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312 CHAPTER 7political entities confirmed their image as ‘white slavers’ and ‘vassals of Frenchneo-imperialism’. Of course, this stereotype did not apply to the former slaves,the demographic majority of the Kel Tamasheq in Soudan Français. The US-RDA’s stress on the ‘bellah question’ during their election campaigns and theirattempts to curb the power of the chiefs confirmed the stereotyped image of‘black usurpers of power’ and ‘destroyers of Tamasheq society’. Again, theslaves did not hold this image, but to the political elite and the common KelTamasheq of free descent, these events were threatening and the stereotype wasa valid one.During Alfellaga, racial discourse was again present on both sides, althoughthe more solid historical evidence I have on this point comes from the side ofthe Malian regime for both their own point of view as well as that of theifulagen. It was expressed by Captain Diby Sillas Diarra in an interview he gaveto the Malian press, and his opinion as he stated it there was either based on hisinterrogations of ifulagen, or he had written his preconceived ideas on theifulagen in his interrogation reports. In either case, it is at least clear that theMalian regime had a racial interpretation of the conflict, and it is most likelythat the ifulagen were fed by racial ideas they had expressed earlier in writing.During the rebellion of the 1990s, discourse on inclusion and exclusion inthe Malian nation and the image of the Kel Tamasheq as Malian or foreign wasfully developed by the Ganda Koy, which can be seen as the Malian vox populiabout the rebellion. Ganda Koy’s exclusion of the Kel Tamasheq from theMalian nation and depiction of the Kel Tamasheq as foreign was largely basedon the same discourse on race that played a role in the period of decolonisation,as if decolonisation had indeed more or less taken off again with the start of therebellion. By accusing the Kel Tamasheq of being ‘white slavers’ and ‘Qadhafi’sArab mercenaries’ they were depicted as foreign elements seeking todominate the indigenous Malian population. By stressing the rebels’ ‘whiteness’,the Ganda Koy managed to develop an othering discourse excludingthose elements of Tamasheq society that were not ‘white’: the bellah or formerslaves who could join the Ganda Koy ranks.Perhaps the most interesting side to the racial aspect of the conflict betweenthe Malian state and the Kel Tamasheq is that both sides were equally obsessedwith race and that both used racial discourses. One could safely say thatAlfellaga was the result of relations between two different political elites basedon mutual distrust and negative preconceived stereotyped images. While theKeita Regime perceived the Kel Tamasheq as white, anarchist, feudal, lazy,slave driving nomads who needed to be civilised, the Kel Tamasheq elite sawthe Malian politicians as black, incompetent, untrustworthy slaves in disguisewho came to usurp power. These ideas resurfaced with the outbreak of thesecond rebellion in 1990 and were openly expressed in a mutually hostile dis-