Africa's 'Blue Men' Flee Desert

Scattered around the area are other dome-like homes of Tuaregs who had not run away or who had drifted back since the December attack. In one of them, a Tuareg who prefers not to give his name, talks about his people.

"The people of Timbuktu say all Tuaregs are rebels. But it's not true. We're not happy they [the rebels] continue like that. People are suffering," he says.

A Tuareg merchant normally working in Timbuktu, whom this reporter met in Bamako and who did not want to give his name, says antirebel Tuaregs like himself are in danger from three directions. "We're between the rebels, the government [as suspected rebels], and the Songhay," a black Malian tribe living on the southern edges of Tuareg territory who also views Tuaregs as rebels.

A policeman in Timbuktu calls Tuaregs "animals, murderers. The only solution is to kill them," he says. Another resident says even nonrebel Tuaregs are spies for the rebels and calls them all "bandits." But recent attacks on Timbuktu do not bear the mark of bandits.

The governor's house, an unlikely target by bandits, was attacked in December. The governor was not hurt. And on Nov. 12, American Baptist missionaries Richard and Anna Marshall were robbed in their home a few miles outside Timbuktu by what Malian security officials say were Tuareg rebels.

In the past two years, there have been numerous deaths from the conflict, according to both government and rebel spokesmen, though neither side offers estimates of how many.

The Western diplomat in Bamako says the current rebellion (an earlier one occurred in the '60s) stems from the Libyan-trained Tuaregs coming home in mid-1990 after fighting wound down in Lebanon and the Spanish Sahara.

This diplomat says the conflict could last a long time because rebel factions disagree on peace terms and, even within the factions, the ideas of the younger and older generations differ.

The rebels are demanding the following: a federal state to allow them control of most of their activities; demilitarization of north Mali to eliminate conflict with the Army; and more economic aid.

Malian military head of state Lt. Col. Ahmadou Toumani Toure told the Monitor that he is willing to grant the rebels "autonomy or decentralized" powers, not a federal state. Once the area is safe, he says police will be able to handle "internal management" of the Tuareg region, and he promises more economic aid for the north.

Malian negotiator Col. Brehima Sire Traore, in a separate interview, did not rule out the possibility that Mali's scheduled transition from a military head of state to a civilian president, due to be elected by early March, could be delayed beyond the promised date of March 26 if the rebellion continues longer than that.

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