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A suicide attack Wednesday claimed the lives of two Chadian peacekeepers near the Algerian border in Tessalit. Radio France Internationale reports Ould Badi as claiming responsibility for the attack....

The second round of elections in Mali is underway today. Here is a link to the Al Jazeera piece; a round-up of French language pieces may be found here.

I wonder if ONUCI is seen as something of a model for all this?

Thanks for passing all of this along, Dave.



The election deadline seems impossibly optimistic/foolhardy to me, but what do I know? :confused:

If I understand the Al Jazeera and BBC pieces correctly, the United Nations is in charge of peacekeeping in Mali as of today. But I am assuming that the four figures of French troops remaining there...

Vice is a strange mix of journalism that needs to be done which no one seems to do anymore and MTV’s Jackass. There was a good piece in the New Yorker about them recently. If nothing else, they (at...

Distrust of nomads is hardly limited to either the Sahel or the current-day!

Tuareg social structure traditionally included a caste system of which the Ifoghas were the nobility. The fact that Western elites are troublemakers and somewhat despised doesn't tend to call their...

Northern Songhay languages show clear historical influence from Tuareg, though, so there is a longstanding history of interaction. (Mostly unrelated note: one of my favorite ethnographies is set...

From the late '90s until last year there had been a working multiparty electoral system. I honestly don't know how much governing the government did, though.


For better or worse, Westphalian...

A press release from the French Minister of Defense’s website. Points to the French for handle—Opération Serval shows some real Gallic style. Here’s hoping for substance, as well.

Protecting a $120-per-individual investment seems reasonable, but are the investors sure that that investment has been an effective one?

I did a guest post at the On Violence blog if anyone is interested. Nothing new, really, just some (hopefully) useful information in a (hopefully) readable format.

That's a good one, David. Thanks, I have passed it along.

An undercount, perhaps? I am under the impression that about 10% or so of the population of the whole of Mali is Tuareg, though I do not know if a real census has been done in Mali. And the Tuareg do...

I get the impression that Ansar Dine might not have come into being had its leader been able to find room at the MNLA table and that his being left out seems to have had more to do with Tuareg social...

The muddle is that there are two things going on—a secular separatist movement in the form of the MNLA and an Islamist insurgency in the form of Ansar Dine and the MUJAO. I don’t think foreigners...

So am I off base in thinking maybe the force will headquarter in Mopti and send one battalion up RN15 and another towards Timbuktu? And that it won’t happen until harmattan season is over at the...

The fact that there wasn’t much in the way of the first two stages beforehand says a lot about the Malian government’s “hold” on things previous to that. And suggests bad things to come for people...

Running the insurgents out of that area is one thing. Running them down in the desert afterwards is another. The Tuaregs have been known to make do there.

The former missionary to the French and governor to the Massachusettians made mention of the situation in Mali during last night’s presidential debate (good thing he made it early or I would have...

I saw a couple of guys being dropped over the base across the road where I was staying in Bobo in the summer of 2010. Given the size of the Burkinabé army—c. 6,000—their capability is certainly...

Passed along that link to my friend who is currently in Burkina Faso and she replied back a couple of hours or so ago that she had seen “loads of paratroopers today falling out of the sky with...

related to the current situation in Mali via Global Observatory. Important meeting in Abidjan tomorrow, apparently.

during which hours of nothing was discussed but prior to which great effort was expended in the procurement of stackable white plastic chairs and refreshments I must compliment the author on his fine...