Fear

The next person to tell me ganda si boori will convince me it is as Aliou said, "The great fear has installed itself." Kidal, precisely Abeïbara, was attacked with a force of 80 vehicles full of marginalized, gun-toting rebels. There were casualties on both sides and the rebels killed the Commandant. Then yesterday, rumors were spreading that Labbézanga, on the boarder would be attacked, so the government sent reinforcements (good thinking, after the Ansongo attack where there was ONE guardian in the gendarmerie courtyard). Everyone is saying this is an escalation. Us volunteers aren't panicking, but it is hard ignoring rumors. These people have seen and know war. 

The gandakoye rebel leader of the 1991-92 coup d'état has returned from Senegal. He sits and drinks his tea outside along the road near the phone-charging boutique here in Ansongo. And now as I am finally typing this entry, 3 months later, does the Malian media circulate the following article: 

Security: Northern Mali, another rebel front is being born

By Abdrahamane KEÏTA
While the open front led by Ibrahim Ag Bahanga begins the process of its disintegration, another hotbed of tension is trying to take over. It has to do with a rather faint copy of the "Gandakoye" Movement, as isolated veterans who have had difficulty in succeeding are drawing inspiration from the May 23 Alliance.

"Ganda Izo." This is what the former "Gandakoye" veteran, Cheybou Diallo, has named a new movement of ethnic revindication that nearly missed the 7th Region (Kidal). The diplomat, after a long stay in Dakar, has chosen to settle in "the City of Askias" (Gao) where his multiple offensives of charm directed toward the youth in Gao has only managed to stir up wind.

Mr. Diallo's plan, according to our sources, was first to recreate from its' ashes the mother movement, while attracting the sympathy of a youth lost through the shimmering favors comparable to those obtained by the May 23 Alliance. But after lengthy and unsuccessful attempts to bring people together around the same ideals, the prophet of violence retreated to the village of Fafa in the Ansongo Circle, not far from the Niger border, where he seems to have sufficiently labored for the needs of his cause.

According to our sources, Mr. Diallo finds himself finally at the head of a more or less formidable rebel battalion, composed mainly of young Fulani men from Mali and Niger. But unlike the former Gandakoye Movement, where he had once carved out a somewhat mixed reputation, the new front has nothing to envy to a rebel position. He openly chose to use the same methods that Ibrahim Ag Bahanga used to impose on the Malian government the same concessions made to the fighters from Kidal.

Our sources affirm that the former "Gandakoye" activist has already established cooperative ties with the Malian and Nigerian branches of the rebellion, which in turn, agreed to strengthen its capacity for creating a nuisance with an endowment of appropriate materials. To begin with, Ag Bahanga, add our sources, had already provided him with a satellite telephone (Thuraya) and three all-terrain vehicles.

The problem is that all these threats of destabilization and conflagration have free rein, with the knowledge and in view of everyone, without appropriate measures from the highest Malian authorities. Which obviously prefers to extinguish fires rather than stifle crises in their infancy.