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CONCLUSIONS 309of a new political elite, political parties and a gradual transfer of power in AOFand Morocco from the French colonial administration to this new elite. At thesame time, as mineral wealth was discovered in the hitherto worthless Sahara,various conflicts broke out over attempts to redraw the Saharan borders, whichculminated in the French creation of the OCRS in 1957, while in 1956 alreadythe Moroccan Liberation Army invaded the Spanish Sahara and Mauritania.These were driven back by French and Spanish forces in 1958, while, further tothe northwest, a ferocious colonial war of independence raged in Algeria. In thisgeo-political configuration, the Bidân and the Kel Tamasheq were at centrestageas the inhabitants of the Sahara.However, in Soudan Français the new political elite created in the decolonisationprocess consisted mainly of French educated colonial servants and armyofficers recruited from among the colonial elite of traditional chiefs. Mostmembers of this new political elite came from the heartland of Soudan Français:the Mande and Bambara inhabited regions. The inhabitants of the North, especiallythe Bidân and the Kel Tamasheq, were less well represented but notabsent. It is often argued by scholars and some Kel Tamasheq alike that theBidân and the Kel Tamasheq had no interest in or understanding of the newpolitical game. I hope to have shown that this was not the case. The Kel Tamasheqpolitical elite did play an important part in the new politics, but theyplaced their bets on the wrong horses.The inchoate and politically charged decolonisation of the Sahara led tocompetition over power between old and new political elites in the region, andfinally to the creation of competing expressions of nationalism. The nascentnationalisms included those of Mauritania, where the political elite was dividedover alliance with Morocco or France; and the West Sahara, where local Bidântribes supported both the Moroccan invasion and the subsequent Spanish andFrench military Operation ‘Écouvillon’. This led to the birth of a nationalfeeling among West Saharans that would ultimately lead tot the creation ofPOLISARIO. A Malian nationalism was already in the making, but it wascertainly strengthened by the necessary political struggle to keep its territorialintegrity intact even before independence was reached. In the attempt the US-RDA regime made after independence to modernise society, politics and statecontrol dominated over economic development, while patriotism and Maliannationalism were preeminent in politics. The nation was imagined as Malian,but this imagining was specifically based on Mali as a Mande nation, an imagethat proved incompatible with the images of potential members of that nation:the Kel Tamasheq. Hence, the same adverse national ideal was constructed onboth sides. The Malian political elite imagined the Kel Tamasheq as inherentlynot Malian and the Kel Tamasheq political elite fully agreed.