At a time when Mali is once again on the warpath, Nathalie Prévost’s podcast is a valuable document for understanding a conflict that has never been completely extinguished since independence in 1960. After the documentary broadcast in May on France 5 , Mali, the lost war against terrorism, produced with Olivier Jobard, the French journalist uses for this radio series, “Mali, the story of a crisis”, in three 36-minute episodes, the abundant material that she had collected in the field in order to explore the tensions that undermine this country, from their roots to their ultimate developments.

“With this podcast, we return to our initial project, explains to Le Monde Nathalie Prévost, of which we had been diverted by the announcement of the withdrawal of French soldiers from operation “Barkhane” in 2022. This new radio format is the opportunity to realize our initial idea: to tell the long history of modern Mali, without overhang or bias. »

Political figures, Azawad separatists, self-defense groups, warlords, jihadists, imams, democrats, soldiers, inhabitants of the south, center and north of the country: the reporter drew her material from more than eighty long-term interviews with the main actors in this conflict whose roots also lie in six decades of colonization.

Rebellions and destabilization

The first episode, La Genesis 1960-2011, focuses on the succession of rebellions which punctuated the decades preceding the shift of 2012 and the split of the country along a North-South line. From Kidal to Bamako, we revisit the first Tuareg revolt of 1963, repressed in blood, the exile of northerners in neighboring countries to Libya, where they learned to use weapons in the “Green Legion” of Gaddafi. Before returning to Mali, in 1990, he attempted a revolution which failed. Nothing will remain of the “national pact” signed in 1992 twenty years later. The North has not been the subject of better consideration of its specificities nor of the promised development.

Episode 2, The Tempest 2012-2013, deciphers the destabilization of Mali following in particular the Libyan crisis of 2011, which led to a second wave of return of hundreds of fighters, this time over-armed. Their attacks, which benefited the jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda with whom they had once allied, led to Bamako’s appeal to France for help to prevent the worm-eaten State from collapsing. collapses.

Finally, episode 3, Failed Peace and Contagion, scheduled for early December, analyzes how the jihadist insurgency will encompass part of the Fulani community and will end up, from 2014, spilling over, in particular, into Burkina Faso and the Neighboring Niger.

Heritage desire

Beyond writing that does not avoid the complexity of the subject, Nathalie Prévost insists on the heritage desire of this work. To Malian youth connected to social networks, exposed to disinformation and whose education system has deteriorated, the journalist was keen to “make her contribution”.

If RFI has been banned from broadcasting in Mali since March 2022 by the junta in power in Bamako, the podcast, which frees itself from traditional airwaves, is a way to reach these young people. “Transmission from seniors has not happened in many respects,” analyzes Nathalie Prévost. It seemed important to me to offer a polyphonic account from the very mouths of those who carried out these battles. »

A welcome perspective for the French public, for whom the modern history of Mali often remains unknown, summed up only by the decade of military intervention, which began with fanfare in 2013 and ended pitifully in 2022.