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ALFELLAGA 155Tamasheq society in order to understand the discursive continuity in Tamasheqrevolt underlying continued military resistance against the state. The secondpart deals with preparations for revolt, the goal and strategy of the rebels, andsupport from inside and outside Tamasheq society. This part is generally downplayedin Kel Adagh accounts. The third part deals with combat itself. I willhere focus on Tamasheq masculine ethics of warfare and its code of conduct,which structured and regulated the actions of the rebels. They will be contrastedwith the acts of the Malian regular armed forces in the fourth part, which dealswith army repression and retaliation on Kel Adagh civilians. This, although notoften narrated in detail, is seen as the most important aspect of the revolt. Tomost Kel Adagh, it was not the fighting between rebels and army but the heavyarmy retaliation on civilians that matters in Alfellaga. In the fifth part I willcome back to the question of how memories of Alfellaga are given meaning in acontinuing story of resistance and struggle for independence, linking it to thesecond rebellion dealt with in Chapter 6.A continuum of resistance‘Old leatherpants’, the great chiefWhen he approached the wells of IndjezalEven the tishghen and idhan trees would move asideThe donkeys would balk, the cows would bellowFrom Tidjim to Adrar, the wardrums would soundThe above is a translation of part of a poem from the 1950s in honour ofIntidgagen: ‘Old leatherpants’, a nickname for Alla ag Albachir. The poem wasset to music and recorded by the al-guitara band Terakaft from Kidal on their2008 CD Akh Issudar. 2 When I was discussing the 1963 revolt with KelTamasheq there seemed to be an almost natural connection between Alla ag Albachirand his men, who defied the French authorities in colonial times, and hisson Elledi ag Alla, the instigator and one of the main leaders of Alfellaga. Thisconnection is not coincidental. It is made with the explicit aim to create acontinuous line of Kel Adagh resistance against foreign rule from colonial timesto al-Jebha in the 1990s, via Alfellaga.Alla ag Albachir was a member of one of the Adagh’s leading clans ortewsiten: The Irayaken. According to Kel Adagh history, the Irayaken had onceheaded the Ifoghas, the tewsit leading all of the Kel Adagh, of which they are asubgroup. Alla ag Albachir refused to obey any power, both that of the Frenchand that of amenokal Attaher ag Illi. Instead, he lived as an outlaw with a2“Intidgagen”. Composed by the Kel Adagh poet Magdi in the 1950s. Available onTerakaft, 2008. Akh Issudar. World Village, B001EC23S0.