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After the 1990 government crackdown on Tuareg rebels in Tchin Tabaradan, Niger, my daily life in nearby Tahoua did not change much. I remember only a short newsbrief about the violence that came over the radio, then silence, some whispering, and a mysterious combination of calm and tension. A curfew was imposed but there was no subsequent information on the radio or in newspapers, except for the repeated assurance that government security forces were doing their best to stabilize "the Tuareg situation."
It turned out that many Tuareg prisoners were being brought to Tahoua, but I only heard about that later through a friend of a friend in the military. American missionaries living close by Tahoua's prison told of hearing tortured screams in the night. We thought that was an exaggeration, but the truth was illuminated weeks later, when I received a letter from a friend in France, along with an article cut out from "Le Monde" (a prominent French newspaper). The article explained in detail all about the violence and abuses. We were shocked, but then, we understood very little at that time about "the Tuareg situation."
Generally speaking, there is not at present (nor has there ever been) any great public awareness of or knowledge about the Tuaregs, who are like many other indigenous peoples in being largely invisible within a world dominated by states. In an attempt to correct that lack of awareness, for the past few years "Temoust," a Tuareg support group based in Lyons, France, has participated in the annual meetings of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, in Geneva. Temoust has begun to inform the world community of "the Tuareg situation" that exists in the two main countries they inhabit--Niger (where Temoust claims there are some 1.5 million Tuaregs) and Mali (where there are about one million). Tuaregs also inhabit Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso (for a combined population of about another half a million), and Mauritania and several other countries where there are much smaller populations, mostly of refugees and exiles.1
The intent of this article is to amplify the discussion organized by Temoust to explain Tuareg issues, especially those in Niger and Mali. In both countries, there has been severe oppression against Tuaregs in general and repression of their political movements in particular. In both countries, that repression has been associated with a history of one-party states ruled since independence (in 1960) by military regimes. Both countries have been very unstable in the past few years, due in great part to their individual experiments with "democratization."
The new "democracies" of Niger and Mali have in practice neither addressed the problem of representation of Tuareg minorities nor incorporated Tuareg aspirations into their national agendas. Members of the military in both countries have felt broadly threatened by the democratization process and their reaction to the intensification of Tuareg resistance movements has been brutal. In both cases, the future is clouded by uncertainty over how "the Tuareg situation" will be resolved.
Fourth World Bulletin • Fall 1994/Winter 1995
Copyright © 1996 by the Fourth World Center
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