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CREATING MALI 45Of all the officers who served in Soudan Français and in the Sahara in thelate 1950s Marcel Cardaire was probably the most influential and certainly thebest known. It is no exaggeration to place him in line with early colonial ethnographersand intelligence officers as Paul Marty or Maurice Delafosse. An officerin the Colonial Infantry, in 1954 Cardaire was posted in Soudan Françaiswhere he was integrated in the Bureau des Affaires Musulmanes. He was obsessedwith the possible threats that pan-Islamism and various modernist currentsin Islam, generally labelled Wahabism, could pose to French influence inMuslim Africa, a subject he wrote an elaborate and well-informed book on. 56He initiated the so-called ‘Counter Reform’ movement to safeguard the influenceof quietist Sufi Islam on African Muslim civil servants, in collaborationwith Amadou Hampaté Bâ and Abdelwahab Doukouré. 57 Cardaire’s involvementin Saharan affairs began in October 1956, when he was asked by theMinistry of Defence to study the Spanish Sahara, the Saharan areas of Algeria,and the connections of its inhabitants with the AOF in political and religiousmatters. 58 This request was connected to the conflict between Morocco andFrance over Mauritania (infra), and the ongoing Algerian war of independence.Cardaire took Mohamed Mahmoud ould Cheick as his travel companion andinterpreter, because of his connections with the communities Cardaire wanted tovisit. They visited Tindouf, Atar, Colomb-Béchar, Ouargla, Ghardaïa, and Algiers.Cardaire was rightly convinced that to the inhabitants of the Sahara, theFrench administrative frontiers played no role whatsoever when it came to information,affiliation and travel. Such peoples like the Arab Rgaybat, Tajakantand Berabish tribes, and the Kel Tamasheq, thought and acted in interlinkingnetworks of commerce, clan, and family affiliation extending from Colomb-Béchar, through Tindouf to Timbuktu and Agadez. 59 In these networks Cardairesaw a possible danger for continued French control over the Sahara, shouldlocal leaders decide to side with Morocco or the Algerian FLN. In his reportCardaire recommended that the borders between Algeria and AOF should beconsidered non-existent when it came to intelligence and military operations.Preferably the borders should be officially abolished. Furthermore, Franceshould take actions among the Saharan population to ensure their continuedloyalty to France, if they felt any, or to win their loyalty to the detriment of pan-56575859Cardaire, M. 1954.On the counter reform movement, see Brenner, L. 2000.Personnel de l’Administration Affaires Musulmans, 1942-1959. ANSOM – 1affpol/2235/2.Rapport de chef de bataillon Cardaire sur les chaînes commerciales sahariennes,janvier 1957 – fiches de renseignement sur les Hassan, Tekna, Ahel Ma al Aïnin,Tadjakant, Kounta, Regeibats. Affaires politiques, Sahara, affaires diplomatiques.ANSOM – 1affpol/2261/7.