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BAMAKO, Mali -- Drunk soldiers looted Mali's presidential palace hours after they declared a coup on Thursday, suspending the constitution and dissolving the institutions of one of the few established democracies in this troubled corner of Africa.
The whereabouts of the country's 63-year-old president Amadou Toumani Toure, who was just one month away from stepping down after a decade in office, could not be confirmed. The United States Embassy issued a statement dispelling rumors that he had sought refuge in their compound.
The scene in this normally serene capital was unsettling to those proud of Mali's history as one of the mature democracies in the region. Soldiers smelling of alcohol ripped flat-screen TVs, computer monitors, printers and photocopiers out of the presidential palace, carting them off in plain sight. Others in pickup trucks zoomed across the broad avenues, holding beer bottles in one hand and firing automatic weapons with the other.
The mutineers said they were overthrowing the government because of its mishandling of an ethnic Tuareg insurgency in the country's north that began in January. Tens of thousands of Malian civilians have been forced to flee. The soldiers sent to fight the separatists have been killed in large numbers, often after being sent to the battlefield with inadequate arms and food supplies, prompting fierce criticism of the government.
The coup began Wednesday, after young troops mutinied at a military camp near the capital. The rioting spread to a garrison thousands of kilometers (miles) away in the strategic northern town of Gao.
Oh, boy.....
Well, that explains part of it. Way to go team NATO.
Mali coup: soldiers loot presidential palace after seizing power
Rebels claim they have put an end to 'incompetent regime' of President Touré but promise to restore democracy
But the CNRDR's claim to have democratic intentions was dismissed by international organisations, which were swift to condemn the coup. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, called for calm and said grievances had to be settled democratically.
Jean Ping, head of the commission of the African Union continental grouping, said he was "deeply concerned by the reprehensible acts currently being perpetrated by some elements of the Malian army".
I guess their tourism will take a hit ? It looks like a lovely place. Much like Dee_troyt or South Shitcago, but warmer.
BAMAKO, Mali Ethnic Tuareg rebels in Mali say on their website that they have taken a northern town a day after mutinous soldiers declared a coup in the capital.
The rebel National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad said in the statement that they had moved into the town of Anefis without resistance. The town is between the strategic northern outposts of Gao and Kidal.
Soldiers in the capital stormed the presidency Wednesday. They say they are angry over the handling of the Tuareg insurgency in the north. The uprising has cost the lives of many soldiers.
As of Friday, the whereabouts of President Amadou Toumani Toure were unknown.
Many worry that the rebels in the north will take advantage of the power vacuum to take strategic towns.
To the clatter of gunfire and under the cover of darkness, the President who ushered Mali into an unprecedented era of multiparty democracy fled the West African country's sleepy capital, Bamako, last night as an army mutiny rapidly escalated into a full-blown coup attempt. The renegade soldiers had claimed to have seized the country after storming the presidential palace during the night. But President Amadou Toumani Toure's reappearance at a nearby military cantonment, apparently at the head of a crack bodyguard of red-beret paratroopers, now leaves Mali on the brink of a civil war apart from dealing with the thorny Tuareg rebellion that helped precipitate the military uprising. In less than 24 hours, one of Africa's most stable democracies has turned upside down.
Across Bamako, growing numbers of the military, gendarmerie and police switched sides, locking down the capital, firing sporadically and establishing roadblocks. Shops stayed shuttered, crowds stood uneasily on street corners, and old men in traditional robes lounged in deck chairs as they waited for news. "Pow-pow-pow," said Abdoulai, a taxi driver, mimicking gunfire as troops insouciantly loosed off rounds to cow the population. Gendarmes commandeered a silver station wagon; a soldier strolled casually down a half-deserted street, can of Coke in his hand; and a policeman riding pillion behind a driver on a moped flashed a V sign and shouted: "We've won."
In fact, the situation is a lot less certain than that. Around noon on Thursday, news emerged that Toure had successfully slipped past the renegade assault on the presidential palace, which bestrides a limestone cliff overlooking the center of Bamako, and was regrouping at Kati, the barracks where the mutiny began Wednesday morning. He is, however, without several key senior government members who are under lock and key. Meanwhile, mutinies continue to take place across the country. Former colonial power France, which retains close links to Mali, said it was suspending military assistance and called for the restoration of the constitution, which the mutineers suspended overnight. The U.S. and the European Union echoed that call, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for grievances to be settled democratically. The African Union said it was "deeply concerned by the reprehensible acts currently being perpetrated by some elements of the Malian army."
