the least. Most of its senior officers have no other objective than to pillage the regions targeted for intervention. Senegal also has a competent and disciplined military force, but it is small, on the scale of the country. Farther afield in Africa, Angola and South Africa could provide effective support, but their geographic distance, and maybe other considerations, might dissuade them from running the risk of any commitment.
Mali’s reconstruction can only be done by the Malians themselves. Still it would be desirable to help them rather than erect barriers that would make such reconstruction impossible. French colonial ambitions—to make Mali a client state like several others in the region—certainly motivate some of the administrators in Paris responsible for Malian policy. Françafrique still has its mouthpieces. But they are not a real danger, let alone a major one. A reconstructed Mali will also quickly affirm—or reaffirm—its independence. However, a Mali wrecked by reactionary political Islam would before long be unable to find an honorable place on the regional and world scene. As with Somalia, it would end up being erased from the list of sovereign states worthy of the name.
During the Modibo era, Mali had made economic and social progress, asserted its independence, and achieved some success in uniting its diverse ethnic groups. The Union Soudanaise had succeeded in uniting in one nation the Bambara from the south, the Bozo fishers, the Songhai peasants, and the Ikelan (Bella) of the Niger Valley from Mopti to Ansongo (it is forgotten today that the majority of the inhabitants found in northern Mali are not Tuaregs), and had even made the Tuaregs accept the emancipation of their Ikelan (Bella) serfs. It remains the case that for lack of means—and lack of will after Modibo’s fall—successive governments in Bamako have abandoned development projects in the north of the country. Some of the Tuareg demands are, consequently, perfectly justified. Algiers has demonstrated a clear understanding of the situation. It recommends making a distinction in the ranks of the rebellion between the Tuaregs (now marginalized), with whom discussions should take place, and the jihadists who have come from elsewhere, often quite racist in regard to the “blacks.” The limitations in Mali’s achievements under Modibo, but also the hostility of the Western powers (and France in particular), lie behind the project’s failure and the ultimate success of Moussa Traoré’s odious coup d’état (supported to the end by Paris). That dictatorship bears the responsibility for the decomposition of Malian society, its pauperization, and its helplessness. The powerful revolt of the Malian people succeeded, at the price of tens of thousands of victims, in overthrowing the dictatorship. It gave rise to great hopes for the country’s rebirth. These hopes were disappointed. Why?
Since the fall of Moussa Traoré, the Malian people have benefited from unequaled democratic freedoms. Yet that seems to have served no purpose: there have been hundreds of phantom parties with no program, impotent elected members of parliament, and widespread corruption. Analysts who are not always free from racist prejudices have been quick to conclude that these people (like Africans in general) are not ready for democracy! It is left unacknowledged that the victory of the Malian people coincided with the “neoliberal” offensive that imposed on this extremely fragile country a form of lumpen-development advocated by the World Bank and supported by Europe and France. The result was social and economic regression and unlimited pauperization. It is these policies that bear the major responsibility for the failure of democracy, now discredited. This involution has created, here as elsewhere, favorable terrain for the rising influence of reactionary political Islam (financed by the Gulf), not only in the north, captured subsequently by AQIM, but also in Bamako.
The resulting decay of the Malian state lies behind the crisis that led to the destitution of President Amani Toumani Touré, to Amadou Sanogo’s reckless coup d’état, and then to putting Mali under the supervision of the ECOWAS, which “nominated” a “provisional”—so-called transitional—president. The ECOWAS president is the Ivorian president, Alassane Ouattara, who is nothing more than a functionary of the IMF and the French Ministry of Cooperation. It is this transitional president, whose legitimacy is close to zero in the eyes of Malians, who called for French intervention. Above all, Mali’s reconstruction now requires the pure and simple rejection of liberal “solutions” that really lie behind all its problems. On this fundamental point, Paris’s ideas are the same as those current in Washington, London, and Berlin. The concept of “development aid” coming out of Paris does not go beyond dominant liberal platitudes.
Ghana After Nkrumah
After Nkrumah’s fall, I had only passed through Accra several times. But my colleague Kwame Amoa, assistant director of the IDEP, frequently visited the country. He regularly had contacts with the two popular movements that, during the 1970s, created conditions favorable for the army’s intervention, under Jerry Rawlings’s leadership. I deliberately say “intervention” and not “coup d’état.” The army movement here worked with the two avant-garde popular movements. Certainly, problems arose between the two branches of the movement that rejected the business-friendly compradorism of the civilian and military regimes that succeeded one another from 1966 to 1980.
Amoa and I were then invited to meet Rawlings’s new team in 1981. Our main mission was to clean up the Treasury accounts, left in a state of total confusion by the chaos of the preceding regimes. The IMF and the World Bank used the situation, as always, to the advantage of the multinationals—the only institutions toward whom they feel any sense of responsibility. The IMF and the World Bank then presented the populist regime with an unpaid bill. They had never demanded any settlement of this supposed bill from their recently overthrown corrupt servants. This consisted of extravagant foreign debts. I had developed, as I have said, a certain competence in this area and always find pleasure in disentangling a confusing mass of details in situations of this kind. Amoa and I were able, with the assistance of numerous comrades on site, of course—notably P. V. Obeng, a sort of prime minister in the provisional government, and Kwesi Botchwey, subsequently named Minister of Finance—to produce a large report that, I believe, had its usefulness. It provided support for a considerable reduction in the claims of the IMF, the World Bank, and multinationals, and established their share of responsibility. These institutions had actively supported numerous bad projects that were behind the disaster. Their functionaries should also have known that these projects were the source of the misappropriation of funds that led to the gigantic fortunes of their friends in government. And if they had not seen anything amiss—as they wanted us to believe by presenting the naive face of being great destroyers of corruption—they should have been dismissed for gross incompetence. Of course, our work was not going to win us any friends in Washington!
But we were also given more directly political objectives. Could we contribute to a calmer exchange of views between