ASC-075287668-2887-01

REBELLION: AL-JEBHA 279of a large transport company, two petrol stations in Gao, and head of the localtransport union.The rebels had cut off transport. To survive, we had to start eating our investmentcapital. They explained to us they wanted the region to develop, but all they did wasattack the sedentary population. The army did nothing. They [the Kel Tamasheq]never thought the blacks would take up arms to fight in the bush. But without afight, they would never have returned to dialogue. 48Apart from the lack of trading goods and provisions, Gao also suffered underthe state of emergency that had been declared in the North in July 1990. It is nowonder that the sedentary population was not sympathetic to the rebellion. Theishumar had never included them in their movement, they had only scarcelyincluded their own people, but they pretended to fight in the interest of theNorth. Particularly after the signing of the Tamanrasset Agreement the generaldiscourse of the Tanekra had changed from a fight for independence to a fightin the interest of all of Northern Mali, which had been neglected by the Malianstate. However true this neglect may have been for the Adagh and Azawadregions, it had never been the case for Gao or the villages along the NigerRiver. The Songhay population had never felt excluded from Mali. Particularlyafter the droughts, development projects had flourished in the Niger Bend. Theprojects of the Norwegian NGO AEN in the Gossi area, the projected buildingof a dam near Tossaye, the activities of World Vision, Accord, Oxfam and otherNGOs had brought hope for prosperity after the drought. Now these organisationshad to retreat from the area under the threat of violence from both therebel forces and the Army. In revenge, pogroms were directed against Tamasheqand Arab NGO employees. In May 1992, a crowd at Gossi, headed by anarmy unit, killed twelve Tamasheq employees of the Norwegian AEN, includingits vice-director and the assistant to the director. Negotiations between therebel movements and the state in December 1990 leading to the TamanrassetAgreement, and again in November 1991 leading to the National Pact, only includedrepresentatives of the rebel movements. Other groups within Tamasheqsociety were excluded, not to mention delegates from other communities in theNorth. In April 1993, during a congress organised in Gossi, the MPA leaderIyad ag Ghali pleaded for the inclusion in negotiations of members of civilsociety, the ‘wise men and traditional leaders’. Fearing a growing influence ofthe chiefs to their own detriment, the MFUA intellectuals rejected this idea,stating that for the moment only the MFUA and rebel movements were validinterlocutors of Tamasheq interests. 494849‘Ganda Koy, ou la revanche des paysans’, Le Monde, 31/01/1996.‘Congrès MPA. Société civile: Un passage de témoin controverse’, L’Essor,14/09/1993.