ASC-075287668-2887-01

REVOLUTION: TESHUMARA AND TANEKRA 219idea that Tamasheq country forms a political unit focus on the argument thatpolitical unity lays in common social cultural concepts of politics within a givenspace. Those refuting Tamasheq political unity focus on the lack of centralpolitical authority in the Tamasheq world with a form of power over all Tamasheqcountry. In other words: The absence of a state. Indeed, it is hard todetect a moment prior to the Tanekra nationalist movement in which Tamasheqsociety formed a state-like political entity but the question should be askedwhether or not one should judge political unity solely on criteria of stateformation. Where, for example, would that leave the European Union? Politicalunity has never been the prerogative of the state as those in defence ofTamasheq political unity argue. But if one does apply state formation criteria asa litmus test for political unity in the Tamasheq case, a few observations can bemade. Prior to colonial conquest, the territorial integrity of Tamasheq countryhad never been under threat, and neither had been their political supremacy in it.Although one central power was lacking within the Tamasheq political constellation,the Kel Tamasheq ruled their land with a strong political influence overtheir neighbours, even if these were more or less strong states, such as theFulani jihad-states of Macina or Sokoto. The French colonial armies had conqueredTamasheq country with tremendous military superiority over the defenders,and with a speed forestalling Tamasheq attempts to unite in defence,which were made nevertheless. When the French retreated, the Kel Tamasheqmade great efforts to regain independence as a unified Saharan state, if need beunder French tutelage in the form of the OCRS, or inclusion in Algeria or‘Greater Morocco’. This was not achieved and the Kel Tamasheq were facedwith the dismemberment of their territory between five former colonial states.Only then was the need first felt to find ways to regain territorial and nationalindependence, and it was concluded that this could only be done if all KelTamasheq were united.The Tamasheq pronoun ‘Kel’, the first part of the name of most tribes andclans, literally means ‘those of’ or ‘those from’. Kel Hoggar, Kel Ajjer, KelAdagh, Kel Aïr, or Kel Udalan: Those from the Hoggar, the Ajjer, the Adagh,the Aïr, or the Udalan. Since the 1960s, national belonging has slowly crept intoideas of identity. The pronoun Kel is now not only used to indicate specificsocial-political groups internal to Tamasheq space, but also to denote one’salism, and on the other side André Bourgeot and Dominique Casajus being criticalof it in light of the rising democratisation movement of the early 1990s in Mali andNiger. Other contributions came from Georg Klute, Gunvor Berge, André Salifou,and Pierre Boilley. The debate remained unsettled after it took an embarrassinglypersonal tone. See Berge, G. 2000; Bourgeot, A. 1990, 1994; Boilley, P. 1999;Claudot-Hawad, H. 1987, 1992, 1993a, 1993c; Casajus, D. 1995; Klute, G. 1995;Salifou, A. 1993.