ASC-075287668-2887-01

230 CHAPTER 5The various currents within the Tanekra movement did not agree on variouspolitical issues and goals, but what they all had in common was a feeling ofpowerlessness against Mali and Niger. A feeling that Tamasheq society hadbeen robbed of its honour in the public exposure of their distress during thedroughts, the forced begging for food in the refuge camps. A feeling of outragefor the massacres perpetrated by the Malian army against civilians duringAlfellaga, and hatred for the riches of the modern world they somehow couldnot reach.Egha as an emotion can be reified and instrumentalised to connect a pastwith a future, via the present, as Sloterdijk’s thoughts on the ‘anger bank’ makeclear. The anger debt, transformed into hate, remains open until an act of revengehas been carried out. In this sense egha had the power to give theishumar meaning to their suffering in the past; their destitution and marginalityin the present; and a purpose for their future: To unify in a political movementthat would settle the debt with Mali in kind. They did this in 1990, after fifteenyears of preparation, carefully managing their anger, their hatred, their wrath,their egha.Organising the Tanekra, a narrativeAlfellaga ended in the summer of 1964 with three of its most important leadersimprisoned: Zeyd ag Attaher; Ilyas ag Ayyouba; and Elledi ag Alla. Threeothers had managed to escape to Algeria: Younes ag Ayyouba; Amegha agSherif; and Issouf ag Cheick. In the early 1970s, or perhaps already in the1960s, Issouf ag Cheick and Amegha ag Sherif were contacted by the Algeriansecret services which regarded both men as of possible use in the future andtherefore to be surveilled. 81 Both Issouf ag Cheick and Amegha ag Sherifobtained jobs within the Algerian administration, which permitted them to helpthose Kel Adagh who came to Algeria after the end of Alfellaga and during thedroughts of the 1970s and 1980s. At the end of 1974, Elledi ag Alla, one of thetwo most charismatic and notorious leaders of Alfellaga, managed to escapefrom Bamako where he had been kept under house arrest. 82 Travelling by truck,8182The contacts between Issouf ag Cheick, Amegha ag Sherif and the Algerian secretservices were confirmed by archive material in Kidal and various interlocutors.However, stories about the Tanekra abound with secret services and agents, betrayaland individual projects.After a few initial years of imprisonment, the captive rebel leaders had been putunder house arrest in Bamako. They were allowed to leave their house on certaindays, but they were not to leave Bamako. This house arrest was part of the programmefor national reconciliation set up by the Traoré regime to restore some ofthe wrongs done by the Keita regime. In 1978 Zeyd ag Attaher and the last re-