Mr Mohamed OULD CHEIKH EL-GHAZOUANI, President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritanie & Chairman of the African Union,
Subject: Could the African Union unite to put an end to the ongoing genocide against the Tuareg and Moor populations of Azawad?
Dear Mr President
First of all, we would like to express to you, with a slight delay, our warm congratulations on your election, as an Amazigh-Moor, to the rotating presidency of the African Union for this current year of 2024/2974. And to congratulate the AU on the appointment of Mr Adama DIENG as the first AU Special Envoy for the Prevention of Genocide and Other Mass Atrocities, in order to combat the ideology of hatred and the prevention of genocide on the African continent, on the occasion of the 30th commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda.
We have the honour of presenting to you the delicate issue of the murderous violence unleashed against the indigenous populations of northern Mali, in this case the Tuareg and Moors of the Azawad region, by the Malian military forces (the Fama), with the inhuman and criminal support of the Russian mercenary militias of the ‘Wagner’ group, who continue to methodically carry out ethnic cleansing operations against these Azawad civilian populations, in this Sahel-Saharan region, in the very heart of our African continent.
It is truly intolerable that the 54 members of the AU continue to remain silent on this genocide, as well as the international media and public opinion. This deafening silence makes our African states notorious accomplices in this atrocious ethnic cleansing.
We would like to inform you that our NGO, Amazigh World Assembly (AMA), took the initiative of calling on the presidents Mr Emmanuel MACRON [1], Mr Vladimir PUTIN [2], Mr Abdelhamid DBEIBEH, Head of the Government of National Unity of Libya, and the foreign ministers Mr Nasser BOURITA for Morocco, Abdoulaye DIOP for Mali, Sameh CHOUKRY for Egypt, Nabil AMMAR for Tunisia, Mohamed SALEM OULD MERZOUG for your honourable country, Mrs Aïssata TALL SALL for Senegal, Ragnaghnèwendé Olivia ROUAMBA for Burkina Faso [3], the European Union [4] and the US Ambassador to Morocco. The latter was kind enough to take our distress call seriously and to respond to us by sending one of his emissaries to meet us on 19 December, 2023 to whom we had provided some reports from various human rights NGOs [5] on this crime against humanity, which is totally overshadowed by the armed conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Mr President,
If Mali, Burkina-Faso and Niger have experienced various coups d’état, it is mainly because of their inability to deal with the insecurity caused by jihadist terrorist groups! So, the fundamental question, which we pretend to ignore, is who is behind these terrorist groups?
Knowing that this vast desert region of the Great Sahara and the Sahel was once a haven of peace, where various ethnic groups lived in harmony and respect, notably the Tuareg, the Moors, the Peuls and the Dogons, the Toubous, the Songhaïs…
At our NGO, the Amazigh World Assembly (AMA), we have always been convinced that the Algerian military secret services were involved, in particular through the creation of the Salafist group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), confirmed by François Gèze and Salima Mellah’s study [6], now led by the famous Tuareg Iyad AG GHALI of Ansar Dine (who has opted for a new name, the Groupe de Soutien à l’Islam et aux Musulmans -GSIM-). This leads us to ask the crucial question: why?
The main geostrategic aim of these sinister and criminal Algerian services (from the DRS or DGDSE), which are directly responsible for all the murders committed – and which continue to be committed – is to destabilise these Sahel countries. Their aim is threefold:
– Firstly, by turning the Sahel into a powder keg, they are preventing anyone from drilling for hydrocarbons and exploiting the riches beneath the surface, because of their insane fear that neighbouring countries such as Mali or Niger will succeed in pumping out the same pockets of oil and gas reserves that lie to the south;
– Secondly, their fear that the Malian Tuaregs will succeed in gaining regional political autonomy and that the Algerian Tuaregs will follow in their footsteps; and
– Thirdly, to economically weaken these Sahelian countries, which are already landlocked, in order to maintain its “supposed great power hegemony” (al9uwa adariba القوة الضاربة) in the Sahel region.” Let’s not forget that their famous bloodthirsty AQIM emirs, such as Mokhtar BELMOKHTAR and Abdelmalek DROUKDEL, succeeded in expelling the Paris-Dakar Rally from Africa to South America, thus depriving the local populations of a major financial windfall and its potential for tourism!
We believe that it is in everyone’s interest to return, seriously, to the realistic proposal of Mr Romano PRODI, former President of the European Commission and Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Sahel from 2012 to 2014. In response to a question from Jeune Afrique as to whether a State of Azawad seemed viable to him? He wisely replied: “I am hopeful of an acceptable agreement between Bamako and the armed groups. Because I believe that, without an agreement with the North, there will never be peace in Mali” [7]. In the end, this was the solution to which the parties to the Malian conflict agreed in Ouagadougou on 4 December 2012, at the initiative of former Burkina Faso president Blaise COMPAORE, who counted on the support of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), where the government side and the side representing the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad (MNLA), insisting on “the rejection of terrorism” and respect for territorial integrity, agreed on the “need to create a framework for dialogue to bring about a cessation of hostilities” in which the MNLA would renounce the independence of the North in exchange for guarantees of “broad autonomy”, following the example of the Moroccan proposal of 2007 for the UN to settle the Saharan question, which the Tuareg leader Bilal AG CHERIF has just resubmitted on 30 April [8].
In short, as the great pan-African Amazigh king MASSINISSA declared two millennia ago: “Africa for Africans,” all the countries of Africa are called upon, more than ever, to unite their efforts and use all their diplomatic influence to obtain peace, combat the scourge of jihadist terrorism and put an end to fratricidal wars.
To achieve this, we need to:
– Firstly, to stop rolling out the red carpet for the government leaders of states that foment Islamist terrorism, in this case Algeria, and to cut off all diplomatic and economic relations with them;
– Secondly, to call on the Russian Federation to withdraw its bloodthirsty Wagner mercenary militias from Africa, and more particularly from Mali and Libya. It is unacceptable that some of our African countries that want to free themselves from French neo-colonialism should fall into a new, crueller neo-colonialism, and that the gold resources of the indigenous people of Azawad should be used to finance their extermination!
– Thirdly, in order to avoid being notorious accomplices in this new ethnic cleansing, we must work as urgently as possible to convince Mali’s military leaders and the Tuareg and Moor fighters of Azawad to sit down around a round table, where the establishment of a federal territorial system would be the best political option for saving Mali and the Sahel region.
Thanking you most sincerely for all your efforts and the resources you are deploying to come to the aid and offer assistance and humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of Azawad refugees and displaced persons who are taking refuge in your territory, including the Mbera camp, please accept, Mr President, our most fraternal greetings.
Mr Rachid RAHA, President of the Amazigh World Assembly (AMA)
Copie :
Mr. Moussa FAKI MAHAMAT, Président de la Commission de l’UNION AFRICAINE (AU)
Mr. Leonardo SANTOS SIMãO Représentant spécial pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest et le Sahel du Secrétaire général de l’ONU
Notes :
[2]- www.afrik.com/mali-la-russie-accusee-de-declarer-la-guerre-aux-les-touaregs
[6]- www.algeria-watch.org/fr/aw/gspc_etrange_histoire_intro.htm
