As Mali Wars with Islamists, a Mormon Runs for President

Time ^ | May 02, 2013 | Aryn Baker / Bamako

[Pan_Yan]

When Niankoro Yeah Samake lands in Mali on Friday, following a successful California fundraising campaign, to register as a candidate in the country’s upcoming presidential elections, he will be carrying a lot of baggage. There will be the requisite suitcase stuffed with gifts from the United States for his family back home. He will have a sizable check from an American hair products magnate to help fund his campaign. And he will have his well-thumbed copy of the Book of Mormon, scripture that has been a constant source of strength since he converted more than a decade ago. He is likely to need it. Aside from his wife and children, Samake is Mali’s only Mormon. He’s not even sure which will be more difficult: running as a Mormon in a country that is 95 percent Muslim, or being president of a nation so weakened by corruption that the past 14 months have seen the government felled by a coup and two-thirds of its territory overrun by Islamist militants. “I am not running for President because of my faith, but my faith will help me be President,” he says, via Skype on a layover in Paris.

It’s hard to understand why a man like Samake, a social entrepreneur well on his way to achieving American citizenship, who has spent most of the past thirteen years in Utah running a successful charity, would even want such a job. Were it not for a French-led intervention earlier this year, Islamists would still control some half of the country. The security situation in the northern territory is grim: The undeveloped and ungoverned Saharan expanses have become ground zero for terror expansion in Africa, a malevolent node where al-Qaeda-affiliated groups collude with drug trafficking mafias, gun runners and kidnappers-for-ransom.

[Tennessee Nana]

who has spent most of the past thirteen years in Utah running a successful charity,
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so a charity is a profitable business venture ???

[null and void]

I hope the Malians have the good sense to elect a muslim in preference to a Mormon, like we did! Do I really need a </sarc> tag? Seriously?

[Pan_Yan]

so a charity is a profitable business venture ???

All I can tell you after 13 years working in a variety of class A commercial office buildings is that charities have by far the nicest offices.

[Amberdawn]

Of course! We Con’s are SO behind the times! We could have been ripping off donors and funneling the money into “right wing” schemes all these years, JUST LIKE THE LEFT DOES.

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

So true.

[glock rocks]

Heh. Good one.