The voices of the shadows
The splits in the armed resistance
Taxi of Freedom
Introduction
The voices of the shadows
The idea for this book was born precisely from the distortion observed between the commentaries published since the Touareg uprising of 1990 in the major medias & the points of view of people concerned who had not been able to have their opinions heard by the outside world.
History can only be constructed by, as the American ethnologist Lina Brock put it, 'bringing together the stories which represent important points of view in a certain society - or in the different societies present' so as to 'hear not just a single voice but the conversation in which they take part'. It is in this sense that it seemed indispensable to us to become aware of the different points of view hidden by the authorised version and to put these discordant versions of the facts in relation with each other. Only a plural vision of the situation can permit the understanding of the complexity of the events and the process which led to their emergence. The rebellion was just one of the multiple forms of rejecting the established order, judged oppressive & destructive. If its appearance in public may have appeared sudden, it was in fact foreseeable for a long time and the principles which animated it were perfectly well known, at least to those who listened to the voices of the shadow from the folds of lived reality.
Some of the speeches gathered were recorded before the start of the armed struggle, mostly in Touareg country, while others after the outbreak of hostilities, from Touareg of different regions in exile. They illustrate the different strategic & political currents, some thinking that the armed struggle is the only way to survive, others having opted for a negotiated settlement. All pose the burning question of being a Touareg in modern times, of the transformation of roles & definitions of the individual in the African states. Each expresses in their own way an immense morbid pain, the pain of disappearing from humanity, of being wiped out forever because the menace is not just over isolated individuals but the entire community ; the pain of seeing oneself denied, dismissed, trodden over & to watch impotently one's condemnation and loss without being able to react, without any witness or any echo ; the pain of the silence & indifference of others in front of injustice : the pain of being alone in the waste & the dispossesion of ones self.
The colonial rape is felt to be the starting point for this 'anomie'. The indictment of the order put in place by France is damning and this critical position appears deeply anchored in Touareg public opinion, marked indelibely by the violence of the French conquest and occupation that the current situation is just continuing. The theme of the territory broken up, of the nation trampled, of liberty taken away runs through most of the speeches.
The divergences of viewpoints are on how to envisage solutions for existence & survival. A clear fracture line runs between the conceptions of the rural Touareg & those one can call schooled urbanites.
Whether old or young, the rural Touareg, in order to restore the 'torn cloth' of the Sahara & the Sahel, think trans-nationally, referring to an Africa of nations rather than an Africa of states. In their speech always runs the leitmotif of the torn desert that must be mended. The nourishing fibres which have been broken didnt only connect families, tribes & Touareg confederations ; they also concerned the neighbouring communities implicated in networks of political, economic, social & cultural exchange of vital importance for all concerned. Thus the Songhay, the Moors, the Haoussa who gravitate around the Touareg world are often included in the idea of the community or country to be rebuilt. In the same manner, in their speeches, the Kounta of Azawad, whose group was in the political orbit of the Western Touareg, connect their destiny to that of the latter by calling themselves "the Moors of the Touareg" (araben win Kel Tamashaq ).
This current of thought is in favour of a wide federalist project, which could englobe all the Saharo-Sahelian micro-states. It criticises the model of the centralised State which, instead of connecting societies together, has cut them up, isolated them & turned them against each other. It denounces the hypocrisy of the reorganisation of the world which, in the name of generous principles like the right for peoples to self-determination, has eliminated these peoples from the political scene and has denied them the right to live decently and even simply to survive. It questions the legitimacy of these states which have used western democratic forms without the content and led their populations to a social collapse & an unprecedented economic misery.
Seeing the categories of the current political structure where only peoples with a State have the right to exist, some feel the necessity of an independent state, considering it as a stage which at least would prevent the physical disappearance of the Touareg.
However, the schooled urbanites who have interiorised the framework taught by French & Arabic schools, accept the division and the new political geography, demanding an equal part in the nation-State. In a frequent attitude of self-depreciation, they generally see their society as backward or archaic. To the alternative models proposed by the most radical, this current of thought is opposed to solutions of regional autonomy within constituted States. While being aware of the problems denounced by other political currents, they defend positions that they consider more realistic considering the political, economic & social environment which has changed & shrunk.
These contrasting attitudes bring one back of course to different conceptions of 'progress', seen in the latter case as the result of borrowings from the dominant modern societies, or in the other as a constant work of human groups on themselves in a dynamic which springs from an organism in interaction with its milieu.
In all cases one conviction is shared : the Touareg are today in an impasse. Marginalised in all the States where they ended up, they have never been able to work out a way of insertion into the new African order where all forms of difference & pluralism have been fought as fermenting destabilisation. That is why they think that only struggle & resistance, whether it is military or not, will enable them to obtain the changes which could bring their community out of it's dying state : "I prefer to die fighting than die of malaria", said one of the signatories of the National Pact of Mali.