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268 CHAPTER 6allies only a short decade earlier. In fact, the ARLA-MPA rivalry can be partlyseen as a continuation of that conflict which was played out in violent waysdirectly after the creation of the ARLA. Having the majority of Kel Adaghfighters in their camp, the ARLA ousted the MPA/Ifoghas from the rebel basein Mount Tigharghar, forcing them to leave most of their material behind.The conscious efforts within the Tanekra to overcome internal social differencesparadoxically led to the creation of new concepts that furthered socialdifferences. From the start of the 1990s, clan and caste based ideologies gainedthe upper hand, slowly destroying the previous ideals of equality the Teshumarahad stood for. The first such ideology was timgheda: the behaviour of animghad, a free but not noble Tamasheq. Timgheda found its origins withinTeshumara culture and the resistance organisation of the 1980s, when a numberof the movement’s members with an imghad background questioned the leadershipposition of the Ifoghas tribe within the movement. The main characteristicsof ‘imghadness’ were seen to be industriousness, as opposed to the perceivedlaziness of the nobles; the sense that all the Kel Tamasheq are equal; and thatlineage or descent should be of no importance to one’s place in society. Thislast idea forms an explicit denial of social privilege based on birthright. Theperceived industriousness of the imghad and the laziness of nobles echo thewritings of Malian administrators during the Keita Regime. In the relativeabsence of former slaves in the Adagh, the Keita Administration came to see theimghad as the oppressed class of the ‘labouring masses’. The same idea hadnow taken hold among the imghad themselves. This conflicting view of imghadself and noble other had already played an important role in the Tamanrassetwar in the mid 1980s, and it would play an important part in the conflicts tocome within the movement, continuing throughout the rebellion. Like casteidentity, tewsit identity has recently become the focus of essentialist conceptualisationsbordering on ideology. This conceptualisation has large impacts on alocal or regional scale. A powerful example is the conceptualisation of tefoghessaor ‘ifoghasness’: the essence of ‘being of the Ifoghas clan’. Tefoghessahad largely been developed in reaction to timgheda and it was an extension ofthe idea of temushagha, nobility. Tefoghessa expressed the idea that the Ifoghasclan is one of noble, strong warriors and religious specialists. Their descentfrom the prophet Muhammad (the Ifoghas claim shorfa status); their pureadherence to Islam; and their historical role as the wise and just leaders of theKel Adagh federation, would give them the undeniable right to political supremacyin the Adagh and even beyond. The tefoghessa idea was developed byishumar and intellectuals from the Ifoghas, including MPA leader, Iyad agGhali. The latter had come to believe (or perhaps had always believed) that thechiefs and other traditional authorities were indispensable to Tamasheq society.