ASC-075287668-2887-01

Conclusion7I began the introduction saying that this book attempts to answer a few simplequestions that could be summarised as ‘why have there been violent conflictsbetween the Malian state and its Tamasheq and Bidân inhabitants since the1960s’? Perhaps I was too enthusiastic in asking such a broad question whichbrings about its own complexities. Of course the conflict had many reasons andvarious causes, but one encompassing answer can be given. Throughout thisbook I have argued that the conflict found its origins in a Tamasheq desire toregain the political independence they held in the 19 th century and which theyhad lost after French colonial conquest. They expressed this desire in a graduallydeveloping Tamasheq nationalism culminating in violent upsurge. Thisdesire was countered by successive Malian Governments who wished to keepthe Northern part of the country within the Malian borders because it was believedto contain mineral riches and, in a way, also because the Malian nationhad imagined the Kel Tamasheq to be ‘an other within’ that was needed to givefurther body to the imagined Malian nation. This is an obvious answer, valid formany similar conflicts, and there have been many, but human history is not asdifficult as it is sometimes made out to be. Nevertheless, this simple answerdisguises complexities about the variegated, inchoate, and sometimes incoherentprocess of decolonisation; about the nature of the state and who holdspower in it; about racial prejudice and stereotyped images of self and other;about various forms of competing nationalisms; and about political and socialdevelopments within Tamasheq society.Decolonisation, the state and nationalismAfter the Second World War, colonial politics were restructured worldwide. InFrench West Africa and the Maghreb this restructuring led to the establishment