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EPILOGUE 319The programme first took shape in the form of a cash-for-weapons initiative, inwhich each fighter who handed in his weapon would receive a demobilisationfee of 500 US dollars. This money was destined to finance investments for hisfuture livelihood, but most fighters used it to pay a dowry and marry. 6 After1999, the financial handouts stopped and were replaced by microcredits to setup small businesses. In all, some 9,500 former fighters were reintegratedthrough these programmes for a total cost of around 9,000,000 US dollars. Asmall sum to pay for peace, when one compares it with other DDR programmesin West Africa. 7 In the early 1910s the French had introduced firearms toexacerbate local conflicts, after which they reaped benefits in the form of mediationand, ultimately, colonisation. After that, the colonial administration triedto curb arms possession without much success. 8 But never had the amount ofarms and their use been so widespread in the Tamasheq world as after the 1996rebellion. By 2002, the DDR programmes had managed to collect about 35,000small arms, but this was estimated to represent about one tenth of the amount ofweapons then circulating in Northern Mali. 9 The possession of firearms hadslowly become an integral part of daily life among the Kel Tamasheq.Old and new local conflicts were played out in a new game of decentralisedadministration, democracy and violence. One of the main demands of the rebelmovements in the later stages of the rebellion had been for more autonomy.This had been granted in a double shape: the decentralisation and democratisationof the Malian administration on a local level. Although these measureswere ‘sold’ to the rebel movements as meeting their demands, the pressure inthe early 1990s of donor countries and institutions to implement ‘good governance’had weighed more heavily on the decision to implement decentraliseddemocracy. Kidal had the honour of being the first place in Mali to be decentralisedby being formally upscaled from Cercle to Région in August 1991,but the effective administrative installation of that Région came only in 1996when Eghless ag Foni, a Kel Adagh himself, finally took his seat in the newGovernors office. He was the first Kel Adagh ever to be appointed to high6789CAR/Nord. Both programmes fell under the direction of the Commissariat au Nord.It is unclear when exactly this programme ended but in 2002 it was slowly integratedinto a West African region wide DDR programme set up by ECOWAS: Programmefor Coordination and Assistance for Security and Development in Africa,PCASED.Interview with PAREM responsible Gao. Gao, 10 December 1996.OCDE, Regional Working Group on DDR Programmes and Post-conflict Managementin West Africa. Vol. 2 Working Documents. Paris, December 2006. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/58/18/38520347.pdfLecocq, B. 2003; Lecocq, B. & P. Schrijver 2006, 2007.USAID office of Conflict and Mitigation, USAID/DCHA/CMM Assessment: NorthernMali. 17/06/2004. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADC966.pdf