For two years, the data relating to the situation in the Sahel have been particularly alarming: number of deaths, refugees, internally displaced persons, out-of-school children, expansion of the field of action of terrorist groups, political instability in Mali and Burkina Faso. and in Niger…

Mali now embodies the coffin of UN peacekeeping and Niger is about to be that of ECOWAS. Worse still, the “three border region” (the border area of ??Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) has notably become a site of regular clashes between Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Islamic State at large. Sahara (EIGS); and the Sahelian capitals have become one of the epicenters of tensions between great powers, the long-term consequences of which are still far from being known.

In this context, the rejection of the traditional partners of the international community, first and foremost France, and the emergence of an “African neo-sovereignty” – to use the words of Achille Mbembé – have given rise to a vast assessment overview of what has been undertaken over the past ten years by the international community: military approach of France and the EU, effectiveness of the peace process, development aid and roles of specialized organizations (G5 Sahel, Sahel Alliance, Coalition for the Sahel).

Given its centrality in the geopolitics of the Sahel, the management of the “Tuareg question” by the international community must appear in this assessment, to which this article intends to contribute by laying the foundations of a counterfactual analysis. Would the situation in the Sahel be worse if the State of Azawad (name given to a territory of approximately 820,000 km2 located in northern Mali, housing according to the last census of 2009 nearly 1.3 million people? inhabitants of which, although a minority, a significant proportion of Tuaregs, and claimed by the various Tuareg rebellions since 1963) had been recognized after the declaration of independence of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), founded in 2011 on the bases of the Azawad National Movement (MNA)?

On April 6, 2012, the secretary general of the MNLA, Bilal Ag Achérif, unilaterally proclaimed, from Gao (the large city in northern Mali), the independence of the State of Azawad, positioning his movement on a democratic and secular in opposition to jihadist groups. This declaration, which is part of the very logic of the operations of a national liberation movement, comes in a highly volatile context, made of opportune alliances and then competition for control of the towns of North Mali between the MNLA and several jihadist groups.

In Bamako, in reaction to the situation which had become uncontrollable in the north of the country, a military coup put an end to the functions of President Amadou Toumani Touré on March 21, 2012. The putschists, who on April 6 were in full discussion with ECOWAS on the modalities of the return to constitutional order and the handing over of power to civilians, are totally opposed to the independence of Azawad and consider the MNLA as an enemy entity, even more than the jihadist groups.

Unsurprisingly, the African Union immediately expressed its “total rejection” of this declaration and reiterated its attachment to the principle of the intangibility of borders – even though a year earlier, the organization had recognized the Southern State. Sudan, itself resulting from a secession with Sudan.

Likewise, the United Nations Security Council affirms its “categorical rejection of the MNLA’s declarations relating to a supposed “independence” of northern Mali.” France logically adopts the same position.

In his work The Rebellion and International Law: the principle of neutrality in tension, the jurist Olivier Corten asserts that the principle of neutrality of the international community which prevails in such circumstances did not apply to the MNLA, “not by the sole fact of the secession attempt as such, but because of the links maintained between secessionist movements with groups considered terrorists”. These remarks refer to the signing of a “memorandum of understanding” on May 26, 2012 between the jihadist group Ansar Dine (affiliated with AQMI) and the MNLA for the conquest of the city of Gao against the Malian armed forces, a protocol however very quickly denounced by MNLA executives following disagreements between the two parties on the application of sharia law.

In 2012, jihadist terrorism was still an embryonic phenomenon in the Sahel. But Mali’s foreign partners have placed it at the heart of their handling of the “Tuareg question” by the United Nations. As part of the peace process initiated in 2013, the Minusma was forced to distinguish between, on the one hand, Tuareg elements who are members of secessionist groups (who will work with the UN as part of the peace process) , and, on the other hand, those members of terrorist groups (who will be in the sights of anti-terrorist forces, including the French operation Serval which deployed its troops in January 2013 at the request of Mali). However, this approach ignores the great fluidity generated by tribal and clan ties in this region as well as the opportunism which can motivate certain one-off alignments, whether collective or individual.

This approach opened the field, from the preliminary agreement of Ouagadougou in 2013 which aimed to organize the Malian presidential election of 2013, to the emergence of a huge gray zone in which all the parties involved – government, military, armed groups , international partners – were able to take advantage through the sluggish signing, in 2015, of the agreement for peace and reconciliation, known as the Algiers agreement.