Situated in the heart of West Africa, Mali is deemed a key ally by Western powers, who will want to see Toure restored to power as fast as possible, particularly because terrorist groups are spreading rapidly in the region, and the Sahara is awash with weaponry looted from Libya. The country's northern desert is a thoroughfare for arms smugglers, a safe haven for al-Qaeda's regional franchise and a lucrative route for cocaine traffickers headed north to the markets of Europe. With an apparent standoff looming, there is every prospect of security deteriorating before it gets better.
JOHANNESBURG Tuareg rebels overran the ancient desert crossroads of Timbuktu over the weekend, according to residents of the city and local officials, virtually sealing the rebels control of the northern half of the troubled West African nation of Mali.
The fall of Timbuktu, a backwater deep in the Sahara, is the latest in a series of steady advances by the rebels and another setback for a nation struggling to come to grips with a coup that deposed its elected president last month and replaced him with a junta of junior military officers.
On Sunday, a convoy of trucks carrying fighters from the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, the main Malian Tuareg rebel group, paraded into Timbuktu, residents said. The Associated Press reported that another rebel group, Ansar Dine, was also in the city. Residents reported seeing its black flag flying, and said fighters from the group, which espouses an Islamist philosophy, were on the streets to prevent looting.
Fida Ag Mohammed, a Tuareg elder who tends a library of crumbling ancient manuscripts near Timbuktu, said that the rebellion had rattled the ancient city.
They have taken the whole of the north, Mr. Mohammed said in a telephone interview. He said that the price of food had risen, and that people in Timbuktu were worried about what the rapidly evolving events in Mali would mean for them. Asked if the citys Tuaregs were supporting the rebellion, he replied: The people support whoever is in power. What else can they do?
The fall of Timbuktu and other cities in the north have greatly undercut the rationale of the coup leaders, who argued that they needed to overthrow President Amadou Toumani Touré because he had failed to properly arm and equip the military in its fight against the rebels. But in the days since the military coup, the rebels have made some of their most significant gains yet, taking control of towns like Gao and Kidal.
The coup leaders faced another major setback on Monday, when the landlocked nations neighbors in West Africa closed their borders to all nonhumanitarian trade with Mali and froze its accounts in the regional bank, news agencies reported. The regional bloc, known as the Economic Community of West African States, had threatened the coup leaders with such sanctions last week if they did not surrender power and restore democracy.
BAMAKO, Mali Just 12 days after they stormed the presidential palace, the young officers that seized control of Mali in a coup were slapped Monday with harsh financial sanctions that could cause the country to run out of gasoline.
The body representing nations in West Africa announced Monday that starting immediately they are closing the land borders with Mali. The landlocked nation of over 15 million imports nearly all its petroleum products from neighboring Ivory Coast, and economists say gas stations could run dry within weeks. The country's account at the regional central bank has also been frozen, meaning that the junta will struggle to pay the salaries of government employees, including the very soldiers whose loyalty they need to retain power.
"All of the measures are applicable starting today and until the constitutional order is restored," said Alassane Ouattara, the president of Ivory Coast who is the chair of the Economic Community of West African States, after an emergency summit in Senegal. "The measures taken by the junta are in the right direction, but are not sufficient," he said.
The regional body representing 15 nations in West Africa had issued a 72-hour ultimatum to the soldiers that grabbed power, which expired Monday. In an effort to stave off the sanctions, the captain who led the coup held a press conference Sunday to say he was reinstating the constitution and planning to hold elections.
Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo refused to give a timeline on when the elections would be held, however, and dodged questions on whether he would continue to be president during the period leading to the election.
Meanwhile, the government on Monday also lost control of the northern half of the nation, as rebel flags were hoisted over the last three major towns still under government control. In just three days, the Tuareg rebels swept across the north, taking the regional capital of Kidal on Friday, the largest city of Gao on Saturday and the fabled desert outpost of Timbuktu on Sunday.
Commentators on television are already talking about the possible partition of Mali, which has weathered numerous rebellions by the lighter-skinned Tuaregs who have long felt marginalized by the darker-skinned Bambaras, who dominate the south where the seat of government is located.
BAMAKO, Mali The rebel group that recently seized control of Mali's remote north in a maneuver that effectively partitioned the country in two announced a cease-fire Thursday, saying they had reached their military goal.
Moussa Ag Assarid, a spokesman for the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, said the group was declaring the cease-fire to allow humanitarian aid to resume in the north, where shops were looted.
