Mali mainly, 2012 coup, drugs & more

[JMA]

Because they are not a single homogenous group, but rather a series of affiliated tribes spread across several states. Even if they were to get an independent homeland, the lands that they traditionally inhabit are some of the least viable lands in the Sahel. They are heavily dependent on aid from the states that they inhabit and foreign (NGO) aid. Any new Tuareg state would just be another economic basket case that would require extensive aid just to survive, never mind grow.

Most of the Tuareg that I knew in Niger harbored no particular interest in an independent Tuareg homeland. They just wanted to be better integrated into the states in which they lived. I can certainly sympathize with that. The Tuareg have had it hard. They do not fit in well with either the black Africans in the south nor the Arabs to the north. Niger's previous president liked to use the fear of Tuareg insurrection as a kind of wag the dog ploy. If memory serves, Mali's president did some of that as well. For their part, the Tuareg have been associated with many things that have not necessarily endeared them to the general public in the states they inhabit, including smuggling and slavery. Those associations are, of course, exaggerated but they are not totally unjustified, but then there are not many ways to make a living where many of them live.

And the USA is a single homogenous group? Afghanistan (a country which the US seems to want to keep together at all costs) comprises a homogenous group?

In my Southern African travels I have noted the one 'thing' that really gets Africans angry is the smart solutions for Africa's problems thought up by so-called 'smart' people in the US with little or no experience or understanding of Africa.

If the Tuareg peoples (note the plural) consolidated into single 'homeland' would not be able to form a viable state (in your opinion) why would it be acceptable for their 'area' to be carved up among a handful of surrounding states where the Tuaregs would be 'looked after' like a parasitic minority by the (certainly not affluent) racially/ethnically/religiously (tick as applicable) different majority?

I don't want to question your sources, or your reading of the local situation as I don't know what exposure you had in Mali... I have none. I would suggest that as a general comment the 'research' carried out by foreigners before forming an opinion is 99% too limited and as such leads to incorrect conclusions being drawn.

(On this point I remember being told by a US female USAID worker that tribalism no longer existed in Mozambique. I asked her how she had arrived at that decision and she replied that her local driver (who she was screwing) had told her. For those who don't know there is a tendency among educated and semi-educated Africans to deny the existence of tribalism as this would somehow confirm the backward status of Africa.)