A CARPE DIEM MOMENT FOR MALI
(…to create a mutually beneficial accord with the Tuareg)

Thanks to France’s unilateral action to come to the aid of its impotent central government, Mali has been freed, for the moment, from an extreme Islamist jihadi invasion of its northern territory; and, that French action seems to have achieved a positive resonance with both the Mali population and Tuareg leadership.

Thus, having helped to drive these jihadis back into the Saharan wilderness, liberating a population they had terrorized for the past ten months, France now has some positive political leverage to help Mali re-organize and re-shape itself into a much stronger and much more stable national entity…and to do it in such a way that all of its disparate elements might benefit from that.

Given its strategically central location within that region, such a development in Mali would also have very strong positive impacts upon its surrounding neighbors such as Chad, Niger, Mauretania, and Algeria, etc., and for the region as a whole. And from such a stabilized condition there would result profitable economic flows for all, mostly from the extraction of various natural resources there (the underlying motivation behind all the recent conflicts and turmoil we have seen in the region).

So, how could that be achieved?

It is a truly carpe diem moment for Mali, and the opportunity for seizing it may not last very long, because the key to successfully achieving such a goal is to establish a mutually beneficial relationship between Mali and the Tuareg. A symbiotic relationship based upon mutual economic and political interest. To that end, France may now be in a position to act as honest broker to help negotiate such a workable accord between them. For France, being a party to such an effort will give it even further benefits of goodwill in the surrounding region as a whole, and possibly a wide range of economic returns as well.

The outline of such an accord could be…in exchange for autonomy within a new Mali political framework, the Tuareg would provide their nomadic desert skills as Mali’s long range surveillance and watchdog forces against renewed Islamist incursions into Mali’s northern territory. France’s role would be to provide the equipment, training, and technical means to make the Tuareg role in such a function as effective a counter as possible against any further Islamist attempts to establish a base in that region.

 For its part, Mali might politically re-structure itself along the Swiss cantonal federation model, to include theTuareg as part of it, providing for local autonomy in a collective security and economic matrix that would benefit all. The security aspects of this would derive from a two-tier military structure with each locality responsible for recruiting, organizing, and maintaining a well trained, equipped, and locally led security force, to act as the first responder against any outside incursions in their area.  By recruiting such units locally that would minimize the potentials for these to abuse their own population. The central government, meanwhile, would be responsible for establishing a similarly well trained, equipped, and led, national military force, capable of rapid deployment to back up any local area’s appeal for help. Here again, France, could have a significant role as the supplier of equipment and training for all those forces; and, as it has done in this instance, to provide back up support to such local efforts.

If such a concept seems somewhat naïve and idealistic, the recent uprising events we’ve seen throughout Africa and the Middle East against the many authoritarian regimes which replaced the former colonial overlords in Africa and the Middle East (with many of these revolts still continuing), suggests it is this lack of pragmatic accommodation and vision which has kept so many of its populations mired in the misery of perpetual conflict and insecurity. And so long as that continues, their expectations for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will remain as elusive as any desert mirage.

A new-model Mali…could change all that.

CENTURION