Extrait de l'album Tartit "Ichichila" Network 36.584 - www.networkmedien.de
Production : Network Medien Frankfurt & Divano Production Bruxelles - Produit par Gerald Fenerberg et Michel Winter - Enregistré au Centre Culturel de Bamako par Yves Wernert et Gerald Fenerberg. Mixé par Gerald Fenerberg

The Tuareg, who call themselves Kel Tamasheq, live in five African states: Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. In the past, they were nomads whose economy revolved around livestock breeding, but today many of them have become sedentary and cultivate the land. Tuareg men veil their faces and are legendary as fearless warriors. They have preserved a script (tifinagh) consisting of purely geometric signs that related to the ancient Libyan alphabet. Tuareg society is traditionally organised along the lines of a caste system headed by a nobility of warriors and Koran scholars. These are followed by a class of vassal's known as imrad, who formerly had to pay tribute to the nobility.
Their slaves or iklan were taken from among the Black African population on raids, and were; employed as serfs and herdsmen.
Today, they are free and have adapted better to the structural change than their former masters on the lowest rung, outside society, are the metal smiths or enads, feared for their power over the element of fire. These metal smiths produce aIl the main implements and weaponry for the Tuareg. Tuareg women, known as targia, enjoy extraordinary freedom, including the right to divorce and choose their own husbands. Although the Tuareg are Moslems, they do not follow the Koran as strictly as some other African peoples.

The Touareg Rebellion
In 1963 a rebellion by the Touareg people of the southern Sahara was brutally suppressed by the government of the newly independent republic of Mali. As a result the first great migration of Touaregs from their homelands in northern Mali to Algeria was set in motion. The cumulative effect of severe droughts in 1973 and 1974 also resulted in a massive exodus to the big cities of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. A new diaspora established itself in these unfamiliar urban surroundings and their exile was tainted by rootlessness and social upheaval. Young Touaregs abandoned the age-old nomadic and pastoral way of life and became part of a precarious wage economy, alternating between low-paid menial work and unemployment. This new generation of Touaregs was called 'Ashoumar', or 'Ishoumar' in the plural, after the French word 'chomeur' or 'unemployed person'. The young exiles developed a new political outlook whose central credo became the struggle for social justice and freedom for the Touareg nation. In 1990, a group of Touareg freedom fighters launched a major rebellion in Mali. On 11th April 1992 the Malian government and the rebels signed a national pact of reconciliation. Nevertheless it was only at the dawn of the year 2000 that the Iforas region in northern Mali, home of the Kel Adrar group of Touaregs, gradually began to up to outsiders after years of isolation imposed by the bitter conflict.

Tuareg in Mali
The huge West African state of Mali, covering an area of some 1.2 million square kilometres, is one of the poorest countries in Africa, and one of the five countries in which the Tuareg live as an ethnic minority. Mali's Black African majority of Bambara and Songhai live along the shores of the rivers in the south of the country, where they cultivate the land. Two thirds of this vast country, whose capital is Bamako, is made up of desert and steppe or savannah. In the north the fair- skinned Tuareg and Moors (sometimes referred to as White Mali) live a nomadic or semi-nomadic life. They make up just six per cent of the population and are concentrated in the regions of Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao.

ln 1990 a massacre of Tuareg in Niger led to an armed revolt that soon spread to Mali. The conflict broke out in the wake of two devastating droughts in 1974 and 1984 in the course of which the nomads lost the greater part of their herds and, with that, the sole basis of their livelihood. Many fled from poverty to neighbouring countries. Promised foreign aid ended up in the pockets of corrupt politicians or on the markets in the South of the country.

Almost all the key administrative and political posts are held- by-Bambara or Songhay, as a result of the Tuareg's refusal to send their children to school. During the colonial era, they sent the Black children of their former slaves- in-stead, who now reap the benefit. Civil war in Mali triggered primarily by the deliberate non development of the north, the destruction of herds by drought, social injustice and government repression, left the country in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Algeria, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, only to be kept in a state of limbo in wretched conditions.

It was only when President Konaré came to power that the aims of the peace treaty were realised and today peace seems assured. Most of the refugees have returned to their homeland, the former rebels have been integrated into the regular army, and the infrastructure (including health care, water supplies, schools, agriculture and livestock) has been rebuilt. The Tuareg themselves are turning increasingly towards cultivating the land, forming cooperatives and setting up business with the help of small loans. Some have returned to the desert to take up their centuries-old tradition of nomadic life.

Petra Bode

Extract from album Tartit "Ichichila" Network 36.584 - www.networkmedien.de

Production : Network Medien Frankfurt & Divano Production Bruxelles - Produit par Gerald Fenerberg et Michel Winter - Enregistré au Centre Culturel de Bamako par Yves Wernert et Gerald Fenerberg. Mixé par Gerald Fenerberg