Three key factors laid the groundwork for the war that first took off at malyq. The unrest among the tareg, militarized conflict in the tribe border region and violent jahadism exported from the algerian civil war. How did these social contradictions and livelihood crises explode when they did? And then why and how did the western press, particularly in france, romanticize the toireg?
Featuring Rahmane Idrissa on Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The region has been beset by jihadist insurgencies and, in the case of Mali and Burkina Faso, recent military coups. This is a comprehensive interview that puts the present conflict—which has drawn in French military and then Russian mercenary intervention—into deep historical and political-economic context from struggles over the slave trade, through French colonialism, to the neocolonial imposition of neoliberalism.
Idrissa’s work:
newleftreview.org/issues/ii132/articles/rahmane-idrissa-the-sahel-a-cognitive-mapping
newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/kabores-defeat
nybooks.com/daily/2022/05/25/potent-policies-of-empire
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/rahmane-idrissa/coup-contrecouplrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n23/rahmane-idrissa/countries-without-currency
Special outro music from Ali Farka Touré.
Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig
Check out Inside the Second Wave of Feminism: haymarketbooks.org/books/1887-inside-the-second-wave-of-feminism