Alas, poor Mali. Finally it is getting some sustained world attention, only to be widely depicted as a benighted sandbox full of killers on camels.
Nine months back, I wrote with more wishful thinking than reasoned analysis that Mali might find its way back to the kaleidoscope culture, easy tolerance and boisterous democracy that had made it one of my favorite places on earth. Fat chance of that now.
As a kid in Tucson, Arizona, I fantasized about ancient adobe splendor in Timbuktu. I nearly got there in 1969. The Air Mali (Air Maybe, more commonly) plane was about to touch down, but a sudden sandstorm obscured the runway.
Instead, I explored dramatic Bandiagara Cliffs of Dogon country, near Mopti, The Grand Mosque at Djenné (above) and spice-scented markets ablaze in colo at Segou.
At a party in Bamako, I heard a guy named Toumani Diabati play magic on a stringed kora. By the time Malian music got famous, and Ali Farka Touré recorded “Talking Timbuktu†with Ry Cooder, I’d gotten to the exotic old city again and again.
This is not a travelogue; it’s a lament. Web chatter and guesswork reporting are predicting that a few French Legionnaires, African troops, and some air strikes will push Islamist zealots off the map. Don’t count on it.
The sandbox portion of Mali is twice the size of France, dappled with caves and rocky outcrops, across which Tuaregs have traveled for a millennium. Religious fervor and Qaeda campaigns are only part of it. Mali is at war with itself, a nomadic north against a sedentary south.
One dispatch from a distance called Tuaregs “the blue people,†which brings to mind that popular trio of painted entertainers.
Those Blue Men of the Desert are nam! ed for the indigo that dyes their turbans. They are very tough dudes, whose victories and losses are not easily tracked as “breaking news.â€
My last trip to Timbuktu was to find a sheikh who had heard voices and led his faithful band 100 miles across the dunes, far from any water or shade. When I found him, he vowed to stay. For all I know, his camp is still there.
Up the Niger River, Gao is a vital crossroads. If government forces run occupying intruders out of the town, that is a hopeful sign. Perhaps French muscle might recapture Timbuktu before crazed zealots destroy more ancient treasures that offend their brand of Islam.
But beware of optimism from townsfolk watching skirmishes who manage to get off a tweet or a phoned comment to news desks in Europe and America. Rebels melting away into trackless desert do not necessarily mean defeat.
Endemic smoldering in the north had been fanned into flame even before so many jihadists sought refuge when Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi fell. Al aeda hardliners, uprooted from other places, had made inroads. Their religious zealotry was added to old secular grievances.
Some of us may think the world starts each morning when we turn on our computers, and each crisis we focus on has a definitive beginning and end. That’s seldom true anywhere; certainly not in northern Mali.
In the best of times, people eked out tough survival in widely scattered oases and villages. Now many have fled. Timbuktu bustled, in its somnambulant way, with tourists and travelers. We can only surmise what it is like now. But, for sure, carefree couples no longer sip sundowners by the guesthouse pool.
A reporter should know better than to speculate about the future, especially about shape-shifting societies in West Africa. But I suspect it will be a long time before travelers will again be listening to those koras and talking Timbuktu.
