Syllabus
* Jeremy Keenan
* Lecture 1. May 11, 2020
* Traditional Tuareg societies.
This first lecture will give an ethnographic outline and history of the Tuareg groups of the central Sahara (southern Algeria, southern Libya, northern Niger and northern Mali) and explain the key features of both their ecological adaptation to their desert environments, as well as their social and political organisation, from precolonial times to the independence of these countries in the 1960s.
* Lecture 2. May 12, 2020
* The Tuareg’s ‘Prague Spring’ and the launch of the GWOT
This second lecture will explain how geopolitical forces elsewhere in the Sahara-Sahel (Algeria’s ‘Dirty war’ of the 1990s, Libyan sanctions, rebellions in Niger and Tuareg), led to the Tuareg’s effective isolation from the outside world for most of the 1990s, and how this period of isolation led - largely through the arrival of the Internet - to what I have called the Tuareg’s ‘Prague Spring’. This involved a conscious plan by Tuareg groups to regain and re-establish their cultural heritage and, as far as possible, their political and economic autonomy, through the development of what they conceived as an environmentally ‘green’ Sahara. This ‘Prague Spring’ was destroyed by the launch of the GWOT. The lecture explains the planning that led to the launch of the GWOT; how and why it was fabricated and its immediate impact on the Tuareg peoples.
* Lecture 3. May 13. 2020
* The GWOT and ‘Terrorism’ in the Sahara-Sahel.
The third lecture will explain how the GWOT, combined with the consequences of the NATO (British, French and US) intervention to overthrow the regime of Mouamar Qadhafi in Libya, led to the attempt by Malian Tuareg in 2012 to create an independent state (Azawad) in northern Mali, and how this has led progressively since 2013 into what has become the ‘Sahel War’. In particular, the lecture will focus on how and why the Western world, notably the USA and its Algerian allies, along with certain governments in the Sahel, have attempted to demonise the Tuareg as ‘terrorists’. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of the issues and questions relating to the future of the Tuareg and the many other peoples of the Sahara-Sahel whose lives have been turned upside down by the ‘Sahel War’.
Annotation
In these three lectures, It will trace and explain the history of the Tuareg of the Sahara from traditional, precolonial times to the current War in the Sahel: from being ‘the Lords of the desert’ to marginalised and demonised
‘terrorists’ in their own lands. In short, it is the story of how a proud and extraordinary people have struggled, but still managed to survive in one of the world’s harshest environments and against the geo-political machinations of the 21st century.
BRIEF INTRODUCTORY NOTES.
There were seven main Tuareg groups, or politically autonomous ‘federations’, in traditional times: 2 in the North
(Algeria and Libya) and 5 in the Sahel (Niger and Mali). They were generally referred to as the northern and southern Tuareg respectively. Today, the names of these seven groups are rarely used except amongst themselves. They are generally lumped together and designated as Algerian Tuareg, Malian Tuareg, Nigerien
Tuareg and Libyan Tuareg. Today, the region is bereft of accurate demographic census date. The Tuareg, in total, now probably number around three million, possibly a few more. Although I will discuss all of the Tuareg groups
(in Algeria, Libya, Mali and Niger), my analysis of the structure and dynamics of traditional society is based predominantly on the Kel Ahaggar (People of Ahaggar), one of the two northern Tuareg groups. The Kel Ahaggar’s broad social structure and organisation is similar to all other groups, but differs slightly in such details as class alignments and terminologies, kinship systems and nomenclature, marriage patterns and strategies (which are dynamic), other such cultural details and, of course, the exploitation of their slightly different environmental conditions and resources.
The impact of both French colonialism and the subsequent Independence of these countries on the Tuareg groups will be highlighted.
The Tuareg’s Prague Spring, is a term I designated. It was perhaps the most exciting but short-lived time in Tuareg history, but passed so quickly (1999-2003) as to have been hardly noticed by the outside world. It was brought to a sudden end by the launch of the global war on terror (GWOT) into the Sahara-Sahel.
The launch by the US, in collusion with Algeria’s secret intelligence service, of a ‘Saharan-Sahelian’ or ‘second front’ in the GWOT is one of the greatest crimes in contemporary African history. It was conceived in 2002 and put into operation in 2003, based on a series of fabricated, ‘false flag’ operations undertaken by the US and Algerian secret services, to justify the US militarisation of Africa.
At the time, I warned that it would lead to a Saharan-wide conflagration. It has now done so, in what is generally referred to as the ‘Sahel war’, or ‘War in the Sahel’, with disastrous consequences for the Tuareg and most other peoples of the vast Sahara-Sahel region.