generalspeaking

Religious Paradox

Things have not gone well in Mali of late.  It may have been one of the less troubled of the African states for a while, under a competent president doing his best for his country, but things have certainly been altered.  There are those who claim that the liberation of Libya from the tyrannical yoke of Moammar Ghadafi became the downfall of Mali. 

His corps of African mercenaries finding themselves unemployed, yet well armed, including arms looted from depots left unattended, found themselves also at loose ends.  They've begun to tie up those loose ends, becoming self-employed in the process, those militant wanderers the Tauregs.  They battle to achieve a homeland of their own, dividing Mali.

And there are many African countries who have had reason to mourn the downfall of the Ghadafi regime's generosity toward their funding in loyalty to North Africa.  Mali's military, in objection to their administration's lack of attention to arming them as well as the Tuareg rebels they battled, stage a coup whose effect was to encourage the rebels to greater efforts.

By the time the new military rulers made an effort to restore order they found themselves incapable of doing so, since the country's political parties and civil organizations seemed disinterested in working with them.  And the Tuareg separatist group MNLA, joined with the Islamist Ansar dine, linked to al-Qaeda had a free hand to take the northern capitals of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

"Women and girls have been kidnapped and raped by the new occupants who are laying down their own law", grieved a junta spokesman.  There was widespread looting in Gao: "Public buildings, private offices, banks, NGO headquarters, food banks, everything has been vandalized", a humanitarian organization employee reported.

"There are no more cars, equipment, material.  There is no hospital, no dispensary, no health centre.  They removed even the beds, the doors of the hospital."  In Timbuktu, there was a parting of the ways, with the Islamists throwing out their invasion partners, the Tuareg rebels.  The Islamists stopped the looting, imposing shariah law; women henceforth to wear headscarves, thieves to have their hands lopped off.

The Tuareg flag was burnt, replaced with the black jihad flag of the Islamists.  And now the ancient city of Timbuktu, once famously wealthy, now impoverished, where drug and weapons traffickers abound, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has made itself comfortable.  The city, known for its archives and historical mosques has other concerns.

"Unique manuscripts have been conserved for centuries in Timbuktu, a scholarly city, a city of 333 saints, where practically every household is a heritage site, a library.  I think there are serious risks to those manuscripts", worries Hamady Bocoum, head of African research institute IFAN.

"These manuscripts have survived through the ages thanks to a secular order, in an area of trade where all the region's peoples intersect.  With the arrival of the Islamists, that secular order is broken, that culture is in danger."  Causing the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO to issue a plea for protection of the city's heritage.

"Timbuktu's outstanding earthen architectural wonders that are the great mosques of Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia must be safeguarded", ordered UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova. 

And there's a peculiar, ironic twist; the religious extremists, the fanatical Islamists pose a real threat to the continued existence of a fabled treasure; the written and architectural heritage of an Islamic tradition.

Vicious ignorance, visceral stupidity.

Labels: Africa, Conflict, Heritage, Islamism, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Friday, April 06, 2012