The agreement was signed by the government of Mali; the pro-independence Tuareg armed groups of the Coordination of Movements of Azawad (the CMA, which brings together the MNLA, the High Council for the Unity of Azawad and the Arab Movement of Azawad); and the “loyalist” Tuareg armed groups of the Platform (notably the Tuareg Self-Defense Group Imghads and Allies and the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad-Dahouassak).

Despite some symbolic measures, such as the establishment of interim authorities in several northern towns held by the CMA, the return in 2017 to Kidal – stronghold of the Tuaregs in northern Mali – of the governor, representative of the Malian state, which had been absent since May 2014, the establishment of the Operational Coordination Mechanism (MOC), and the announcement of the integration into the Malian army of thousands of former rebels via the process of “Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration” (DDR), no substantial progress in the concrete implementation of the agreement has suggested a lasting settlement of the Malian conflict.

Indeed, the interim authorities never received the promised funds; the MOC was targeted by terrorist groups from its launch and was never operational; the governor returned to Kidal alone, without his cabinet; and the integration of elements from the DDR into the army has always encountered disagreements between the parties on the question of the ranks to be reserved for them in the chain of command.

However, this agreement could have been the vector of a new beginning for Mali. With an army reconstituted around the best elements from rebel groups, Bamako could have fought terrorism more effectively before it gradually mutated into a community war and was exported to border countries.

The populations of the North could have benefited from autonomous governance adapted to their needs, in accordance with the principle of “free administration” enshrined in the agreement, while having better access to basic social services thanks to all the support made possible by Minusma. Bamako could have claimed to have granted the northern regions – after four rebellions and three peace agreements signed in 1992, 2006 and 2015 – an autonomous legal status which could have prefigured a new model of governance in anticipation of the immense reforms to come on the continent. But none of this happened.

Faced with Bamako’s delays in implementing the agreement, the support of the populations of the North for secessionist groups has strengthened. CMA groups have consolidated their cohesion with rival Platform groups through the creation of the Permanent Strategic Framework, which broadens their ethnic base, increases their diplomatic capabilities through numerous meetings of the International Mediation and develops their administrative capabilities through the exercise of local governance in northern cities.

“Ten years after the declaration of independence of Azawad, the governance of former rebels in northern Mali”. The analysis of Bertrand Ollivier (@BOlllivier) doctoral student at the Thucydide Center (@AfriThucy) and associated researcher at @OBGhali on

The agreement was weakened by the advance of jihadist groups and the 2020 coup d’état against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, then undermined by the diplomatic break with France and the request for withdrawal of Minusma expressed by the junta, so that the results of the international presence in Mali are hardly satisfactory: in ten years, terrorism has spread from North Mali to the whole of West Africa and nothing has been resolved on the subject of the “Tuareg question”, although considered as one of the initial factors of the crisis.

During all these years of Western presence, France will have been the power best positioned to advance the settlement of the “Tuareg question” by supporting the holding of a regional conference with Mali, Niger and Algeria. But nothing was done, in the constant concern not to give the impression of interfering in the internal affairs of Mali – a laudable ambition but undermined by the obvious presence of thousands of French soldiers on Malian soil.

It is indeed the “fight against terrorism” which covered up this paradox under the pretext that this fight constituted the only priority for Paris; However, the settlement of the Tuareg question would have been one of the responses to this multifaceted evil that terrorism represents. Paradoxically, accusations of interference against France have only increased as it has sought to be as discreet as possible on this subject.

Today, it is the United States that seems to have the necessary capabilities in the region to enable possible progress. Therefore, the hypothesis of independence, if it arises again, could well deserve greater consideration than a simple accusation of unilateral failure. Inkinane Ag Attaher, one of the founders of the MNLA, warns that the risk of seeing Tuareg groups being caught between terrorist groups – very active in the bushes – and the military junta – obsessed with regaining control of the towns, especially in Kidal – has never been so high.

The international community will have interpreted the declaration of independence of April 6, 2012 as an outgrowth of terrorism rather than as a harbinger of a sub-regional crisis. This was a missed opportunity for regional organizations to open the vast project of governance in West Africa. A project which would have aimed to emancipate French-speaking States from the postcolonial, centralized administrative model, without regard to the growing demands for autonomy in the management of public affairs.

This model ultimately played into the hands of terrorist groups in the most remote areas. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have gained significant ground from Tuareg groups, with the former currently seeking to retake control of Timbuktu (following the same scenario as in 2012) – and the latter continually strengthening its hold on the region of Menaka. They are the big winners from the lack of result which prevailed behind the Gentleman’s agreement that constituted the Algiers agreement. In return, in the face of terrorists and the junta, the ideological popularity of the MNLA and the idea of ??independence remain very strongly anchored in the minds of the populations of the North.