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300 CHAPTER 6ants; would not carry arms when entering the villages; and would warn thevillagers of upcoming rebel attacks. The latter arrangement would effectivelyprevent attacks by rebels or renegades, as the fractions of the Cercle wouldcertainly know of upcoming actions. With this agreement, the fractions of theCercle of Bourem explicitly denied support to the rebel forces. The BouremPact also provided for the creation of a committee to oversee its implementation,analogous to the committees created through the National Pact. 84 Thiscommittee would play a key role in promoting similar local agreementsbetween fractions and villages in the area throughout 1995, which were includedin the Bourem Pact, and the peace agreements between the movements.This local peace treaty on local initiative meant the beginning of the establishmentof a lasting peace.The initiative for peace came mainly from the civil population, but mostrebels too had grown weary of conflict. After six years of fighting, all partieswere simply exhausted. Those ishumar who had fought for an ideal in 1990,had seen nothing of it. Unity was far from being attained, the movements onlyfought among each other. Tamasheq independence had been ruled out by themore pragmatic leaders.You know, of all the fighters who had been trained in Libya, perhaps only twentypercent understood the goal. The others had understood nothing, they just wentalong. With the Kel Tamasheq, there is this thing we call teylelil: If there is one whohas a goal, the rest will follow automatically. Without knowing what the goal is,without thinking. That is teylelil. But we are also jâhil [ignorant, anarchists]. Give ajâhil a gun and the gun controls the man, not the man the gun. 85Fighters who had joined after the outbreak of revolt in fear of their lives anddesiring to see their kin protected had come to realise that the protracted fightingonly brought further insecurity. As one former rebel formulated his experienceof the rebellion in 1995:I was in Libya in 1990. One day, I killed a reptile. A Libyan officer approached meand asked me why I had killed it. Before he went away, he said to me: “the reptileyou just killed is more Libyan than you are”. We started the rebellion. As timepassed, the massacres between Malians began. There came a moment when we, therebels, symbolised terror (...) Many Malians had enough of it, they wanted nothingto do with us. Then, I remembered the Libyan reptile and I started to fear that oneday I would be considered less than a reptile in my own country. 86848586‘Un accord de paix entre Ganda Koy et touareg à Bourem’, Le Tambour, 29/11/1994.Interview with Lamine ag Bilal. Gao, 20/06/1999.‘Sites de cantonnement de Bourem – Kidal – Ménaka. Le triomphe du patriotisme’,Les Echos, 10/02/1996.