MALI: Government strikes new peace deal with Tuareg rebels

Photo: IRIN

A Tuareg family in northeast Mali

BAMAKO, 5 July 2006 (IRIN) - Some 15 years after signing a peace deal to end a Tuareg rebel uprising, the government of Mali has responded to threats of new trouble from the desert nomads by striking a new agreement with the help of Algerian mediators. The deal between the government of President Amadou Toumani Toure and rebels from the north-eastern Kidal region was signed in the Algerian capital on Monday and unveiled by the government the following day. Tuareg rebels from the remote area near the Algerian border say their people have been neglected by the central government. Last May, Tuareg rebels, many of them believed to be army deserters, attacked government barracks in Kidal, Menaka and Tessalit, seizing weapons and demanding a better economic deal for their region as well as a measure of self-government. But in a statement, the government said the just-brokered peace deal “reaffirms (Mali’s) territorial integrity and national unity as well as the principles of republican and democratic values in Mali, and … strengthens the existing policy of decentralisation.” Notably, the deal agrees to a special investment programme for the mountainous Kidal region, an arduous three-day drive from the capital Bamako, to be overseen by a special coordination council. Most of the nomadic Tuaregs, who make up six percent of Mali’s 14 million population, live in harsh deserts. Some say successive Malian governments have largely ignored their interests. Under the deal, the government has also agreed to pull back its military from urban areas and said that Tuareg rebel mutineers can reintegrate back into the armed forces. But in bustling Bamako, some 1,100 km from Kidal, there was some criticism of the government for caving in to Tuareg demands. “These measures will encourage every region of Mali to organise their own rebellion,” said an editorial in the national daily The Independent. Mali’s vast northern deserts were the scene of a secessionist Tuareg rebellion in 1990 in which hundreds of people were killed and 150,000 fled the country. Despite a peace deal the following year, there was sporadic trouble in the region until the mid-1990s. But President Toure said when trouble broke out in May that he aimed to find a peaceful solution rather than retaliate. “I am a soldier of peace. My role is not to pour oil on the fire,” he told reporters on 8 June. “Mali must give a good example in its management of this crisis.” ac/ss/ccr