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MALI’S MISSION CIVILISATRICE 151above in his anxious warnings against French elements penetrating Malithrough Mauritania to arm the nomads. The ghost of the OCRS had not yet beenfully exorcised. Whether or not the French did send ‘agents of subversion’ toNorthern Mali is irrelevant from this perspective. As for the accusations to theFLN in arming nomads and inviting them to join their ranks as ‘brothers in thewhite race’, I do not doubt that the ‘trustworthy person’ who conveyed thisinformation to the Second Lieutenant Maïga would have invoked the idea thatboth the Algerians and the Kel Tamasheq are white. Neither do I doubt thatMaïga and his superiors would take this argument seriously. What the messageshows is a concern for a possible FLN – Kel Tamasheq alliance based onracialist notions and stereotypes of the other held by the administration and theKel Tamasheq alike.EpilogueSo far this has largely been an archive-based narrative. Most of the smallerevents described above have been forgotten and, as happens, the rumours havebeen replaced with newer ones, more urgent in order to assess the situation ofthe day. But the events and rumours of these days have been distilled into asingle essence that is today still very much living history in the Adagh, feedinginto local discourses on state Tamasheq relations. This single essence is apparentin the following short lecture I received one day in Kidal from MoussaBaswish, a local intellectual who had studied in Algeria and who knew muchabout local history. After he had prepared a first glass of tea, he asked me whatI was interested in. I told Moussa that I concerned myself with a very simplequestion: What had happened in the Adagh in 1963?Moussa: That is very simple indeed. Right, what happened in 1945?Me: The start of decolonisation in AOF, on the basis of the Brazzaville declaration,Felix Eboué and de Gaulle.Moussa: Exactly. And what happened in 1957?Me: The OCRS.Moussa: Exactly, the OCRS. 1963 comes from the failure of the OCRS, which wasinstigated by Mohamed Mahmoud ould Cheick al-Timbukti, and supportedby Mohamed Ali and Amegha ag Sherif. Further, it comes from the brokenpromise made by General Messmer in Gao to the assembled tribal chiefsthat the Kel Tamasheq would form an independent unit within a federation.The promise of a federation and the establishment of the shari’a made byMadeira Keita were very important to the Kel Tamasheq in those days.Well, the federation broke up on the twenty second of September 1960, andthe shari’a has never been employed. That is where the dissatisfaction withModibo Keita’s regime came from. Then there was the promise of supportto Zeyd’s cause made by the FLN. They had a base here in Kidal, in the