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222 CHAPTER 5the rich Arabs support it. The Kel Tamasheq are one group, closed in on itself in theSahara. 65The Kel Tamasheq were in the desert and in solitude, wherever they were.Under these circumstances, their own country, with all its deficits, took on asanctified air. It was a desert, but it was their desert. And if they could returnthere, rebuilding the country and securing Tamasheq social existence, thatdesert would cease to be one, and would become instead a fertile social space, ahome country: Akal n temust.Etymologically, temust or tumast is a derivation of imas: ‘nature’ or ‘essence’.In the first instance, temust or tumast means ‘identity’ or ‘self’ in Tamasheq.Now, temust came to mean ‘nation’, embodied through Tamashequnity in culture. The idea of temust was thus first and foremost cultural, but itacquired political meanings later on. Cultural unity was stressed through elementsthat had always been criteria of unity within the Tamasheq world, notablythe Tamasheq language and alphabet, called tifinagh. ‘Kel Tamasheq’means ‘those who speak the Tamasheq language’. It was language that hadalways provided both a common identity and a way to express it. Through thiscommon language and alphabet, a revived Kel Tamasheq nation was imaginedwhich found expression in the politization of the term temust.The foundation of our identity is TAMAJAQ. Our language, the central axis of oursociety, is the most precious thing we have to preserve. We can lose everything, butif we can save the Tamajaq, we save our specificity. Nothing distinguishes a peoplemore from another people than language! 66In these decades both évolués and ishumar developed the idea that ‘tribalism’or the political competition between federations, clans and castes, hadforeclosed political unity in the face of colonial conquest, and was now foreclosingpolitical unity and social change.On the eve of the 21 st century we more than ever need to ban the caste system thathas undermined our unity for too long. (...) At the risk of repeating ourselves, weinsist on certain values, which besides conservation deserve special attention. One ofthose is the political unity of the Tuareg that has suffered so much. (...) One of ourgreatest misfortunes is that we have never succeeded to form a united front. It istime we understand that the resistance of a broom is proportional to its number ofbristles. We should therefore dismiss certain sectarian concepts that honour neitherthose in their defence nor the Kel Tamajaq as a whole. 67656667Interview with Mohamed Lamine ag Mohamed Fall. Kidal, 23/05/1999.Anonymous, Quand le chef travaille, le peuple le suit (n.d. 1990). Document circulatingin Niamey in 1990 among Kel Tamasheq intellectuals.Ibid.