Posted on 07/31/2006 6:46:02 AM PDT by Valin
As journalist Robert Kaplan flew into Bamako, Mali, in 1993, he saw tin roofs appear through thick dust blowing off the presumably advancing desert. He used this image of a “dying region” to conclude his Atlantic Monthly article “The Coming Anarchy,” in which he drew a connection between environmental degradation and growing disorder in the Third World, a hypothesis that certainly seemed to fit not only Mali but most of West Africa. When the article was published in February 1994, it made a considerable splash in Washington policy circles.
But even as Kaplan predicted doom, the situation on the ground in Mali did not quite fit his thesis. Yes, life was hard in this impoverished West African nation of 12 million people, and remains so. The 2005 United Nations Human Development Index, based on a combination of economic, demographic, and educational data, lists Mali as fourth from the bottom among 177 countries. Only Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sierra Leone rank lower. But despite persistent poverty and ongoing turmoil in neighboring states, in a single decade Mali has launched one of the most successful democracies in Africa. Its political record includes three democratic elections and two peaceful transitions of power, a transformation that seems nothing short of amazing.
When I served in Mali as American ambassador, from 1987 to 1990, I had never spent time in a country with such an apparent absence of political life of any kind. The military ruler, Moussa Traoré, presided over a typical single-party African dictatorship. In the early years after he took over in 1968, he survived several coup attempts, but by the time I arrived everyone seemed to have given up and gone to sleep. The government controlled all print and radio news, and, at first, there was no sign of dissident activity.
Mali, along with the rest of the region, had been wracked by drought in the late 1970s and again in the mid-1980s, and the government was making a serious effort to improve an economy dominated by peasant agriculture. Although the United States’ significant interests in this poor, landlocked country were solely humanitarian, American economic aid to Mali almost tripled during my tour as ambassador. But I never imagined that tradition-bound, predominately Muslim Mali might soon become something of a poster child for African democracy.
There was a clue to what was coming, if I’d recognized it. On my daily commute to the embassy through the potholed streets of Bamako, Mali’s capital, my driver would listen to the seemingly endless half-song, half-chant recitals that were standard fare on the only radio station. He told me that the singers were griots, the hereditary musician-historian-entertainers of West Africa, singing about Mali’s ancient history. He was a griot himself, and could explain some of the songs, often about the epic of Sunjata, the outcast-turned-hero who became the first emperor of old Mali in the 13th century. I recall wondering how people facing such a daunting present could be so preoccupied by stories from a distant past. I certainly did not envision how they might put their history to creative political use.
By the time my ambassadorial tour ended in 1990, Mali was on the cusp of momentous change. People were weary of the old dictatorship, which like many in Africa was vaguely Marxist-Leninist in organization; further, the demise of communism in the Soviet Union had destroyed whatever legitimacy such regimes still had. In March 1991, Mali’s military dictator made the fatal mistake of ordering his troops to fire on students protesting in the capital, and several hundred were killed. In the wave of shocked public reaction that followed, a key military commander, Colonel Amadou Toumani Touré, joined the pro-democracy forces, and the dictatorship collapsed. Touré, better known as “ATT,” promised to hand over power to an elected government. Like Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer who took up arms and then returned to his fields, Touré kept his word, surprising many of his fellow Malians.
Mali’s new leaders immediately convened a national assembly, a kind of constitutional convention with representatives from all social classes. The government that emerged was influenced by the example of France, Mali’s former colonial master. It included a specifically secular constitution, a strong executive, and a weak legislature. But most remarkable, and radically different from the French model, was a wholly Malian emphasis on decentralized administration that gave real authority to previously voiceless local governments. From the beginning, Mali’s founding fathers claimed that decentralization was a return to traditional practice. The term for it in Bambara, the principal local language, is mara segi so, which means “bringing power home.”
Mali’s electoral track record since 1991 has been just messy enough to suggest that the country’s democracy is genuine, not the creation of one strong, quasi-permanent leader in the background, as is the case in a number of other African states. The new constitution established a five-year presidency with a limit of two terms. Alpha Konaré, a journalist who had led the pro-democracy movement, won the first election in 1992. It was generally free and fair. Konaré and his ADEMA party also won in 1997, but this second election was a procedural shambles because of an inadequate electoral commission, and the opposition boycotted it. The electoral commission was expanded and repaired, and the third national election, in 2002, went much more smoothly.
After his second term, Konaré—who reputedly once said that what Africa needs is more living ex-presidents—gracefully accepted retirement. Malian law wisely provides a comfortable personal residence for term-limited ex-chiefs of state, on the theory that it will help to discourage post-retirement coup plotting. But Konaré didn’t need it: He is now chairman of Africa’s top regional organization, the African Union. With Konaré out of the picture, ATT, Mali’s erstwhile Cincinnatus, retired from the army, ran for election in 2002, and won handily. Meanwhile, the former dictator, Traoré, had been tried and sentenced to death for political and economic crimes. But Konaré pardoned him, and he is now living comfortably in Bamako with his once-controversial wife, whose extended family had been the economic power behind his regime.
During its first decade, Mali’s democratic government settled a serious rebellion in the Saharan north, halted endemic student unrest, and established comprehensive political and religious freedom. These accomplishments were all the more remarkable given the chain-reaction conflicts that had spread across the region to Mali’s south, from Liberia to Sierra Leone and most recently to Ivory Coast, once a model of developmental progress.
Was Mali’s record simply the result of fortuitous good leadership, or was something more fundamental at work? To find out, I returned in 2004 and traveled throughout the country conducting interviews. When I asked Malians to explain their aptitude for democracy, their answers boiled down to “It’s the history, stupid,” of course expressed more politely.........
Not sure how much progress can be made given all the damage that has already been done on desertification
Ah, but we if nothing else an adaptable specie.
Malians are quite aware that the donors are not about to abandon democratic Mali, ... As one leading Malian academic told me, “For us, democracy is as good as money in the bank.”
There has never been anything BUT disorder in the Third World. It isn't "growing." It's not exactly shrinking, to be sure. But it's no worse now than it has always been.
This sounds like a flyer from the UN.
This sounds like a flyer from the UN.
Well this IS the Wilson Quarterly, and a good case could be made that it loves Turtle Bay. It's stilll a mag that I take a look at as sometimes they have good articles.
The only chance I seen in Bamako happened within the last few months; increases in robberies and street crimes which were unheard 6 months ago are nowadays an accepted way of life.
Entire familiese still live in sheds or under trees, except for the toobabus (white people) who live in beautiful mansions. The locals expect little because they will only receive crumbs, if that much. I must give them credit because whatever little food they have, they will share it with their entire extended families.
I mailed approx 50 lbs of used clothing, and various families formed a line in from of my house just to get some hand-me-downs. They were amazed that we throw away clothes. My children are mailing us packages weekly with discarded clothes and toys just to distribute to the orphanage.
Some of my workers asked me to adopt their children just to take them away from a live of poverty.
I do not know how to post attachments/photos so other freepers can see the daily life in Mali (or as I say to my children, shows how good we have in the States)
(FYI: I'm not a missionary, I'm in Bamako on work assignment)
Where are you in Bamako?
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