In Mauritanian refugee camp, Mali's Tuaregs regroup

Nevertheless, refugees perceive Al Qaeda-linked rebel groups as a greater threat. For while the Tuaregs have a history of raids and resolutions with the Malian government, the Islamists that have hijacked the Tuareg rebellion and are violently imposing sharia upon the North pose an existential threat to northern culture and patrimony, in which musical traditions, empowered women, and local saints figure prominently.

Camp's culture a microcosm of life in northern Mali

The camp is a microcosm of culture and power in northern Mali. At a general assembly, where the heads of each sector are meeting to discuss aid distribution, the din of voices competing for the floor is deafening, until a woman stands up and commands silence under the broad tent. The woman, Fati Ouallet Mamili, conducts the entire meeting, which is focused on a proposal to begin channeling aid through women leaders in each sector, rather than exclusively through the male sector heads.

“All their shouting – it is because there is insufficient material,” she said afterward. “Each sector head has a great world behind him, and is afraid of not providing for them. If you have 400 people and 200 blankets, how will you choose?”

The women of the camp play a crucial, if not quite militarized, role in the Tuareg mission to found an independent Azawad.

“We need the country to be really liberated," says Ms. Fati. "We are not goats that you can send out in the morning and bring back at night.”

The women’s “weapons,” she said, are to counsel their male relatives in the MNLA to be sure to get peace right this time around. For Fati, peace means for Azawad, from Lere to Kidal, to be free.

“Azawad is Azawad, and Mali can just go over there,” she said, waving her hand. “We are surprised that south Mali even wants Azawad. Azawad means the great sieve you rinse rice in. Why does Mali need sand?”

In terms of water and food, Fati said, the refugees were better off in the camp than in Azawad.

“Azawad is only dunes of sand. And we want them. When countries give money to Timbuktu [via Bamako], it should go straight to Timbuktu. The state has never done anything for us – so they must give us our money and we’ll do it ourselves!” said Halimatou, another women’s leader in the camp.

“Northern Mali, Azawad, whatever you call it, what is sure is that it is Tuareg country,” said Ahmed ag Hamama, a professor who belonged to the first generation of Tuaregs to attend school, under colonial rule. He recruited and taught most of the Tuaregs who integrated into the Malian state as Ministers or government officials under the previous peace agreement.

But Mr. Ag Hamama later undermined the separatist message that the bulk of the refugees find so stirring. Ansar Dine, one of the three Islamist groups that is terrorizing northern Mali, is founded and run by Tuaregs. The Tuaregs, already split by tribal, regional, and caste fault lines, are now witnessing a new division between the salafist, anti-Independence Ansar Dinen and secular, separatist MNLA.

“Our concern today is the division of Tuaregs. We don’t even need Independence now – how would we manage it? We are not ready to move toward this Independence. But we aspire to it.”

Hannah Armstrong is a freelance journalist and a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, based in Bamako, Mali.

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