peter tinti

Foreign Policy

In the war for the heart of northern Mali, the real fear isn’t al Qaeda, it’s the criminals and fundamentalists lurking just around the corner.

GAO, Mali – It was Saturday, Jan. 26, when the people of Gao, a trans-Saharan trading hub nestled on the banks of the Niger river, took their first act of revenge against the rebels who had terrorized them for close to a year.

A mob had surrounded a jihadi fighter whose vehicle had been destroyed by a French airstrike. The rebel had retreated to the center of town via a stolen donkey cart. He had no idea that his comrades had abandoned the city earlier that morning.

The jihadi was a member of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, or Mujao, a group that had spent the better part of a year implementing a destructive form of sharia law that included public amputations, floggings, and sexual slavery. He begged for his life, invoking Allah and the virtues of compassion. Then Dani Sidi Touré, a 29 year-old handyman and painter, took a screwdriver out of his pocket and stabbed the jihadi in the neck.

Touré tried to remove the screwdriver, but the handle broke off and the metal shaft remained lodged inside the jihadi’s neck. A man with a large knife came over and struck the Mujao fighter on the head. He fell to the ground and others quickly joined the fray, descending upon him with wood planks, stones, and chunks of concrete.

In a display of communal catharsis, the residents of northern Mali’s largest city continued to beat the body long after it was dead. When they were done, they tossed it into the Islamic police station, a building that had come to symbolize the brutal interpretation of shariah law that Mujao had imposed on their city.

The official liberation of Gao came only hours later, when French and Malian troops toured the city in front of cheering crowds. Women ripped off their veils. Gao’s mayor — a slick-talking, fedora-wearing businessman who campaigned in 2009 on the slogan “Yes We Can” — stood atop a French military vehicle and doled out cigarettes. Men and women danced in public, undulating together to Takamba — a trance-inducing local music played at celebrations — for the first time in months.

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New York Times

BAMAKO, Mali — As French and Malian troops routed Islamist militants from the northern Malian towns of Gao and Timbuktu, residents’ relief and elation appeared to give way on Tuesday to some measure of reprisal and frustration.

In Gao, groups of residents were reported hunting down suspected fighters who had not fled ahead of the French-Malian military forces who took control of the town over the weekend. Other residents expressed concern that Gao remained unsafe and was acutely short of food and fuel after a prolonged isolation.

“The city is free, but I think the areas close by are still dangerous,” said Mahamane Touré, a Gao resident reached by telephone from Bamako, the capital. “These guys are out there.”

Mr. Touré, who spent the evening watching soccer on television and listening to music with friends, said that although everyone was enjoying the new freedoms, the legacy of Islamist occupation was evident in the hardship of everyday life.

“The price of gasoline is almost double, and the price of food is very high,” Mr. Touré said. “There are still things in the market, but no one has any money and there is no aid.”

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PRI’s “The World”

The legendary city of Timbuktu is now at the center of the conflict in Mali.

French and Malian government forces entered the ancient city on Monday.

Islamist rebels are reported to be dispersing and avoiding direct conflict.

Reports say Timbuktu’s ancient library was set on fire by rebels, but as of 2 p.m. ET Monday, there’s no independent confirmation of this.

What is known for sure is that some women in liberated areas are throwing off the hijab.

Peter Tinti is a freelance reporter in Mali.

He’s been in touch with people in the newly liberated city of Gao.

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New York Times

SÉVARÉ, Mali — Residents of northern Mali’s largest city poured out of their homes to celebrate the expulsion of Islamist fighters who had held their town for months, playing the music that had been forbidden under the militants’ harsh interpretation of Islamic rule and dancing in the streets.

“Everyone is in the streets,” a Gao resident, Ibrahim Touré, said in a telephone interview. “It is like a party. There is music. There are drums. It’s freedom.”

Their celebrations came as international forces trying to recapture northern Mali, which has been seized by a mosaic of heavily armed Islamist groups, deployed into Gao, one of the principal militant strongholds, French officials said Sunday. Malian forces backed by French troops also advanced toward another crucial northern town: the ancient city of Timbuktu.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault of France said French troops were “around Gao and soon near Timbuktu,” farther west. Timbuktu has been under the control of rebels and Islamist fighters for 10 months, although there are reports that many of the Islamists have moved farther into the vast desert to escape the advancing forces.

In Gao, people who had been under occupation for nearly a year by Islamist fighters flooded the streets in jubilation, weeping and shouting to welcome the Malian and French troops who arrived in force on Sunday, residents said.

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New York Times

SEGOU, MALI — Malian and French forces were reported to be in control of two important central Malian towns on Tuesday after the French Defense Ministry said they recaptured them on Monday, pushing back an advance by Islamist militants who have overrun the country’s northern half.

At the same time, the United States military said on Tuesday that it had begun airlifting French troops and equipment from a base in southern France to Bamako, the capital of Mali, aboard giant C-17 transport planes.

Two flights arrived on Monday and a third on Tuesday, and the airlift will continue for the next several days, Tom Saunders, a spokesman for the United States Africa Command, said in a telephone interview from the command’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the defense minister of France, hailed the French-Malian advance on Monday as “a clear military success for the government in Bamako and for French forces intervening in support of these operations.”

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