In Ivory Coast, the military chiefs of the nations bordering Mali met Thursday to hash out their plan for a military intervention. Deputy Ivorian Defense Minister Paul Koffi Koffi said military action is being considered both to reverse the coup that deposed Mali's president last month, as well as to preserve Mali's territorial integrity after the rebel advance in the north.
He instructed the army chiefs of the 15 nations in West Africa to draft a detailed plan, including how many troops each intends to send, how quickly they could ready them and what logistical means they plan to contribute.
In Paris, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France is ready to help African forces on a logistical level. The chief of staff of the French army, Adm. Edouard Guillaud, traveled Thursday to Burkina Faso to discuss details with the president.
The rebels launched their insurgency in January, saying they wanted to establish an independent Tuareg homeland in the north, known as the Azawad. They only succeeded in taking small towns until March 21, when disgruntled soldiers stormed the presidential palace in the distant capital of Bamako, overthrowing the democratically elected president.
BAMAKO, Mali Mali's Tuareg rebels, who have seized control of the country's distant north in the chaotic aftermath of a military coup in the capital, declared independence Friday of their Azawad nation.
"We, the people of the Azawad," they said in a statement published on the rebel website, "proclaim the irrevocable independence of the state of the Azawad starting from this day, Friday, April 6, 2012."
The military chiefs of 13 of Mali's neighbors met Thursday in Ivory Coast to hash out plans for a military intervention to push back the rebels in the north, as well as to restore constitutional rule after disgruntled soldiers last month stormed the presidential palace and sent the democratically elected leader into hiding. The confusion in the capital created an opening for the rebels in the north, who have been attempting to claim independence for more than 50 years.
France, which earlier said it is willing to offer logistical support for a military invasion, announced Friday that it does not recognize the new Tuareg state.
"A unilateral declaration of independence that is not recognized by African states means nothing for us," said French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet. The European Union concurred.
"We will certainly not accept this declaration. It's out of the question," said Richard Zinc, the head of the European Union delegation in Bamako.
The traditionally nomadic Tuareg people have been fighting for independence for the northern half of Mali since at least 1958, when Tuareg elders wrote a letter addressed to the French president asking their colonial rulers to carve out a separate homeland called "Azawad" in their language. Instead the north, where the lighter-skinned Tuareg people live, was made part of the same country as the south, where the dark-skinned ethnic groups controlled the capital and the nation's finances.
The Tuaregs accuse the southerners of marginalizing the north and of concentrating development, including lucrative aid projects, in the south. They fought numerous rebellions attempting to wrestle the north free, but it wasn't until a March 21 coup in Bamako toppled the nation's elected government that the fighters were able to make significant gains. In a three-day period last week they seized the three largest cities in the north as soldiers dumped their uniforms and retreated.
Their independence declaration cited 50 years of misrule by the country's southern-based administration and was issued by the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, or NMLA, whose army is led by a Tuareg senior commander who fought in the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's military.
The group is secular and its stated aim is creating Azawad. However, they were helped by an Islamist faction, Ansar Dine, which abides by the extreme Salafi reading of the Quran. They are now attempting to apply Sharia law to Mali's moderate north, including in the fabled tourist destination of Timbuktu, where women have been told to wear veils and not be seen in public with males who are not relatives.
BAMAKO, Mali From one of the hiding places where he has been holed up since last month's coup, Mali's president penned a resignation letter and handed it to an emissary to deliver to the country's new leaders, while reporters looked on.
The move paves the way for Mali to name a new interim president, the next step in the nation's return to democratic rule. President Amadou Toumani Toure was just months from finishing his last term, when soldiers on March 21 stormed the presidential palace, sending Toure into hiding and canceling a democratic tradition stretching back more than two decades.
Under intense international pressure, however, the officers that seized power last month signed an accord on Friday, agreeing to return the country to constitutional rule. They did so after much of the capital only had 12 hours of electricity a day, a result of the severe financial sanctions imposed by the nation's neighboring Mali, including the closure of the country's borders, which made it impossible for landlocked Mali to import fuel.
The accord signed by the leader of the March 21 coup called for the application of Article 36 of Mali's constitution. The article states that in the event the president is unable to serve out his term, the head of the national assembly becomes interim president for a transitional period, before new elections can be held.
For that article to be able to be applied properly, however, Mali's constitutional court needed to confirm that the president cannot carry out his term.
