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IntroductionWhat is Alfellaga and what does it mean? In June 1990, a group of Tuaregstarted an armed uprising against the Malian state. To anybody taking aninterest in these events it would quickly become clear that the upsurge had itsroots in a previous insurgency that took place in 1963, when the inhabitants ofthe Adagh n Ifoghas revolted against their inclusion in the Malian state. Thisrevolt is locally known as Alfellaga and its narrative history, as well as its localhistorical interpretation and politization with its consequence in the past twentyyears are central to this book. It is also about the contested meanings of decolonisation,independence and nationalism in the desert part of the Republic ofMali.Answering the main question of this book resulted in formulating otherquestions, as it goes with scholarly work these days, which became just asimportant. These questions evolve first of all around the workings of KelTamasheq politics. This book hopes in a way to fill the lacuna in knowledge onthe recent political events of a remote corner of the world, the inhabitants ofwhich are so widely yet so shallowly known. Then there are the eternalquestions all historians ask themselves time and again: How does historicaldiscourse influence the present, and how does the present influence historicaldiscourse? Is the past created in the present or the present in the past? Thesequestions will be dealt with not so much on the level of events, although ofcourse that will be part of the book too, but more on the level of local visionsand local workings of history in Tamasheq society and politics. In a way, thisbook wants to be an ethnography of the local politics of history in the CentralSahara. A history that has a worldwide impact if only because a number of itsactors and eyewitness poets are now world famous musicians who sing thehistory studied in this book in sport stadiums and concert halls from Sidney, viaParis and London, to Los Angeles. But perhaps also since the Central Saharahas come under attention of those interested in the perceived conflict between‘Radical Islam’ and ‘The West’ and despite their focus on actual geopolitics,most of those interested cannot help but to frame their vision on this supposed