To Make a World, Part II: The Art of Creating a State

Tom Holert, “National Heterologies: On the Materiality and Mediality of Flags – Mali 2013,” e-flux journal 52 (Feb. 2014) →.

D. K. Twerefou, “Mineral Exploitation, Environmental Sustainability and Sustainable Development in EAC, SADC and ECOWAS Regions,” African Trade Policy Centre, UN Economic Commission for Africa, 2009 →.

Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2014” →.

MNLA, “Déclaration d’Indépendance de l’Azawad,” April 6, 2012 →.

Berny Sèbe, “A Fragmented and Forgotten Decolonization: The End of European Empires in the Sahara and Their Legacy,” in Francophone Africa at Fifty, eds. Tony Chafer and Alexander Keese (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 205–206.

Jeremy Keenan, “Mali’s Tuareg rebellion: What next?,” Al Jazeera, March 20, 2012 →.

Information about the desertion of Malian soldiers is scattered, and although confirmed by several news sources, it is impossible to get an overview of their exact numbers.

The basis for the MINUSMA mission was laid out in Security Council Resolution 2100, April 25, 2013 →.

Berny Sèbe, “A Fragmented and Forgotten Decolonization,” 205.

Baz Lecocq, Disputed Desert: Decolonisation, Competing Nationalisms and Tuareg Rebellions in Northern Mali (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 84 →.

Ibid., 7.

Ibid., 13.

Ibid, 61.

Modibo Keita quoted in Francis G. Snyder, “The Political Thought of Modibo Keita,” Journal of African Studies vol. 5, no. 1 (May 1967).

“The US-RDA’s (Union Soudanaise–Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine) high modernist social economic policies were unrealistic and unwanted, and they proved to be a failure in the end for more or less the same reasons as they were a failure elsewhere in the country: Too few material and financial investments, and too much reliance on willpower. But perhaps more so than elsewhere in Mali, the patronising attitude of the regime toward the population, informed by existing stereotypical ideas, caused a build-up of tension that would in the end form one of the root causes of the rebellion. The regime’s lack of understanding of local work ethics, gender relations, social dynamics, and political power structures led to a wavering policy that was much resented among a population bent on preserving the colonial social-political legacy.” Baz Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 116.

Meeting a Kel Tamasheq delegation from France, I spoke with a young man who told me he had grown up in one of the most deserted parts of northern Mali. Once, when he left Malian territory to travel further northward, he encountered a Libyan checkpoint. He was asked for his papers. He not only had no papers; he didn’t even know that he lived in a state named Mali, nor that there was a neighboring state called Libya. This story might have been embellished, but it is a fact that for most northerners, administration is absent. For example, dates of birth and age are unknown, and many northerners live without passports or other forms of identity documents. Moussa Ag Assarid, one of my main contacts in the liberation movement, made up his date of birth on the spot when he first applied for a passport.

Marissa Cramer, “From Nomads to Nationalists,” 9.

Of this I can testify personally, due to my direct collaboration with Moussa Ag Assarid, writer and European representative of the MNLA, with whom I was present during several of these meetings and public declarations of mutual solidarity.

Andy Morgan – interestingly enough the manager of the world-famous militant Kel Tamasheq band Tinariwen – regularly engages in debates on the Azawadian revolution. Speaking about the historiography proposed by his artists, he argues that “the first rebellion of 1963 and its brutal suppression by a paranoid and inexperienced Malian army ensured that relations between the central government and their far-flung nomads in the north got off to the worst possible start. The bitterness generated by the conflict was deepened by the terrible droughts of 1972-32, during which up to 80 percent of the northern animal herds died and thousands of Tuareg families were forced to flee the country in search of food and work. The corrupt misappropriation of aid by government officials during the crisis only made things worse.” – Andy Morgan, “What do the Tuaregs want?,” Al Jazeera, January 9, 2014 →.

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 37.

Ibid., 45.

The Art of Creating a State, eds. Moussa Ag Assarid and Jonas Staal (Utrecht: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2014), 94.

Ibid., 94–95.

Jolle Demmers shared a series of reflections on the concept of “mocking the state” in a debate with Moussa Ag Assarid during the inauguration of the New World Embassy of Azawad at BAK (basis voor actuele kunst) in Utrecht, September 9, 2014.

Demmers made this point during her introductory remarks for the “Global State” block of the 4th New World Summit on the Stateless State, September 19-21 2014, Royal Flemish Theater (KVS), Brussels. Demmers served as chair of the Global State block.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Eva Morales spoke about the concept of indigenous socialism: “On the topic of Socialism, every country has its peculiarities… It is our obligation to protect the rights of our ‘Pacha Mama.’ It is a very different characteristic (of Socialism) that comes from the indigenous movement. I still firmly believe that regaining or re-establishing this way of life – living in solidarity and complementarity – is the best political, social and economic tool for combatting capitalism and imperialism,” →.

In early November of this year, I had the chance to interview Saleh Muslim, who is copresident of the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) and who represents the people’s armies of the Rojava region. He explained the region’s model of democratic autonomy as follows: “Together with the ethnic and religious minorities of the region – Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrians, Armenians, Christians, Kurds – we have written a collective political structure for these autonomous cantons: our social contract. We have established a people’s council including 101 representatives from all cooperatives, committees and assembly’s running each of our cantons. And we established a model of co-presidency – each of our cantons. And we established a model of co-presidency – each political entity always has both a female and a male president – and a quota of 40% gender representation in order to enforce gender equality throughout all forms of public life and political representation. We have, in essence, developed a democracy without a state,” →.

Security Council Resolution 2178, September 24, 2014 →.