Reporters from state television and French television station France 24 were allowed to film President Toure at a villa in the ACI 2000 neighborhood of the capital where he has been hiding. Looking thinner than before, the 63-year-old leader appeared in a flowing white robe and traditional bonnet. He said he was resigning of his own accord.
"I am doing this without any pressure, and I am doing this in good faith, and I am doing it especially out of love for my country. I have decided to hand in my resignation letter," Toure said.
His resignation will allow the court to declare the vacancy of power, paving the way for the head of the national assembly, Dioncounda Traore, to become interim president, as called for in the constitution.
BAMAKO, Mali Gunfire rang out over this West African capital Monday night as soldiers loyal to the president, who was deposed in a coup in March, appeared to be attempting a countercoup against the ruling military junta.
But by early Tuesday morning the junta aired a message on state television saying that it controlled the positions that had been under attack, including the state broadcaster, the citys international airport and a military base in Kati, the garrison village at the edge of Bamako where the military junta and its troops are based, Reuters reported.
A witness near the broadcasters main building told the news agency, however, that gun and heavy weapons fire continued near the building.
Shots could be heard Monday night coming from the Djicoroni paratrooper camp, where many of the loyalists troops who support Amadou Toumani Touré, the ousted leader, are based. A junta soldier, running from the scene, yelled, The camp paratroops are attacking us! He was heard calling for reinforcements on his phone.
Witnesses near the base, close to the United States Embassy here, said they had seen well-armed soldiers in armored vehicles driving past.
Gunfire was reported in Bamako on Monday night around the area of the state broadcaster, and the national television station failed to broadcast its regular news program. The international airport also appeared to be under attack. The airport is being evacuated, said Tieman Coulibaly, the president of a handling company that works at the airport and a leading opposition figure. The Red Berets are trying to take it, he said, referring to the loyalist troops.
Fighting was also reported in Kati. The soldiers told us to stay inside, and they are all in the streets now, said Sidiki Keïta, a resident. All the streets are occupied by the Green Berets the junta troops and they are looking for the Red Berets.
It took Ibrahim Touré three weeks to escape from Timbuktu after rebels seized the desert town, but, in his heart, he hasnt really left. The 26-year-old shopkeeper studies the floor as he talks, cradling a welter of scabs and fresh scar tissue on his right elbow. Sometimes he stops to rub his head with an uncertain hand the unforgiving sun, maybe, or a reaction to the horrors he has witnessed and suffered. If what he says is true, then the fog of war in northern Mali where Tuareg separatists, Islamic militants, Arab militias and a hodgepodge of terrorist groups are vying for control following a spectacularly successful military campaign is concealing a grisly spate of human-rights abuses, humanitarian suffering and war crimes.
The shadows were lengthening one Friday after mosque, he relates, when he saw three truckloads of gunmen from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) pounce on two young women. One was an old school friend called Isata, Touré says a girl who was always laughing. The rebels fired wildly in the air and stuck a gun in her face. Hidden in a nomads tent, Touré felt his guts contort as he watched them rape her. I didnt think these kinds of things could happen in reality, he says. After the gunmen left the two violated women on the ground, other women went to comfort them. Isata couldnt even talk, says Touré. Her whole face was destroyed where theyd hit her. There was blood everywhere.
Tourés own problems were just beginning. As he surveyed the ruins of his electronics shop days later looted, he reckons, by MNLA fighters Islamic militants from a faction called Ansar Eddine took issue with his livelihood. Spotting a computer, they asked him what he wanted with a white mans things. They knocked him to his knees, gripped his hands and held a flaming torch to his arm. Someone struck him on the leg with a knife. I was so scared, he says. I cant remember what happened after that. Hungry, wounded and destitute, Touré has wound up on a dusty sidewalk in Malis capital, Bamako, one of hundreds of people arriving each day on overcrowded buses from the countrys disintegrating north. His nephews Oussman and Hamar (ages 12 and 5) lie in the dirt nearby. Their mother died about a month ago from sickness and starvation.
Stories like this are almost impossible to verify. TIME found no second source to confirm Tourés pitiful tale. Timbuktu, so long the mystic city of Western imagination, has been largely isolated from the world since rebels put the Malian army to flight on April 1. Emboldened by the chaos, terrorists from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are said to be operating more freely, limiting the extent to which aid organizations can penetrate Malis hinterland. There are good reasons, too, to reserve judgment on what information does emanate from the north, not least because other parties to the conflict the military regime in Bamako, for example have an interest in playing up perceptions of rebel depredations. The truth, to borrow a metaphor from the limited literature on northern Mali, is shrouded in a haze of dust.
